>On balance, though I agree with your (new?) emphasis on not relying on
courts, when something does go to >the Supreme Court or other court, I don't
favor a general theory of "vote the wrong way so that the >progressive
movement will unify or energize against the bad court result ".
I don't advocate voting the "wrong" way- I advocate courts just upholding laws as constitutional unless there is a compelling reason to overturn them based on explicit provisions in the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights.
I don't believe that courts will over time deliver better results on most issues than legislatures, so why vest power in them, since that power is far more likely to be used against progressives. And even if we quietly cheer decent results when delivered by the courts, we should publicly denounce most judicial activism - we can pocket the good results without being cheerleaders for the judges.
My frustration is that progressives become defenders of the courts institutionally. I have actually been shocked that within the National Lawyers Guild during the debate on impeachment, the overwhelming majority of the leadership has declared that you can't impeach judges based on their decisions undermining civil rights, since that would undermine "judicial independence." When progressives think it is more important to defend the perogatives of the Rehnquist Court than to try to remove those fuckers by any means possible, I see the reactionary legacy of the leftover attachment to the Warren Court.
-- Nathan Newman