As someone who has worked hard on legislation to partly socialize Wal-Mart property by requiring them to give public access to unionists, I can tell you one of the biggest legal obstacles are fears by local governments that Wal-Mart will win a lawsuit based on defense of their "property rights" under the Fifth Amendment. So anything that weakens constitutional property rights is good for progressives in my view.
It is frankly the defeatism of a certain wing of the Left that sees more hope in a rightwing-dominated Supreme Court than in local governments where progressive forces have significant power. It boggles my mind that any progressive would prefer to hand economic development decisions over to the courts and disempower local officials.
Sure, some development decisions will stink and that calls for organizing by progressives at the local level. But giving the courts a veto is exactly the kind of anti-democratic defeatism that makes me opposed to almost all judicial review. Some on the left have become so sure of their impotence that they see their savior in judges.
That's just sad and pathetic.
Nathan Newman