Much as I hate to rain on my colleague’s understandable happiness that states will no longer be able to force black kids to go to separate public schools from white kids, this doesn’t exactly represent a ray of hope in our otherwise gloomy policy mix. Not because I believe in segregated schools, but because it was a court that reached this decision instead of a policymaking body.

Instead of having Congress or state legislatures change the law, the nation’s Supreme Court simply decreed that segregated schools are unconstitutional. This sounds like precisely the kind of judicial fiat that countries need to avoid if they want to strengthen the rule of law.

When legislatures violate people’s rights, they should have no redress in the courts. They should be willing to suffer the violations of their rights until such time as they can gain control of the legislative branch.

Isn’t that what the “switch in time to save nine” was partly about. Prior to that event, during the Great Depression, the Supreme Court would routinely shoot down laws and policies simply because they weren’t deemed constitutional. The court applied the same line of thought to New Deal policies and Roosevelt responded with a very blatant power grab threatening to pack the supreme court till he got enough judges on there to agree with him.

Shapiro doesn’t know his history, either, it seems.

What a glorious concept!!!

But when an entire bureaucratic empire exists, complete with its’ own lobbying arm, and that bureaucratic empire is powered by taxpayer’s dollars, and uses those dollars in that lobbying effort, the going for reform is always uphill and in low gear. Add to this the fact that said bureaucracy is aligned with politically influential groups, who view such reform as sanctioning social deviance (or threatening various apple carts such as lucrative industries protected against competition by prohibition), and the going becomes almost impossible.

I agree that what is needed right now is a Supreme Court dominated by such as Louis Brandeis, who understood the values of individual liberties and the bulwark they provided against the actions of those whom he termed as being ‘men of zeal, without understanding’. We’ve got entirely too many such running things in this country, and they’ve pretty much run it into the ground.

is it time to start hunting the SOB’s yet?

These rights were originally abridged by those in the lofty halls of government; surely thence they should be restored.