I'm thinking about restructuring it into a discussion of WHY progressives were so passive in teh face of Bush v. Gore when the Right would have been screaming from the rafters - as they have been against the Court since Brown.
A title like "The Dog that Didn't Bark: Bush v. Gore and the Perverse Progressive Faith in Judicial Activism" might be appropriate. I've also been thinking about a much expanded history on the issue, since it does tie into the points Toobin mentions of the many areas where progressives have lost faith in majoritarian politics.
-- Nathan
----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Pollak" <mpollak at panix.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 6:22 AM Subject: RE: litigation and politics
On Wed, 16 Jan 2002, Heer, Jeet wrote:
> 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.
Our own Nathan Newman made the same argument with telling detail in an excellent article he circulated about six months ago, where he argued that judicial activism always structurally favors the right, and that even the left's greatest victories with it -- like abortion -- not only would have been attainable without it, but would have been deeper and more long lasting for it. Have you published that paper yet, Nathan?
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com