Bush V. Gore - Decision

Decision

In brief, the breakdown of the decisions was:

  • Seven justices (the five Justice majority plus Breyer and Souter) agreed that there was an Equal Protection Clause violation in using different standards of counting in different counties.
  • Five justices agreed that December 12 (the date of the decision) was the deadline Florida had established for recounts (Kennedy, O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas in support; Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens opposed). Justices Breyer and Souter wanted to remand the case to the Florida Supreme Court to permit that court to establish uniform standards of what constituted a legal vote and then manually recount all ballots using those standards.
  • Three justices (Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas) argued that the Florida Supreme Court had acted contrary to the intent of the Florida legislature. However, four justices (Breyer, Souter, Ginsburg, and Stevens) specifically disputed this in their dissenting opinions, and the remaining two Justices (Kennedy and O'Connor) declined to join Rehnquist's concurrence on the matter.

Read more about this topic:  Bush V. Gore

Famous quotes containing the word decision:

    “Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,—that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate,—who is invariably the devil,—and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity,—who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “The decision to feed the world
    is the real decision. No revolution
    has chosen it. For that choice requires
    that women shall be free.”
    —Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    “Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern this nation. This difficult effort will be the “moral equivalent of war,” except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.”
    —Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)