1979—President Carter nominates This Day Hall of Famer Stephen Reinhardt to a seat on the Ninth Circuit.
1987—In the aftermath of the Senate’s defeat of the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork and of Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg’s decision not to proceed with his intended nomination, President Reagan nominates Ninth Circuit judge Anthony M. Kennedy to fill the seat vacated by retired Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.
1989—By a vote of 4 to 3, the Florida supreme court concocts a categorical rule that police violate the Fourth Amendment when they conduct drug searches by boarding intercity buses and questioning passengers. In her melodramatic majority opinion (in Bostick v. State), Justice Rosemary Barkett posits that the “intrusion upon privacy rights caused by the [practice] is too great for democracy to sustain,” and she equates the police conduct with methods employed by Nazi Germany.
On review, the Supreme Court (in Florida v. Bostick) rejects Barkett’s rule by a 6 to 3 vote (with Marshall, Stevens, and Blackmun in dissent). Justice O’Connor’s majority opinion determines that the same totality-of-the-circumstances inquiry that governs whether “encounters that take place on a city street or an airport lobby” constitute a seizure “applies equally to encounters on a bus.”
On remand, Barkett again concludes that an unlawful seizure occurred. This time, though, she is in dissent.