Friday Rant: Judicial Review edition
By Tom Toles
To Americans of a certain age, Judicial Activism still has an echo of progressive rulings. But those of us old enough to remember that will soon be too old to remember that. In any case, the memory is a faulty one.
Not only has the magnetic polarity of the Court flipped, but it has flipped back to its historic norm, the Bad Court. Far from being the institution upholding the rights of the marginalized, it has more frequently been the enforcer of the margins.
If you want to see this point argued a good deal more vigorously than I am prepared to argue, click here.
Personally, I still am inclined to think that judicial review makes sense, legally and historically. But two points need to be remembered. One is the fiction that the Court is just calling Balls and Strikes. If you look at arguments presented at Court and then look at the rulings, it’s pretty apparent that the justices can, when they are determined, make it come out however they want it to. It’s all about who has the votes.
Which leads us to the second point. The Court purports to be all about law, but it’s a lot about politics. It’s in large measure simply a lagging indicator of presidential appointment opportunities, but an astoundingly powerful one. The current Court has been deliberately, systematically shifting economic and political power to corporations and the very wealthy. There will be a lagging, and very powerful consequence of that, too.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2015/04/10/friday-rant-judicial-review-edition/
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