Your Email:

Subject:

Message:
Entry: The Judicial Shakedown Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_judicial_shakedown#27209 Post contents: Kennedy's performance on the Supreme Court has come as a surprise. No less a Reaganite than William Bradford Reynolds personally assured me at a Federalist Society event in Austin shortly after Kennedy's nomination that Edwin Meese had long known Kennedy and that Kennedy would turn out well. Does one doubt that Meese and Reynolds sincerely wanted to remake the federal courts? One shouldn't overlook the power of legal education and the legal culture in warping the attitudes toward constitutionalism even of right-minded judges -- as I develop in _The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution_. Gerald Ford never claimed to be a constitutionalist, but was a life-long Rockefeller-type Republican. Eisenhower's appointments antedated his party's Nixon-era commitment on this issue. Warren Rudman boasted that he intentionally misled constitutionalists into accepting the Souter nomination (although I must note that when Souter praised William Brennan at his confirmation hearings, I thought the nomination should be withdrawn instantly). Nixon's appointments, like Reagan's, were on balance very good. They subtantially moved the center of gravity of the judiciary, despite not having succeeded in reorienting American legal culture completely. But then, it is unrealistic to expect a few appointments to remake the law schools, the media, and the rest of academia, all of which have ongoing effects on judicial behavior. In sum, I think that presidential elections have had far more effect on the federal courts than this article asserts. Imagine if there had been a string of William O. Douglases these past forty years; even John Paul Stevens is far better than that. Sent at: 2008 12 01