Thursday, August 11, 2005
Oyez, Oyez
Oyez.org is a great U.S. Supreme Court resource. For example, the site has a podcast, a collection of audio files from the arguments of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts before the court.
Oyez.org has extensive resources for a number of significant Supreme court cases, such as Griswold v. Connecticut, Bush v. Gore, and Roe v. Wade, including case briefs, links to full text opinions on Findlaw and MP3 files of oral arguments. Oyez.org also sells a collection of oral arguments on CD in Real Audio format.
Recently, Oyez began posting transcripts of the oral arguments in some cases. Sometimes the oral arguments contain little known facts that one can't find in the published opinion. For example, the oral argument in Roe v. Wade reveals that it was legal in Texas for a woman to perform an abortion on herself.
The State of Texas, represented by Assistant State Attorney General Jay Floyd, began its oral argument to the nine black-robed male Justices in Roe with this choice remark:
"Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the Court: It's an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they are going to have the last word."
Justice Potter Stewart is famous for his remark in Jacobellis v. Ohio
"I have reached the conclusion, which I think is confirmed at least by negative implication in the Court's decisions since Roth and Alberts, that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments criminal laws in this area are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that. "
In Roe, Stewart had this to say about freedom of choice:
JUSTICE STEWART: How do you suggest, if you're right, how do you... what procedure would you suggest for any pregnant female in the State of Texas ever to get any judicial consideration of this constitutional claim?
MR. FLOYD: Your Honor, let me answer your question with a statement, if I may. I do not believe it can be done. There are situations in which, of course as the Court knows, no remedy is provided. Now I think she makes her choice prior to the time she becomes pregnant.
That is the time of the choice. It's like, more or less, the first three or four years of our life we don't remember anything. But, once a child is born, a woman no longer has a choice, and I think pregnancy then terminates that choice.
JUSTICE STEWART: Maybe she makes her choice when she decides to live in Texas.
