In his majority opinion in Alexander v South Carolina NAACP, Samuel Alito, whose new motto is “I’ll fly any flag I damn well please—do something about it,” reversed a lower court and ruled that South Carolina’s redistricting, in which thousands of Black voters were effectively disenfranchised, was not an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
I do think of the court as becoming progressively more reasonable and adapting to modernity. With the decisions of the era you reference, it was easy to think of the SC as following along with the progression of liberalism. So, is this recent period the anomaly or is the liberal period? Time will tell.
Unless we expand the Court, this period of theocratic jurisprudence will continue for some time. If you think the earlier Court followed the progression of liberalism, you should Inherently Unequal. It did anything but until at least the 1950s. In some areas, the Court was dragged along but until the 1960s, it did everything it could to protect traditional power centers.
What is interesting for people who came of age in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, is their view of the Supreme Court as a guardian of civil liberties. They think of Miranda, Roe, Baker v Carr, Brown, and other decisions and think that the Court was generally like that. No. Except for those few decades, the Court has generally been the guardian of the powerful, rich, and white...extremely conservative. Not just the cases I wrote about in Inherently Unequal and On Account of Race, but also cases like Lochner v NY and slew of other decisions that protected corporate interests over those of the "people." These justices are more arrogant, perhaps, but in no way an historical anomaly.
I do think of the court as becoming progressively more reasonable and adapting to modernity. With the decisions of the era you reference, it was easy to think of the SC as following along with the progression of liberalism. So, is this recent period the anomaly or is the liberal period? Time will tell.
Unless we expand the Court, this period of theocratic jurisprudence will continue for some time. If you think the earlier Court followed the progression of liberalism, you should Inherently Unequal. It did anything but until at least the 1950s. In some areas, the Court was dragged along but until the 1960s, it did everything it could to protect traditional power centers.
Thanks for the valuable historical background. Seems the court has become unmoored.
What is interesting for people who came of age in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, is their view of the Supreme Court as a guardian of civil liberties. They think of Miranda, Roe, Baker v Carr, Brown, and other decisions and think that the Court was generally like that. No. Except for those few decades, the Court has generally been the guardian of the powerful, rich, and white...extremely conservative. Not just the cases I wrote about in Inherently Unequal and On Account of Race, but also cases like Lochner v NY and slew of other decisions that protected corporate interests over those of the "people." These justices are more arrogant, perhaps, but in no way an historical anomaly.