In his op-ed in the Washington Post Hugh Hewitt has a one sentence statement of the great divide in American politics:
The court should neither “hurry up†nor obstruct social change. It should not try to redirect or dam the mighty river “Culture,†and it should cease trying to vacuum away the delicate compromises local, state and national legislators make between the deeply felt religious beliefs of a vast and diverse people. Rather, it should read closely the laws that Congress passes, hold them up to the Constitution’s guarantees and refuse the efforts of elected officials to punt power to bureaucracies.
Despite the conviction with which Mr. Hewitt makes that pronouncement there are many Americans whose beliefs about the Supreme Court are quite the opposite. They believe that it is the job of the Supreme Court to “do justice” and navigate the murky waters of the law to find passages to some foreordained destination.
That no compromise between these views is possible is evident from the vitriol of the last six months.
There is no divide between those who want judicial restraint and those who want it to control society. There are two groups who want to use the courts to control society. Mr. Hewitt doesn’t mention the betrayers of Christ: the megachurch frauds, the evangelical Dominionists, the religious authoritarians, the prosperity gospel perverts who have allied themselved with centralized corporate power and monied interests. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else.
Off-topic:
https://theweek.com/articles/802594/how-conservatives-are-turning-against-core-economic-principles-efficiency
I don’t really see a big movement but IMO to whatever extent that’s happening their any beliefs in efficiency have been instrumental in nature.
I’ve pointed out before that the bipartisan trade and currency policy of the last 40 years has been to maximize the number of minimum wage jobs. I believe it’s been an obvious mistake.
That’s some really faulty logic, Ben. Just because you can throw in yet another group (Big Religion) who desires to control through the courts doesn’t mean there are not those who believe in judicial restraint.
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Public ignorance is in part what has allowed the judicial activists to hold sway. That and lazy, risk averse legislators.
It would be nice if we would give up the fiction that either side wants to just interpret the laws without bias. Suspect would help if Congress wrote better laws.
Steve
Since Supreme Court justices are human, too, there will always be some bias. But I don’t think that the view you’ve expressed repeatedly around here, that justices just vote along party lines, is correct. It’s not borne out by the evidence.
As I’ve documented here in the past, the most ideological and partisan judge on the present court is Sonia Sotomayor and even she doesn’t just vote along party lines. That was categorically disproved by the number of times the Obama Administration’s positions were overthrown by unanimous votes of the court. The second most ideological justice is Ruth Bader Ginburg. The third is Clarence Thomas.
I think there’s a clear history of sexual libertarianism on the part of the so-called “left wing” of the court plus retired Justice Kennedy, all of those issues should have been decided on the state level rather than the federal level, and they should have been decided politically. Thinking that is not ideological. It’s just believing that the U. S. Constitution isn’t all-inclusive.
Dave- I went back and looked over several years of SCOTUS decisions. Most are pretty technical and dont have any obvious ideological edge to them. On those I agree they mostly decide based upon the merits of the law. For the 10% of decisions that are ideological, they vote by party.
Steve