MORE ON THE ACTIVIST COURT

In an online Slate dialogue, attorney Walter Dellinger echoes the Fourteenth Circuit's assessment of the Supreme Court's recent left-wing activism, noting a "stunning" and "remarkable" number of activist decisions (Dellinger calls them "progressive") this Term. Of course, such decisions are a surprise only to someone who has not been paying attention for the past ten years. The notion that the Rehnquist Court is "conservative" was belied in 1992 when the Court reaffirmed Roe v. Wade and banned voluntary prayer in public school graduation ceremonies. Since then, the Court (to name only a few of its more egregious misdeeds) radically re-engineered the nature of the U.S. military academies, consitutionalized Miranda warnings, took steps towards abolishing the death penalty, and continued to prostrate itself at the shrine of the radical pro-abortion movement. What is really "remarkable" is that anyone should be surprised by this Term's examples of the Court's cocktail-party jurisprudence. With that in mind, the Fourteenth Circuit hereby issues a writ of mandumbass to New York Time's columnist Linda Greenhouse, who seeks to bolster the ligitimacy of Lawrence by explaining to the more gullible of her readers that "[a] conservative Supreme Court has now identified the gay rights cause as basic civil rights issue".

SHAM DEMOCRACY

We share the sentiment of one of our readers, who writes: "Every June reveals American democracy for the sham that it is. I despise the role of the Supreme Court in our society."

THE ACTIVIST COURT

There seems to be no stopping point for the recent liberal activism of the Rehnquist Court. This Term alone, the Court has extended the federal Enforcement Clause power-grab far beyond the limits set by the Voting Rights Act cases decided by the Warren and Burger Courts, has upheld a racially discriminatory admissions program functionally indistinguishable from the one invalidated in Bakke, and is poised to overrule well-settled precedent by creating a constitutional right to homosexual sodomy. The media mantra, of course, is that this is a "conservative" court. As readers of this site are well-aware, the reality is very different indeed.