They sue the EPA to take the teeth out of regulations aimed at reining in the polluters, while they're fully behind Project 2025.
But it's a paradox, not a contradiction.
They want the Executive to have the power to kill whatever agencies they see as restricting business, keeping them from doing whatever they want to do in order to boost their market value.
The Plutocracy Project is aimed at "reforming" the federal government so that it fulfills only 3 directives.
- Defend commercial assets world-wide
- Keep the rabble in line
- Settle contract disputes
And the Roberts Court is working hard to pave the way to Gilead.
But instead of explaining how monumentally stoopid it is to compare the Warren Court (which affirmed people's rights under the law), this fuckin' idiot, Richard Re, tries to tell us the Roberts Court is doing basically the same thing by stripping those same rights away from people. And hey - it'll all come out in the wash. Right? It's just two sides of the same coin.
Right?
Opinion A conservative Warren court
The Roberts Supreme Court faces the same critiques from its critics as Warren’s.
By Richard M. Re, professor of law at UVa School of Law.
After a term in which the conservative Roberts court swept aside the Chevron doctrine, a decision that will clip federal agencies’ authority to enact policy, and granted a broad new immunity to former president Donald Trump, liberals are critical not only of the ideology behind the decisions but also the integrity of the court itself.
As Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) put it: “This activist, extremist MAGA court faces a legitimacy crisis,” which has in turn created “a crisis for our democratic republic.”
Many of the criticisms that this court is enduring — particularly being too political — have been leveled before at earlier courts. What we are seeing is a replay of sorts.
In the 1960s, conservatives were the critics of the bold, liberal decisions of the Warren court. “Impeach Earl Warren” became a popular slogan, and the likes of Barry Goldwater intoned that, “of all three branches of Government, today’s Supreme Court is the least faithful” to “the principle of legitimacy in the exercise of power.”
Today, it is the opposite. The fact of a 6-3 supermajority changes both legal conservatism and liberalism. These shifts reflect a natural process of legal change, as court majorities tend to enhance their own power, while dissenters advocate for legal constraint. That was true during the Warren court of the 1960s, when liberals led the judiciary. It is true today.
While the Warren court was accused of endangering the judiciary and the nation at the time — just think of that era’s explosive decisions on school prayer, the Miranda warnings, legislative districting and desegregation — history has deemed otherwise.
Today, the decisions of the Roberts court are likely to have profound implications as well, including majority opinions before this year, like Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated constitutional abortion rights, or Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which struck at affirmative action in higher education.
The legacies of these and other transformative rulings are yet to be decided.
It’s understandable for liberals to see this new era as beyond the scope of their understanding of democracy. But change doesn’t mean the court is broken. It means that the Roberts court is a conservative Warren court.
This role reversal is uncomfortable for liberals and conservatives alike, but it is also logical. The flexibility that conservative dissenters have long disdained is often essential to responsible judging. At the same time, the liberal justices, who are absorbing what were once strict, conservative principles, are performing a service by reminding the majority of its erstwhile views and curbing the court’s excesses.
Several cases this term illustrate these patterns. Start with judicial deference to administrative agencies. In the 1960s and 70s, liberal courts often looked skeptically on the work of administrative agencies. But with President Ronald Reagan in office and former president Jimmy Carter’s appointees staffing many courts of appeals, conservatives championed so-called Chevron deference, which required courts to accept reasonable agency interpretations of law.
Now the politics of agency deference have reversed. This year, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the conservatives abandoned Chevron, over the liberal justices’ protest. The majority acknowledged that Justice Antonin Scalia, a leading conservative jurist, was “an early champion” of Chevron. But only the court’s three liberals defended ideas once espoused by the conservative icon.
“For its entire existence,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asserted, “Chevron has been a ‘rule in search of a justification,’ if it was ever coherent enough to be called a rule at all.”
A similar story has played out with stare decisis, or the principle that the court generally adheres to its past rulings. Many of the Warren court’s most famous rulings overruled long-standing precedents, despite cries from conservatives.
Likewise this year: When the court overruled the Chevron doctrine, the liberals argued that “a rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris.”
But if the left and right are trading places, this repositioning will happen only gradually — as it should. Despite issuing many dramatic rulings, the Warren court also chose its moments. For example, it took several years for the liberal justices to identify a right to use contraception.
Because the justices, like most of us, do not like to be caught in a blatant contradiction, they do not seize on whatever views are most convenient in the moment.
Yet the conservatives’ gradual repositioning is often desirable. The justices now in the majority have to grapple with real problems in a workable, nuanced way, rather than relying on the stark logic that often appears in angry dissents.
