Not long ago, the New York Court of Appeals intervened in a dispute over a hotly contested social issue: It struck down legislation that had been passed by the democratically accountable legislators of the New York State Assembly, legislation that was also a crucial part of the governor’s first election campaign. Despite this, the court […]
Scott Lemieux
Scott Lemieux is a political science professor at the University of Washington. He writes for the blog Lawyers, Guns & Money. Follow @lemieuxlgm
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In Defense of Roe
From the archives: It is difficult to know when a contrarian idea has been repeated so much as to become the new conventional wisdom. However, it’s not just “contrarian” for center-left pundits to claim Roe v. Wade doesn’t matter. It’s stupid.
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It’s Not That They’re Lazy About Defending Fetal Life And Poor Women. It’s Just That They Don’t Care.
Scott here again… Well, how about that. It may seem counterintuitive to think that increased access to and education about contraception will prevent unwanted pregnancies and hence lead to fewer abortions–what a crazy idea, tried only by those crazy liberal democracies that don’t see the American health care system as the world’s best!–but apparently the […]
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The Barbour of the Confederacy
Scott here… It’s not exactly surprising that Haley Barbour would refuse to issue a posthumous pardon to unjustly convicted civil rights pioneer Clyde Kennard. (And I should say that I happen to share a general principled opposition to pardons in many cases; whatever the question being raised about a given aspect of the legal system, […]
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Endangering Roe
On November 30, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood, the most important abortion case it has heard since it struck down a law banning so-called partial-birth abortion in its 2000 decision Stenberg v. Carhart. While nominally about the constitutionality of a parental notification law, the current case has potentially far-reaching […]
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Chipping Away
Even if abortion hadn’t been a key issue in nearly every Supreme Court nomination since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, Samuel Alito would have to expect it to be the centerpiece of his nomination fight. Since Robert Bork’s defeat, the trend among Republican nominees has been toward people with no recorded involvement with […]
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Judicial Review And Democracy II: The Legislative Source of Judicial Power
In my last post, I noted that the idea that courts are “counter-majoritarian” is not a useful basis for a critique of the courts. This is not to say, however, that there are no potential objections to judicial review from the standpoint of democratic theory. The first set of objections is strictly normative. On can […]
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Takings and the Public Interest
In a case that has split progressive bloggers–with such luminaries as Atrios and Belle Waring taking the side of the dissenters today–the Supreme Court has ruled in Kelo v. New London that New London’s condemnation of property for private economic development was a constitutional taking. This was expected after the oral argument, although the 5-4 […]
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Judicial Review And Democracy I: Beyond the “Counter-majoritarian Difficulty”
I was interested to see Rosenfeld and Yglesias discuss Jeffrey Rosen’s article in last week’s Times Magazine, in which Rosen discovered that courts often tend to represent national majorities. Oddly, my co-blogger Dave and I presented a paper at the Law & Society conference on this very topic. The late Alexander Bickel wrote a book, […]
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Parting At The Crossroads
My apologies for stepping in Matt Holt’s territory, but I was preparing this quick post before Ezra’s intervention (which makes it even more relevant), so I’d thought I’d go ahead anyway. I wanted to strongly recommend Antonia Maioni’s superb book Parting at the Crossroads, which is a comparative study of the emergence of different health […]
