If you’re a law nerd, you will thoroughly enjoy John P. Elwood’s brilliant and irreverent article, “What were they thinking?: The Supreme Court in Revue, October Term 2008,” which appears in the most recent issue of The Green Bag. Here’s a taste of Elwood’s biting and hilarious prose:
Frank Wagner hasn’t even finished scouring Justice Breyer’s majority opinions for first-person singular references yet and already a consensus has begun to form in the media commentary about the Term. In short, it is that Chief Justice Roberts, while masquerading in umpire garb as a judicial minimalist, is actually a conservative activist who, along with Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, is bent on taking the Court “just as far to the right, and just as fast, as Justice Kennedy will let them.” Under this view, Roberts actively seeks to erode precedents favoring criminal defendants, abortion rights, the environment, humanity, cuddly woodland animals, and even Oprah, secure in the knowledge that likely retirements will be from the ranks of the Court’s more liberal members, so replacements will not slow the steady march right. Maybe this time it will be different, but the landfills are brimming with the Maalox bottles of Reagan-Bush officials who are still wondering what became of the last inevitable steady march right.
And it only gets better from there.
So, if you’re the type of person who finds this cartoon humorous, then this article is tailor made for you. Enjoy!
August 27th, 2009 | 10:34 am
[...] Our our great, glorious and most esteemed Founder is on fire in the blogosphere. Over at First Thing… he has passed along this wonderful Green Bag review of the latest term of the Supreme Court. And before you make it to the article, let me make a pitch for the Green Bag: it’s a wonderful and entertaining journal of legal humor and history, re-founded by Ross Davies over at GMU School of Law. The Green Bag has been known, more often than not, to send you a Supreme Court Justice Bobblehead as a treat for the subscription. It’s not guaranteed, but who WOULDN’T want a mini-Niño nodding away on your desk to your self-proclaimed brilliance! To quote the article: Frank Wagner hasn’t even finished scouring Justice Breyer’s majority opinions for first-person singular references yet and already a consensus has begun to form in the media commentary about the Term. In short, it is that Chief Justice Roberts, while masquerading in umpire garb as a judicial minimalist, is actually a conservative activist who, along with Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, is bent on taking the Court “just as far to the right, and just as fast, as Justice Kennedy will let them.” Under this view, Roberts actively seeks to erode precedents favoring criminal defendants, abortion rights, the environment, humanity, cuddly woodland animals, and even Oprah, secure in the knowledge that likely retirements will be from the ranks of the Court’s more liberal members, so replacements will not slow the steady march right. Maybe this time it will be different, but the landfills are brimming with the Maalox bottles of Reagan-Bush officials who are still wondering what became of the last inevitable steady march right. PermaLink | Rebel Yells (0) | Trackback/Pingback (0) [...]