A Judge’s Warning About the Legitimacy of the Supreme Court
By LINCOLN CAPLAN
NYT
During interviews about his new book, Justice Stephen Breyer has spoken mainly about one of its two themes, how the Supreme Court should decide cases. A week before the court’s new term, it’s the second theme — about the court’s legitimacy, or the respect it relies on — that deserves attention.
In the last term of the conservative Roberts court, only Justice John Paul Stevens voted less often with the majority than Justice Breyer. This record, Justice Breyer’s 16 years on the court and Justice Stevens’s retirement make Justice Breyer the likely leader of the more liberal justices in the next term.
In his dissent from a decision striking down the District of Columbia’s gun-control law, he showed why. “In my view,” he said, “there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas.”
Still, he fits no conventional model of a liberal. The historian Jeff Shesol wrote in The Times Book Review: “Breyer has been less willing than any of his fellow justices to overturn acts of Congress.” The Supreme Court now has no old-fashioned liberals, like William Brennan or Thurgood Marshall. If it did, Justice Breyer’s deference to Congress would likely make him a centrist.
(More here.)
NYT
During interviews about his new book, Justice Stephen Breyer has spoken mainly about one of its two themes, how the Supreme Court should decide cases. A week before the court’s new term, it’s the second theme — about the court’s legitimacy, or the respect it relies on — that deserves attention.
In the last term of the conservative Roberts court, only Justice John Paul Stevens voted less often with the majority than Justice Breyer. This record, Justice Breyer’s 16 years on the court and Justice Stevens’s retirement make Justice Breyer the likely leader of the more liberal justices in the next term.
In his dissent from a decision striking down the District of Columbia’s gun-control law, he showed why. “In my view,” he said, “there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas.”
Still, he fits no conventional model of a liberal. The historian Jeff Shesol wrote in The Times Book Review: “Breyer has been less willing than any of his fellow justices to overturn acts of Congress.” The Supreme Court now has no old-fashioned liberals, like William Brennan or Thurgood Marshall. If it did, Justice Breyer’s deference to Congress would likely make him a centrist.
(More here.)
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