Chuck Darwin on Nostr: I read Joseph Russomanno’s new book on recent conservative decisions of the Supreme ...
I read Joseph Russomanno’s new book on recent conservative decisions of the Supreme Court.
Many of the points made by the author are unassailable:
in the last few years, the Court has moved far to the right in its constitutional decisions,
including in high-stakes cases involving guns, abortion, voting rights, and religious liberties;
the Court’s move to the right accelerated once there was a six-Justice Republican-appointed supermajority on the Court;
the conservatives sought to justify their decisions as based upon neutral jurisprudential principles such as an “originalist” interpretation of the Constitution;
but a better explanation for the majority’s decisions was not "neutrality" but their having a conservative or “fixed” worldview
-- rather than a more “fluid” one embraced by the three-Justice Democratic-appointed minority.
On this last point, Russomanno relies heavily on the excellent book
"Prius or Pickup?" by Mark Herrington and Jonathan Weiler
-- and should have relied more on the equally excellent "The Company They Keep" by Lawrence Baum and Mark Devins
-- about polarization among the Justices and the rise of the Federalist Society as a conservative support network.
https://academic.oup.com/psq/article-abstract/139/2/295/7646482?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false
Many of the points made by the author are unassailable:
in the last few years, the Court has moved far to the right in its constitutional decisions,
including in high-stakes cases involving guns, abortion, voting rights, and religious liberties;
the Court’s move to the right accelerated once there was a six-Justice Republican-appointed supermajority on the Court;
the conservatives sought to justify their decisions as based upon neutral jurisprudential principles such as an “originalist” interpretation of the Constitution;
but a better explanation for the majority’s decisions was not "neutrality" but their having a conservative or “fixed” worldview
-- rather than a more “fluid” one embraced by the three-Justice Democratic-appointed minority.
On this last point, Russomanno relies heavily on the excellent book
"Prius or Pickup?" by Mark Herrington and Jonathan Weiler
-- and should have relied more on the equally excellent "The Company They Keep" by Lawrence Baum and Mark Devins
-- about polarization among the Justices and the rise of the Federalist Society as a conservative support network.
https://academic.oup.com/psq/article-abstract/139/2/295/7646482?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false