litigation and politics

Heer, Jeet JHeer at nationalpost.com
Wed Jan 16 14:01:54 PST 2002


Toobin's comments strike me as historically short-sighted. Did liberals invent judicial activism? What about all the conservative decisions of the 19th and early 20th century, upholding segregation and striking down social reforms? The period from the 1950s to the early 1970s was only a small liberal island in a sea of judicial conservatism, I would argue.


> ----------
> From: Doug Henwood
> Reply To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 16:31
> To: lbo-talk
> Subject: litigation and politics
>
> An excerpt from a profile of legal writer Jeffrey Toobin in
> Publishers Weekly, January 11, 2000
> <http://www.publishersweekly.com/articles/20000110_83934.asp>:
>
> >"My thesis about the Clinton scandals relates a great deal to the
> >evolution of political culture and the political class in this
> >country," Toobin says with zeal. "Like any storyteller, I love a
> >good irony. And basically what happened is part of a larger
> >development that is regrettable, I think: that the political left in
> >this country, using Thurgood Marshall's work as a model, started
> >using litigation as substitute for other political action. This was
> >done on behalf of the civil rights movement, of feminism, of
> >environmentalism, and they had some tremendous successes, but they
> >paid a political price, because instead of mobilizing large
> >constituencies behind their work, all they had to do was persuade a
> >few judges. And that was a problem. First, because some of these
> >victories turned out to be politically rather hollow, but more
> >importantly, as far as this story is concerned, they created a
> >template for the right wing to follow. And that's the irony. It was
> >the Democrats who created the use of civil lawsuits for political
> >gain, it was the Democrats who sponsored the independent counsel
> >law, and here was the right wing, in the Paula Jones case and in the
> >Starr investigation, using it almost to topple the presidency and
> >overturn the results of an election."
>



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