The Disdain Campaign

Abstract:     
A response to Pamela S. Karlan, ​The Supreme Court​ 2011 Term Forward: Democracy and Disdain, 126 Harv. L. Rev. 1 (2012).

In her Foreword, Professor Pamela Karlan offers a quite remarkable critique of the conservative Justices on the Supreme Court. She faults them not so much for the doctrines they purport to follow, or outcomes they reach, but for the attitude they allegedly manifest toward Congress and the people. “My focus here is not so much on the content of the doctrine but on the character of the analysis.” She describes Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion of the Court as “a thinly veiled critique of Congress: the fools couldn’t even figure out how to structure section § 5000A to render it constitutional.” And of the Chief Justice’s attitude, she says that “[h]e conveyed disdain even as he upheld the Act.” In her conclusion, she asks, “if the Justices disdain us, how ought we to respond?” This question echoes how she begins her provocative piece: “The Court’s dismissive treatment of politics raises the question whether, and for how long, the people will maintain their confidence in a Court that has lost its confidence in them.”

Although Professor Karlan also offers insightful observations comparing the Roberts Court with the Warren Court, her principal theme is reflected in these passages and the very title of her piece: “Democracy and Disdain.” According to Karlan, in addition to whatever may be wrong with their principles and doctrines, the conservative Justices simply have a bad attitude. To paraphrase the Captain in Cool Hand Luke, they don’t have their “minds right.” It is this quite distinctive thesis the author wishes to examine here. For, as it happens, the left knows a thing or two about disdain.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 13

Keywords: Supreme Court, Congress, disdain, Justices

JEL Classification: K00, K30, K39

Accepted Paper Series