Tapsearch Com EditorOn 1980's conservative Supreme Court
September 19th 2007 22:09
Cass R. Sunstein has a pretty absurd article about the Supreme Court. It says, accurately, that the court has tended right over the past few decades.
It goes horribly wrong, though, in characterizing the 1980 court as "conservative" to begin with. Here's said court, right to left as the author sees it:
The second-, third- and fourth-most-conservative members voted with the majority on Roe v. Wade (Rehnquist and White dissented). Some right-wing, strict-constructionist court. Only compared to the Warren court was that group's conservatism worth talking about.
In fact, the 1980 court was so conservative, the writer gets nostalgic about its -- well, liberalism:
Far to the left of anyone on the Court today, Marshall and Brennan believed that the Constitution banned the death penalty in all circumstances, created a right to education, and required the government not merely to protect the right to choose but actually to fund abortions for poor women.
They must not have read the document, because my copy doesn't say anything like any of that. It's really too bad we don't have this diversity of opinion anymore -- even Ginsberg, a former ACLU head, knows how to read.
And here a statistic rendered useless by the writer's complete lack of context:
Maybe an example or two, so readers can gauge what effects these overrulings had? No? Might as well assume they weren't too significant, then, and that's why they're "widely unknown."
If there's any place liberals can push their policies, it's the courts -- with or without public opinion (or for that matter, the laws the courts purport to interpret) on their side. It's arguable the court is pretty balanced today, and it's true it has moved to the right. But it moved from left to center, certainly not from right to far-right.
It goes horribly wrong, though, in characterizing the 1980 court as "conservative" to begin with. Here's said court, right to left as the author sees it:
Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Byron White, John Paul Stevens, Lewis Powell, Potter Stewart, Warren Burger, and William Rehnquist.
The second-, third- and fourth-most-conservative members voted with the majority on Roe v. Wade (Rehnquist and White dissented). Some right-wing, strict-constructionist court. Only compared to the Warren court was that group's conservatism worth talking about.
In fact, the 1980 court was so conservative, the writer gets nostalgic about its -- well, liberalism:
Far to the left of anyone on the Court today, Marshall and Brennan believed that the Constitution banned the death penalty in all circumstances, created a right to education, and required the government not merely to protect the right to choose but actually to fund abortions for poor women.
They must not have read the document, because my copy doesn't say anything like any of that. It's really too bad we don't have this diversity of opinion anymore -- even Ginsberg, a former ACLU head, knows how to read.
And here a statistic rendered useless by the writer's complete lack of context:
A widely unknown fact: Between 1984 and 2000, the Court overruled more than 40 precedents, specifically rejecting the law as it was understood in 1980. And on many more occasions, the Court significantly reoriented the law without overruling particular decisions.
Maybe an example or two, so readers can gauge what effects these overrulings had? No? Might as well assume they weren't too significant, then, and that's why they're "widely unknown."
If there's any place liberals can push their policies, it's the courts -- with or without public opinion (or for that matter, the laws the courts purport to interpret) on their side. It's arguable the court is pretty balanced today, and it's true it has moved to the right. But it moved from left to center, certainly not from right to far-right.
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