The Crisis in Teaching Constitutional Law

[In It to Win It]

NYT - Gift Link

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. Then you read and discussed cases that set precedents for different parts of the Constitution — the commerce clause, presidential powers, due process, equal protection and so on. Finally you studied how the court balances individual liberties against the government’s need to act in the public interest.

It was all based on an underlying premise that has long bound together everyone involved in the project of training the next generation of lawyers: The Supreme Court is a legitimate institution of governance, and the nine justices, whatever their political backgrounds, care about getting the law right. They are more interested in upholding fundamental democratic principles and, perhaps most important, preserving the court’s integrity, than about imposing a partisan agenda.

The premise no longer holds today. Many in the legal world still believed in the old virtues even after Bush v. Gore, the 5-to-4 ruling that effectively decided the 2000 presidential election on what appeared to many Americans to be partisan grounds. 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.

Under the pretense of practicing so-called originalism, which claims to interpret the Constitution in line with how it was understood at the nation’s founding, these justices have moved quickly to upend decades of established precedent — from political spending to gun laws to voting rights to labor unions to abortion rights to affirmative action to the separation of church and state. Whatever rationale or methodology the justices apply in a given case, the result virtually always aligns with the policy priorities of the modern Republican Party.

[mopinko]

1. the legal profession has much to answer for.

i’ve said many times that, imho, law schools dont teach respect for the law, they teach work arounds.
it’s never been more true.
thx for the gift link. worth reading.

In short, Bruen only makes sense when considered as a partisan political ruling: The modern right has long supported the elimination of gun restrictions, and the court agreed to decide the case only after it secured its current right-wing supermajority.

Professor Friedman, of N.Y.U., said, “When you combine overruling with no appreciable change or explanation other than that the membership of the court has changed, what you have is naked power.”

[Sympthsical]

2. That's the path I've been following now

"First you learned the basics: the Supreme Court’s power to say what the Constitution means. Then you read and discussed cases that set precedents for different parts of the Constitution — the commerce clause, presidential powers, due process, equal protection and so on. Finally you studied how the court balances individual liberties against the government’s need to act in the public interest."

Exactly that path. (I'm in school for nursing, but I take constitutional law classes for fun. And they are fun!)

[dalton99a]

3. The "law" according to the Republican Party

more accurately, the "law" according to Donald Trump