Título: The Supreme Court Phalanx

Editora:New York Review Books

Autor: Ronald Dworkin

ISBN: 9781590172933

Disponibilidade: Pronta Entrega

Nº de Páginas: 72

Encadernação: Brochura

Ano: 2008

The Court´s New Right-Wing Bloc
Resenha:
George W. Bush's nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court in 2005 were widely expected to turn it sharply to the right. Bur no one foresaw the rapidity or the revolutionary zeal with which, as Ronald Dworkin writes, the Court would begin "overruling, most often bv stealth, the central constitutional doctrines that generations of past justices, conservative as well as liberal, had constructed."

Dworkin examines the key decisions of the Court's 2006-2007 term and argues that these two new justices, along with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, have created an "unbreakable phalanx bent on remaking constitutional law." They are guided not bv political ideology or conservative judicial principle but rather by "partisan, cultural, and perhaps religious allegiance," and disdain tradition, precedent, even careful legal reasoning.
In his analyses of the prior records of Roberts and Alito, Dworkin finds ample evidence that both have long held strong conservative convictions. But during their confirmation hearings, they gave little hint of their judicial philosophy, hiding behind vague promises to make decisions "according to the rule of law." If senators fail to press nominees for candid answers to the controversial questions of principle underlying t he Constitution, Dworkin contends, t hen i he confirmation process is irrelevant.

As a result, the Court mav be dominated for a generation bv justices whose views are far from those of most Americans. Its past decisions on issues such as abortion, affirmative action, and executive power, Dworkin (cars, are "vulnerable to reversal in the next several years as the fiercely conservative justices set out to rewrite American constitutional law without much caring about the logic of the arguments they use to do so. Bush's appointment of Roberts and Alito mav prove 10 be among the worst of the many disasters of his miserable administration."

Ronald Dworkin is Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University and Jeremy Bentham Professor of Law and Philosophy ar University College London. His books include Is Democracy Possible Here?, Justice in Robes, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality, and Freedom's Law. He is the 2007 winner of the Ludvig Holberg International Memorial Prize for "his pioneering scholarly work" of "worldwide impact."