The Supreme Court Isn’t Your Friend, Liberals

What liberals and conservatives have in common in their current struggle over the complexion and purpose of the Supreme Court is that both harken back to their own distinct myths that serve as literal benchmarks on the nature of the federal judiciary.

For liberals, the ideal is the Warren Court, whose progressive rulings generally obtained through the end of the 20th century. For conservatives, the seminal moment came with Franklin Roosevelt’s failed attempt to expand the high bench in 1937, making any further effort at such New Deal court-packing anathema. 

What liberals failed to realize was that the enlightened moderation of the Warren bench and its immediate successors was an exception to a Supreme Court that, for most of its history, was a citadel of reaction. At its height of power in the Gilded Age it served as an imperial judiciary that overrode popular sovereignty subordinating man-made statutes to a doctrine of market-oriented “natural law” that defied precedent. Weaponizing the court to carry out a political agenda has a venerable pedigree. 

Read more at The Daily Beast.