The liberal justice took aim at various recent rulings, including one that paved the way for rampant partisan gerrymandering of legislative districts.
Liberal Justice Elena Kagan sharply criticized the Supreme Court’s conservative majority Tuesday, saying it undermined democracy in a series of rulings, including several that have prompted a new wave of legislative map-drawing that has increasingly eliminated competitive districts.
Kagan, who has dissented in those cases, also took aim at the majority for striking down campaign finance restrictions and, as she put it, the “evisceration” of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act that was enacted to protect minority voters.
“Part of the reason why the court got it wrong was a kind of lack of the appropriate concern or understanding of the consequences of their decisions,” she said in remarks at Catholic University’s law school in Washington, D.C.
When has the SCOTUS not enjoyed a large conservative majority?
The Warren Court, from 1953-1969. Which is when most of the advances to civil rights that are currently being unmade took place.
United States v. O’Brien made burning draft cards in protest illegal
Terry v. Ohio legalized Stop-and-Frisk Police tactics
Swain v. Alabama cemented the All White Jury for another decade.
Walker v. City of Birmingham made the original MLK protest marches illegal.
And unlike the subsequent Burger Court, which began placing substantial constitutional limits on the death penalty, the Warren Court was generally comfortable with capital punishment.
Much of the modern police state finds it’s roots in the Warren Court.
Then consider that the first major ruling striking down a law for discriminating against women did not arrive until 1971, after Earl Warren had retired. This was after over sixty years of Sufferegate agitation.
Warren fully neglected LGBTQ rights, despite a number of early cases. Warren even interpreted federal immigration statutes to uphold the exclusion and deportation of individuals based on homosexuality, treating it under provisions barring “psychopaths” or persons with constitutional psychopathic inferiority.
Civil Rights advancements were largely limited to a pool of politically engaged upwardly mobile straight black men. Rights for women and other minority groups (particularly migrants) floundered.
It should further be noted that Warren was a century behind the times, relative to the legislative and even the executive branch. They were still the last branch of government to get behind civil rights, and often in the most minimal fashion.
They could only be called progressive relative to their Hughes Era predecessors, which operated in open defiance of the FDR lead government. By 1941, FDR had thinned the herd of opposition judges enough to consistently uphold his legislative agenda. Stone, Vinson, Warren, and Burger would lead a relatively liberal court for the next 40 years. But it still trailed the national executive and legislatures, which in turn trailed the progressive state governments, which trailed the activist movements nationwide.
The courts are consistently the last to do anything resembling progressive reforms. They are far more often a bullwark against process.