Kermit (not that Kermit, Kermit Roosevelt, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania) in this Christian Science Monitor article says the Roberts court agreed with the public in this latest flurry of 5/4 decisions; that in fact, the court provides a "mirror" in which we can see ourselves.
Here is the final paragraph in his article:
These are judgments about America's core constitutional values, about who we are as a people. Such rulings are not required by the words of the Constitution; indeed, for the past 40 or 50 years, Americans have lived with dramatically different interpretations of constitutional law. The court's decisions are holding a mirror up to society. To evaluate its performance, we need only ask if we recognize ourselves.
What I want to know is, just who recognizes themselves? The something less than 50% that voted for Bush in 2000? The slightly more than 50% who voted for him in 2004? Or all of those who didn't vote for him, along with all those who did but now suffer from buyers remorse?
Because if the Roberts court represents anyone other than Bush and all the elite Republicans, along with a few die-hards in the base, then I don't know who they might be.
"Ourselves" my ass.
Privilege and cronyism is who the Roberts court represents. We need look no further than the sheer number of split votes on the controversial issues. Which is like a truism - if they are controversial in the public sphere, how can any decision - with its binary outcome - mirror that public? In these decisions, it actually appears that the split goes the wrong way - the public is at LEAST 5/4 the other way.
If this is a mirror, it is a notfunanymorehouse mirror.
Jake
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Yes, but
That it's a notfunanymorehouse mirror was precisely my point.
Let’s see if we can
Let's see if we can construe notfunanymorehouse mirror some other way, like
HORRORHOUSE mirror.
Which is what I first wrote, but then didn't like the awkward wording.
This is mirror that doesn't make us look funny, it is a mirror that makes us look venal and self serving. Hell, if I wanted to look like a Republican, I'd vote for one. No mirrors required.
But, of course, I don't. Nor do most people, actually.
Jake
Kermit, you know what they say...
...if you have to explain the joke you must not have told it very well in the first place.
I think this is Jake's point. You are in effect praising with faint damns when you discuss the Bush Court's recent decisions in such mild terms. Your intent seems to be to analyse these decisions in the frame you used in your recent book, described at the bottom of your article thusly:
rather than the way most people evaluate SCOTUS actions: are these guys protecting my freedoms and restraining government tyranny or not?
I realize the Christian Science Monitor is not a blog and law professors are not reknown for forceful language. But your column was so bland as to make tapioca pudding jealous.
Nice to have you commenting here though. Please feel free to drop in again. Maybe we can help with editing on your next piece. :)
Xan, I think maybe the issue is this
We're from the class of 2000. Kermit is from, maybe, the class of 2006.
Be kind to the man, he's new to the game.
Put down that Zucchinni!
NOTE Hey, why not the SCROTUS joke? Oh, wait, today is my day to be kind. There are kittens, 'n' stuff...
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
xan, I read the article at least 4 times
trying to see if I understood it correctly. And I think praising with faint damns is EXACTLY where I came down on the whole issue.
If this is criticism, I guarantee the only people who will pissed will be liberals. The Republicans will be all smug because another law professor supports them.
I think these two passages are what lead me to read the article the way I did:
and
I can only read that as saying that because the court is acting as it thinks it should, Kermit approves of at least the process, and maybe the outcome as well.
Well, I think it important that the court act as it believes it should. I also think the court chose to act in ways that reflect poorly on the court, and upon us.
Perhaps Kermit thinks the same. I just couldn't reach that conclusion, although I wanted to, which is why I made the whole smoking reference - things are just not that clear.
Jake
four times?
The conservatives who've been sending me hate mail seemed to get it pretty easily. The point is this. If there's a pattern as to when the court defers and when it's assertive, then you can evaluate that pattern. There is no pattern here. That might mean the court is hypocritical--I don't think that's impossible, but I don't see how to establish it. The other possibility is that there's no deference, and the court is upholding actions it agrees with and striking down those it disagrees with, based just on its views of the relevant constitutional provisions. So we need to consider what those views are, and whether they're ones that we would like to have as our nation's deepest values.
If you look at what I say about the rulings, I say that these values are the following: there's little protection for the right to abortion, corporate electioneering is more important than student speech, and attempts to integrate are as bad as attempts to segregate. And then I ask: is that who we are? My hope (which really I think comes through pretty clearly) is that readers will say no. I thought that was a more effective way to reach people whose minds might be changed.
And class of 2006? Look at anything I've ever written, or who I clerked for.