The Conservative Agenda Depends On Judges Being Terrible Historians

[In It to Win It]

Balls and Strikes

The Supreme Court has once again started the summer by upending many Americans’ understanding of what rights are afforded to them under the Constitution. Our 50-year experiment with something resembling sex equality was dashed aside in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Our 200-year, already-rapidly-failing experiment with maybe not getting shot in public came to a screeching halt in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Examples abound.

Already, people are hurting because of the Court’s decisions. Drafting another blog post complaining about the vacant logic the conservatives on the Court use to impose their minoritarian ideology feels, to a certain extent, like throwing a water balloon at a forest fire. But despite what the David Frenches of the world might tell you, the work of this radical Supreme Court is not done. That’s because the Court’s use of “originalism” doesn’t just compel the most conservative result in every case; it also lets the justices tee themselves up as the only people in this country capable of answering the call.

Whenever the conservatives want to dispense with a constitutional argument they view as protecting “liberal” causes, they follow a pretty straightforward playbook

[H2O Man]

1. Recommended.

I'd say it depends more on their being terrible human beings.