Take United States v. Rahimi, which involved a federal law prohibiting people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms. By an 8-to-1 vote, the Roberts court upheld the law. And that majority — composed of conservatives and liberals alike — relied more on “common sense” than the strict originalism long associated with conservative justices.
Some Roberts court critics object that the justices are cynically helping Trump or the Republican Party. Yet the court’s bold conservative vision, like the Warren court’s liberal one, cuts across party lines.
The recent Trump immunity ruling, for instance, might prove an asset for presidencies of both parties. Just imagine how the case would look if criminal charges were pending against a former Democratic president.
Other critics object that the justices are corrupt or have conflicts of interest. These concerns, too, call to mind the 1960s, when liberal justice Abe Fortas was severely criticized for, among other things, accepting large payments from business interests for teaching a series of classes. (Another scandal later prompted Fortas’s resignation.)
So while judicial ethics may be a ripe topic for reform, transformational courts have attracted harsh ethical criticism before.
Of course, the Roberts court is conservative whereas the Warren court was liberal. That fact alone guarantees that many commentators will adore one and loathe the other. But pitched debates about judicial politics should not obscure what the left and right have in common.
Today, much as in the 1960s, the rule of law persists — even as it changes.
It’s understandable for liberals to see this new era as beyond the scope of their understanding of democracy. But change doesn’t mean the court is broken. It means that the Roberts court is a conservative Warren court.
This role reversal is uncomfortable for liberals and conservatives alike, but it is also logical. The flexibility that conservative dissenters have long disdained is often essential to responsible judging. At the same time, the liberal justices, who are absorbing what were once strict, conservative principles, are performing a service by reminding the majority of its erstwhile views and curbing the court’s excesses.
Several cases this term illustrate these patterns. Start with judicial deference to administrative agencies. In the 1960s and 70s, liberal courts often looked skeptically on the work of administrative agencies. But with President Ronald Reagan in office and former president Jimmy Carter’s appointees staffing many courts of appeals, conservatives championed so-called Chevron deference, which required courts to accept reasonable agency interpretations of law.
Now the politics of agency deference have reversed. This year, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the conservatives abandoned Chevron, over the liberal justices’ protest. The majority acknowledged that Justice Antonin Scalia, a leading conservative jurist, was “an early champion” of Chevron. But only the court’s three liberals defended ideas once espoused by the conservative icon.
“For its entire existence,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asserted, “Chevron has been a ‘rule in search of a justification,’ if it was ever coherent enough to be called a rule at all.”
A similar story has played out with stare decisis, or the principle that the court generally adheres to its past rulings. Many of the Warren court’s most famous rulings overruled long-standing precedents, despite cries from conservatives.
Likewise this year: When the court overruled the Chevron doctrine, the liberals argued that “a rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris.”
But if the left and right are trading places, this repositioning will happen only gradually — as it should. Despite issuing many dramatic rulings, the Warren court also chose its moments. For example, it took several years for the liberal justices to identify a right to use contraception.
Because the justices, like most of us, do not like to be caught in a blatant contradiction, they do not seize on whatever views are most convenient in the moment.
Yet the conservatives’ gradual repositioning is often desirable. The justices now in the majority have to grapple with real problems in a workable, nuanced way, rather than relying on the stark logic that often appears in angry dissents.
Take United States v. Rahimi, which involved a federal law prohibiting people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms. By an 8-to-1 vote, the Roberts court upheld the law. And that majority — composed of conservatives and liberals alike — relied more on “common sense” than the strict originalism long associated with conservative justices.
Some Roberts court critics object that the justices are cynically helping Trump or the Republican Party. Yet the court’s bold conservative vision, like the Warren court’s liberal one, cuts across party lines.
The recent Trump immunity ruling, for instance, might prove an asset for presidencies of both parties. Just imagine how the case would look if criminal charges were pending against a former Democratic president.
Other critics object that the justices are corrupt or have conflicts of interest. These concerns, too, call to mind the 1960s, when liberal justice Abe Fortas was severely criticized for, among other things, accepting large payments from business interests for teaching a series of classes. (Another scandal later prompted Fortas’s resignation.)
So while judicial ethics may be a ripe topic for reform, transformational courts have attracted harsh ethical criticism before.
Of course, the Roberts court is conservative whereas the Warren court was liberal. That fact alone guarantees that many commentators will adore one and loathe the other. But pitched debates about judicial politics should not obscure what the left and right have in common.
Today, much as in the 1960s, the rule of law persists — even as it changes.
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