Or more appropriately, Ross Douthat’s army of stick figures tries to overthrow the Roman Empire.
… or something like that.
From Douthat we get preening pseudo-intellectualism that sounds like this:
Complaints about the Supreme Court’s power are almost as old as the Constitution, but they have more merit now than ever. … [The] Court has gone from overturning roughly one state law every two years in the pre-Civil War era, to roughly four a year in the later 1800’s, to over 10 a year in the last half-century. So too with federal law: Prior to 1954, the Court had struck down just 77 federal statutes in a century-and-a-half of jurisprudence; in the 50-odd years since, it’s overturned more than 80.
Why is it that Douthat uses 1954 as the dividing line between the “old court” and the new? 1954 is the year in which the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education, a decision that announced a sea-change in American politics and kick-started the civil rights movement. Following Brown v. Board, the institution of “separate but equal” was no longer sustainable. Jim Crow laws were attacked everywhere. And the “state’s rights” movement began trying to enact various legislation for the sole purpose of putting up a stopgap measure to prevent the inexorable progress of civil rights. Therefore, it makes sense that following 1954, there would be an inordinately high number of state laws being overturned.
Then there’s this:
There are bipartisan ways that the Court could be reined in, and the legislative branch reinvigorated. … [Others] have proposed a supermajority rule, for instance, requiring a 6-to-3 vote to overturn federal legislation. … Such limits wouldn’t reduce the Supreme Court’s power directly, but it would help us see the Court for what it has become — a deeply political institution, as fallible as any other, and answerable, when all is said and done, to us.
A “supermajority”? Apparently, Douthat recognizes that the shift of the court is irrevocably in the direction of progress and a supermajority is nothing more than retrograde court-packing.
And a court that is “answerable to us”?
Apparently Douthat is too stupid to understand that the judicial branch was constructed in such a way as to avoid being blown in a direction by the prevailing political winds or popular mores. It is what has allowed the court to strike down legislation regarding school prayer, segregation, bans on abortion, anti-miscegenation, anti-sodomy, and a whole host of other laws. Yet these are all steps forward for a civilized society. Why would we want a judiciary that is answerable to the rabble? Answerable to people like … Douthat?
1 response so far ↓
1 shrimplate // Jun 28, 2009 at 8:20 am
Douthat has been pretty well kicked to the ground and spat upon by the Reality-Based Community. He’s an asshat. He could use some more.
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