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Crist Has Big Opportunity To Shape High Court
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Published: May 28, 2008
In his eight years in the governor's mansion, Republican Jeb Bush only got to appoint two justices to the seven-member Florida Supreme Court. As a result, the court remains significantly to the left of the state's political mainstream, which has drifted from moderately liberal to moderately conservative over the last couple of decades. Fate and the state constitution are giving Bush's successor, Charlie Crist, a chance to reshape the court.
Crist, another Republican, has that opportunity after Justice Kenneth Bell announced Friday he was retiring from the high court. Bell cited family reasons for the decision. Last month, Justice Raoul G. Cantero III announced he was stepping down from the court for personal reasons. Two other justices, Charles Wells and Harry Lee Anstead, must resign by next year. They are bumping into the constitutional requirement that justices step down after reaching age 70.
Bell and Cantero were Bush's appointees and the only dissenters when the Supreme Court struck down the state's educational voucher law. In general, the 2006 ruling delighted liberals and angered conservatives.
It will be interesting to see on which side of that sort of ideological divide the quartet of justices Crist must name will stand.
That will be hard to predict, given Crist's growing renown in the national media as a GOP moderate.
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