>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.
Dred Scott, Lochner and Bush v. Gore are likely to remain on any progressive list of terrible decisions, just because they had so much political impact. Plessy and the Civil Rights Cases will always be on lists and I would complement Dred Scott with Prigg -- any decision that legalizes the kidnapping of potentially free people and denies them any access to any due process against such kidnapping has to rank as a monstrosity.
Dennis was so embedded in the muddle of 50s Court decisions slowly backing off from McCarthyism that I would not nominate it pro or con on all time lists. On the McCarthyite front, ACA v. Dowds which upheld the anti-Communist provisions of Taft-Hartley should make the list, since it was so early and so crucial is gutting the free speech of the leftwing in the unions and thus the country.
I think there a couple of labor cases that deserve particular infamy; The Danbury Hatters case in 1905 which made union boycotts illegal would have to qualify as an abomination. For pure legal perversity, the refusal of the Supreme Court to recognize the anti-injunction provisions of the Clayton Act in the Duplex Printing case should rank high on complete constitutional lawlessness by the Court.
Although going to the unique evil of the Supreme Court, one should nominate the cases that gave corporations independence from the states that created them and then legal personhood to resist state regulation. From the 1819 Dartmouth College case to the 1886 Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad case, those decisions created the independent corporate power in this country that fundamentally undermined democracy here and globally. So you got to give them a couple of nods.
-- Nathan Newman
On race issues,