If you thought the primal screams from the left after the Dobbs decision were deafening, just wait until after next Tuesday’s election result, and especially next year if the Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action at the end of this term. I expect the left is going to go hoarse from all their primal screaming.
The New Republic is especially alarmed that, as they put it in a headline today, “The Supreme Court Is Operating Without a Leash,” though silly me, I’d have thought the Constitution is a fairly strong leash.
Let’s take in the opening of Matt Ford’s article, starting with the subhed:
After an epic day of oral arguments in two affirmative action cases, it’s clear that the conservative justices will do what they want regardless of facts, law, or precedent.
Monday’s oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v. UNC and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard lasted for nearly five hours, making it among the longest for a set of cases in the Supreme Court’s modern history. (Some nineteenth-century sessions took multiple days.) The justices touched upon nearly every aspect of the case as they questioned lawyers for both sides at length. And yet rarely has the outcome of a Supreme Court case felt so preordained as the likely downfall of affirmative action in higher education, no matter the factual or legal circumstances.
Hmm, let’s try the opening again this way (my changes marked in bold):
After an epic day of oral arguments in two school desegregation cases, it’s clear that the liberal justices will do what they want regardless of facts, law, or precedent.
Monday’s oral arguments in Brown v Board of Education lasted for nearly five hours, making it among the longest for a set of cases in the Supreme Court’s modern history. (Some nineteenth-century sessions took multiple days.) The justices touched upon nearly every aspect of the case as they questioned lawyers for both sides at length. And yet rarely has the outcome of a Supreme Court case felt so preordained as the likely downfall of segregation in public education, no matter the factual or legal circumstances.
Yeah, I seem to recall that Brown involved disputed facts as well as having to overturn (supposedly*) several long-established precedents, such as Plessy. For the left, the operative rule now is: stare decisis for thee, but not for me.
* Read closely, Brown didn’t actually overturn Plessy directly, but used sleight-of-hand ever since to make everyone think they did. But that is a story for another day.
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