Editors at Issues and Insights address different political factions’ approach to the US Supreme Court.
If you want to understand the difference between the political left and right, just look at how each side has treated the Supreme Court.
For decades, conservatives grumbled about liberal justices on the court and the judicial activism they engineered in rulings such as Roe v. Wade. Justices, conservatives said, are supposed to interpret the law, not make it. They spent years articulating and defending this principle, and educating and supporting judges who thought likewise.
And for decades, conservatives tried to get Republicans elected president in hopes (which were often dashed) that they would restore judicial balance to the court.
That campaign finally paid off when President Donald Trump was able to name three justices in his first term –- one who replaced “centrist” Anthony Kennedy and the other filling the seat vacated by liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The result has been a string of court victories for those who believe the Constitution means what it says, including the lifting of the 50-year plague on the court known as Roe v. Wade, weakening the administrative state, protecting gun rights, ending race-based college admissions, supporting religious liberty, etc.
That doesn’t mean the right is happy with every decision the court has made since. We published a guest commentary in these pages that attacked George W. Bush-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts for siding with liberals on birthright citizenship and election integrity cases this term, saying “Roberts cobbles a majority canoodling with the court’s radical leftists whenever he is scared witless of being ousted from the popular girls’ table of elite opinionmakers.” (There have been other disappointments along the way.)
But while conservatives railed against such rulings, they didn’t stoop so low as to attack the integrity of the court itself.
Now look at how the left has reacted once it lost its decades-long Supreme Court majority.
It embarked on a sustained campaign to attack the court itself and threaten justices who didn’t rule its way.
