Posted by Orin Kerr:
Is the Supreme Court Conservative?:
Writing in the [1]Washington Monthly, Stephen Pomper offers this
assessment of the Rehnquist Court:
To the surprise of the legal left, the Rehnquist Court has
refused to overturn Roe v. Wade and has broken new ground in
protecting the civil rights of homosexuals. It has endorsed some
forms of affirmative action. In last Spring's highly charged enemy
detainee cases, it refused to write the executive branch a blank
check for wartime detention powers. And even in its hypertechnical
(and therefore less controversial) federalism cases, which concern
the powers of Congress over the states, the Court has feasted less
aggressively on Congress' legislative authority than might have
been anticipated, contenting itself to snack on bits and pieces. In
retrospect, liberal anxieties (including my own--see "The Gipper's
Constitution," December 1999) about how far this Court would go in
implementing the Reagan revolution are looking somewhat misplaced
if not, on occasion, hysterical.
I think the picture is particularly interesting if we focus only on
the Court's decisions since Bush v. Gore. Terms like "liberal" and
"conservative" are tricky, especially when you're talking about the
judiciary. But my tentative sense is that, on balance, the Supreme
Court's decisions post-Bush v. Gore have tended to have the overall
effect of nudging the law slightly in a liberal direction. If you
scroll down a list of all of the Court's decided cases from the last
three Terms, see [2]here, [3]here, and [4]here, that seems to be the
overall trend.
Do you agree? I have enabled comments. As always, civil and
respectful comments only.
References
1. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0412.pomper.html
2. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/03slipopinion.html
3. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/02slipopinion.html
4. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/01slipopinion.html
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