If you attended law school at any time over the past half-century, your course in constitutional law likely followed a well-worn path.
First you learned the basics: the Supreme Court’s power to say what the Constitution means.
Finally you studied how the court balances individual liberties against the government’s need to act in the public interest.
They are more interested in upholding fundamental democratic principles and, perhaps most important, preserving the court’s integrity, than about imposing a partisan agenda.
But now, the court’s hard-right supermajority, installed in recent years through a combination of hypocrisy and sheer partisan muscle, has eviscerated any consensus.
Persons:
Bush, Gore