It's interesting, as a liberal, to watch Ross Douthat and Daniel Larison argue over whether the judicial choices of recent Republican presidents have actually achieved anything for social conservatives. On the Left, there's very little ambiguity as to the Court's shift; the view looks much more like the picture Cass Sunstein recently painted in The American Prospect: "In 1980," writes Sunstein, "John Paul Stevens stood at the center of the Supreme Court. Today, he is its most left-wing member -- and he hasn't changed."
Granted, much of the Court's right-wingery is economic, rather than social, in nature. Their decision in Ledbetter was far more radical than anything they've offered on abortion. But I think, in the ferociousness of Larison's discontent, I see the seeds of a compromise. In the next issue of TAP, Ted Kennedy has a piece arguing that we're choosing Supreme Court justices in a tremendously illogical and unhelpful way, focusing on their personal qualities and stated "philosophies" rather than concrete explanations of how they would rule on important cases of the recent past. It's time, Kennedy argues, to end that bizarre custom, stop letting nominees hide behind "precedent," and begin uncovering what these men and women really think. And if the Right is growing as restive as the Left with the surprising behavior justices exhibit once confirmed, maybe Kenney's argument has a chance....
