rights, rights, and still more rights; majorities and majorities. "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com> Subject: Re:
>
>You make the following point: "so long as they and
>you will respect each other's willingness to
>politically decide your differences, including your
>differences about rights, by reference to democratic
>procedures."
>
>Seems to me that the civil rights movement expressly
>rejected this proposition and relied on an
>anti-democratic institution (the Supreme Court) to
>override the will of the people in the name or moral
>rightness.
>
>Do you reject that approach? Or reject the calim that
>the Court is anti-democratic?
^^^^^^^
CB: There is more than one "majority" involved here. Super majoriities in Congress and the state legislatures passed the 14th Amendment. The Jim Crow laws were passed by majorities in the legislatures of the states that had the laws ( those legislatures were elected with an exclusion of a major group of the Peoples of those states, the Black people in them; this raises questions about the will of the majorities of those states on this issue )
So, in striking down the Jim Crow laws based on the 14th Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court stood with a larger majority than the ones that passed the laws.
^^^^^^^
The CRM took LEGAL arguments to the courts, not just moral ones. Among those were the legal principle (of footnote 4 of US v. Carolene Products) interpreting the equal protection clauseas requiriung special efforts to protect discete and insular minorities. That is a democratic, though countermajoritraian principle. That is not a contradiction: see Ely, Democracy and Distrust. Btw the CRM also betook itself to the streets in a democratic carnival of civil disobedience, quite properly too.
jks