judicial tyranny

[Justin Schwartz]

I was saying off list to Reese, who asked what were the other four when I 
said that Plessy was one of the five worst S.Ct cases, that Dred Scott was 
one, but that in fact Taney was dead right about the original intent, and 
from a legal point of view, his opinion is careful and well-reasoned; it is 
legally defensible, though horribly wrong. My other candidates were Lochner, 
Dennis (which Charles likes), and Bush v. Gore, which cleraly the worst of 
the lot, legally speaking. Nathan voted for the Civil Rights Cases, which 
gutted the Civil Rights Acts of 1875, and there's something to be said for 
that; one might add Hans v. Louisiana, which gave us out ureent 11th 
Amendment states right jurisprudence.

--jks


>From: LeoCasey at aol.com
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Re: judicial tyranny
>Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 21:19:16 EDT
>
>Nathan:
> > Judicial activism has been historically one of the PRIME EVIL forces in
> > American society, from Dred Scott through the Civil Rights Cases through
> > Lochner and its progeny.
> >
> >
>
>Come on, Nathan, you are so on this kick about judicial activism you would
>attribute everything but the devil himself to it. Dred Scott was no 
>instance
>of judicial activism. The bloody Constitution had a 3/5 clause, a slave
>fugitive clause and allowed the international slave trade to operate in the
>US for a number of decades. When Taney said the enslaved African-American
>"has no rights the white man is bound to respect" he was as thoroughly 
>based
>in the bloody text of the bloody pre-Civil War Constitution as any Supreme
>Court decision has even been!
>
>Leo Casey
>United Federation of Teachers
>260 Park Avenue South
>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
>
>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
>It never has, and it never will.
>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
>lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
>-- Frederick Douglass --

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