Barbara A. Perry Virginia Law-Related Education Center, Sweet Briar College

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Barbara A. Perry 
Executive Director 
Professor of Government

Barbara Perry was the 1994-95 Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where she won the Tom C. Clark Award. She serves as a consultant to the Supreme Court Historical Society and Street Law's Summer Institute for Teachers. Perry is the author of numerous books and articles on the Supreme Court, including The Priestly Tribe: The Supreme Court's Image in the American Mind , and co-author of Freedom and the Court: Civil Rights and Liberties in the United States, with Henry J. Abraham. She currently is writing a book on the University of Michigan affirmative action cases. Perry received her B.A. from the University of Louisville, M.A. from Oxford University, and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.

Professor Perry is also a frequent media consultant. Most recently, her expertise has been sought concerning the U.S. Supreme Court nominations of John G. Roberts, Harriet Miers, and Samuel Alito.

All eyes of court today on Kansas
Kansas City Star (MO)
... “It’s Broadway, it’s the big show, the Super Bowl, the World Series,” said Barbara Perry, a professor at Virginia’s Sweet Briar College and an author ... FULL STORY>

Focus on Supreme Court at Schupf Lecture
Cazenovia College, New York
Dr. Barbara A. Perry will discuss the personalities and ideologies
of the U.S. Supreme Court at College’s Sixth Annual Schupf Lecture......Full Story>

Alito Could Be 5th Catholic on Current Supreme Court
New Yor Times, November 1, 2005
"This would add a whole new meaning to the Catholic rite of confirmation," said Barbara A. Perry, a Supreme Court expert at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. "This would mean that the religion factor no longer matters."
...FULL STORY >

Nominee holds long, conservative track record
The Daily Tar Heel, November 1, 2005
... Barbara Perry, a professor of government at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, said Republican senators were looking for a hard-core conservative in ideology and
... FULL STORY >

USA Today – Washington, DC, USA …
Barbara Perry, a political science professor at Sweet Briar College who has written extensively on nomination politics, says that with today's 'round-the-clock media cycles, casting nominees in an effective message is much of the battle.
...FULL STORY >

A History of Diversity on the High Court
National Public Radio, Weekend Edition, Oct. 8, 2005…
Professor Barbara Perry of Sweet Briar College tells Scott Simon the makeup of the Supreme Court has always reflected political realities. And she maintains justices have usually brought a surprising diversity of experience....FULL STORY >

The following is an article from the August 7, 2005, edition of the New York Times:

Paper: New York Times, The (NY) Title: Catholics and the Court Date: August 7, 2005

IT is, in many ways, a triumph of assimilation, a marker in the political ascendancy of American Catholics: After more than a century when there was typically only one Catholic seat on the Supreme Court, Judge John G. Roberts, if he is confirmed next month, will become the fourth Catholic on the court.

So why is there so much simmering tension about Judge Robertss religion and the role it should or should not play in his coming confirmation process?

Religious conservatives contend that liberal Senate Democrats are trying to keep people of faith off the federal bench. Some Catholic conservatives quickly declared that any questions about Judge Robertss beliefs were utterly out of line. Democratic leaders, for their part, angrily deny that they are the ones injecting religion into the debate, and take particular offense at being accused of anti-Catholicism, since many of them are Catholics themselves.

All this fury is largely pre-emptive; Democratic leaders say they have no intention of grilling Judge Roberts on his religious beliefs (which several of them share) in next months confirmation hearing. But the role of religion in the public square for voters and public officials is one of the most contentious debates around these days. And the influence of a judges faith and personal beliefs may be growing just as contentious, as abortion, gay rights and other social issues come increasingly under the purview of the courts.

Which leads to the question: how relevant are a nominees religious views? Friends and political allies have described Judge Robertss active and conservative brand of Catholicism, which he shares with his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, as an important part of their lives. Many social conservatives clearly took his religious background as a positive sign about his judicial and political philosophy. But any deeper probing of his religious views and their implications for his rulings strikes some Catholics as reminiscent of a more prejudiced time. I think its unfortunate that were still at a point in our nation where we have to ask these questions, said Douglas W. Kmiec, a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University.

Lisa Cahill, a professor of theology at Boston College, argued: Just as with any candidate, his track record is the key thing. People have a lot of communal identities and roles that go into their public stance maybe a political party, maybe a religious tradition, maybe the Elks Club and I dont think its fair to pick out the religious tradition and suggest that will determine his views.

Paradoxically, scholars like David Yalof, a political scientist at the University of Connecticut, note that Catholicism, like other religions, has not been a very good predictor of judicial conduct. We have a small sample of Catholic justices now, and theres no pattern on whether their Catholicism determined anything, said Mr. Yalof, author of Pursuit of Justices: Presidential Politics and the Selection of Supreme Court Nominees. Are you a Scalia Catholic, a Brennan Catholic or a Kennedy Catholic?

Barbara Perry , an expert on the Supreme Court at Sweet Briar College, said that President Dwight Eisenhower very carefully picked Justice William J. Brennan Jr. to reinstate the Catholic seat in 1956, which happened to be an election year, and noted that Justice Brennan eventually became one of the key supporters of the constitutional right to abortion.

There is, moreover, a tradition in American Catholicism of public officials drawing a clear line between private beliefs and public duties. That line was most famously defined by John F. Kennedy, who told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September 1960, I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.

Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York reiterated that line in 1984, declaring that while he accepted the churchs teachings on abortion, he could not impose those views on a pluralistic society.

The Senate Judiciary Committee that will review the Roberts nomination next month is in many ways a case study in Catholic political independence and diversity: 4 of the 8 Democrats are Catholics, and 2 of the 10 Republicans.

Still, in recent years, the American church has grown increasingly divided over the responsibilities of Catholic elected officials to promote church teachings particularly on abortion in their public lives. Last year, some conservative bishops threatened to deny communion to Catholic elected officials who disagreed with church abortion policy, including the Democratic presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry. Some analysts say the blurring of that line has inevitably heightened the interest in Judge Robertss religious background.

R. Scott Appleby, a historian at Notre Dame, said the bishops stance eroded the broad area of discretion that Catholic laity have historically had in their professional lives, and I think thats unfortunate. He added, That in itself planted the seeds for the kind of controversy that is now going on around Judge Roberts, someone who those bishops would very much approve of.

Still, even as some church leaders try to exert more influence over Catholics in political life, several scholars noted that judges are not elected officials. Mr. Kmiec, the former dean of Catholic Universitys law school and a former Reagan adviser, said that the church has never argued that someone serving in the role of a judicial officer has the duty or even the encouragement to impose, in the scope of that judicial office, their faith. In short, a judge is not supposed to be making the law, but merely applying it.

In the ideologically polarized climate of the current judicial battles, there is little room for scholarly parsing. Senator Richard J. Durbin, the Illinois Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, tried to have a private discussion with Judge Roberts about their shared Catholic religion and found himself embroiled in controversy and denounced by religious conservatives. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said he was once denounced on a Sunday morning talk show as "anti-Christian or anti-Catholic" -- while he was at Mass.

Its a world upside down, said Mr. Leahy, who spoke nostalgically of the bright lines drawn by Kennedy in 1960.