civilrights
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You are viewing stuff tagged with civilrights.
Ian Millhiser at Vox, The Roe opinion and the case against the Supreme Court of the United States:
[Dismantling voting rights], moreover, is consistent with the history of an institution that once blessed slavery and described Black people as “beings of an inferior order.” It is consistent with the Court’s history of union-busting, of supporting racial segregation, and of upholding concentration camps.
Moreover, while the present Court is unusually conservative, the judiciary as an institution has an inherent conservative bias. Courts have a great deal of power to strike down programs created by elected officials, but little ability to build such programs from the ground up. Thus, when an anti-governmental political movement controls the judiciary, it will likely be able to exploit that control to great effect. But when a more left-leaning movement controls the courts, it is likely to find judicial power to be an ineffective tool.
The Court, in other words, simply does not deserve the reverence it still enjoys in much of American society, and especially from the legal profession. For nearly all of its history, it’s been a reactionary institution, a political one that serves the interests of the already powerful at the expense of the most vulnerable. And it currently appears to be reverting to that historic mean.
“I must honestly confess that I go through those moments of disappointment when I have to recognize the fact that there aren’t enough white persons in our country who are willing to cherish democratic principles over privilege.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr., Anaheim, 1968