ACLU Pres. Critical of Court

The president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reproached the Supreme Court for abandoning its traditional role as the protector of the rights of women and minority groups in a speech at the Harvard Law School Wednesday night.

Nadine S. Strossen '72, a constitutional law and international human rights expert, told approximately 50 students gathered in Austin Hall that "the Supreme Court is the single greatest threat to civil liberties" that Americans face today.

In her discussion of the relationship between civil liberties and the Supreme Court, Strossen singled out a woman's "reproductive freedom" as being in acute danger in the hands of the present court.

"[Roe V. Wade] has effectively been overturned already," Strossen said. "It is just a matter of time before the Webster ruling is enforced."

Roe v. Wade is the 1973 landmark case which ruled state bans on abortion unconstitutional. In 1989, in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the high court placed its first limitations on Roe.

Freedom of Speech

Strossen also singled out the socalled "gag rule," which prohibits family clinics which receive federal funding from counseling women on abortion, as the court's latest attempt to curtail a woman's right to control her reproductive system.

The ACLU president said the Supreme Court is rewriting constitutional history at will. Strossen in voked Mark Twain in her criticism of the court. "No one is safe while they are in session," she quoted.

Strossen also discussed the court's recent challenges to the "traditionally preferred right" or freedom of speech. She expressed concern over the court's intent to question not only rights that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, such as a woman's right to have an abortion but also rights, such as freedom of speech, that are specifically delineated.

As an example of what she termed court challenges to individuals' freedom of speech, Strossen cited a recent Supreme Court ruling that "forms of protected expression may be prohibited because of a community's sense of morality" in a nude dancing case.

Strossen stressed the ACLU's traditional defense of freedom of speech and referred to a remark of one juror in the widely-publicized Florida trial of the rap group 2 Live Crew. "Take away one freedom, and soon they are all gone," she quoted.

And in her own last words, Strossen encouraged the audience to not let the Supreme Court have the last word on abortion. "Support legislation that will protect a woman's right to choose," she said.