I suppose I haven't given the blocks much thought, have mostly noticed the tenor and habit of this Court as it pertains to the rulings where most have the Court and have until fairly recently as a more conservative Court than we've had since Burger.
“While the current court’s decisions, over all, are only slightly more conservative than those from the courts led by Chief Justices Warren E. Burger and William H. Rehnquist, according to political scientists who study the court, its business rulings are another matter. They have been, a new study finds, far friendlier to business than those of any court since at least World War II. In the eight years since Chief Justice Roberts joined the court, it has allowed corporations to spend freely in elections in the Citizens United case, has shielded them from class actions and human rights suits, and has made arbitration the favored way to resolve many disputes. Business groups say the Roberts court’s decisions have helped combat frivolous lawsuits, while plaintiffs’ lawyers say the rulings have destroyed legitimate claims for harm from faulty products, discriminatory practices and fraud.” [New York Times, 5/5/13]
Do you mean one where I agreed with the legal reasoning or where I personally agreed? They aren't always the same thing...the most recent case is a case in point where I thought the outcome (on gay marriage) was the likely one but found the majority approach to be on the weak point of the arguments available. Curiously enough, I think
Roberts hit on the better argument with his questions from the bench, wondering if what was before the Court wasn't a clear case of sexual discrimination.
They were right in Windsor too, off the top of my head. The conservative response, I thought, argued against itself without seeming to realize it.
Alito said that the Court ruling was, in essence, another example of the will of the people being thwarted by the Court acting as a de facto supreme legislator. Of course,the larger part of the Court's job is to review and where called for to overrule Constitutionally compromised legislation, which can often have the same effect. I thought the application of 15th and 5th Amendments was cogent and on point by the majority,
which included that more liberal block.
Scalia's claim that the Court, "has cheated both sides, robbing the winners of an honest victory, and the losers of the peace that comes from a fair defeat" is a remarkable thing to hear in a jurist. The notion that rights and protections should at any point be a mob decision, undermining as his sentiment does the foundation of our Republic.
I don't really think he believes that though, except when his ox is being gored, as he makes plain with his "other shoe" comment. But it's disappointing to see in a jurist of his intellectual ability, even if he's been that sort of jurist for most of his tenure.
Kennedy and the more liberal members of the Court's majority holding in recognizing gay marriage was, to my mind, among the weakest of possible advances and almost as troubling for it as
Alito's minority rebuttal here.
lain:
