The Next Time, by Linda Greenhouse

[elleng]

Three years ago, after Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. led the Supreme Court to the brink of overturning a few precedents but then blinked, a frustrated Justice Antonin Scalia accused the chief justice of “faux judicial restraint.”

It was foreseeable then that something would have to give: either the faux or the restraint. Now we know. Goodbye to restraint. . .

But while I’m unsure of the decision’s impact on the political system, I have no doubt about its impact on the Supreme Court itself: the Roberts court has lost its virginity.

The question now is what the Roberts majority’s next target will be — where will the court’s raging judicial hormones lead it next, now that it has experienced the joy of overturning?


http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/the-next-time/?hp

[Demeter]

1. Virginity? Supremes Lost Their Credibility--in 2000

[elleng]

2. She's referring to 'virginity' in the context of Supremes restraint against overturning itself.

'“It’s neither minimalist nor restrained to overrule cases while pretending you are not,” Walter E. Dellinger III, who served as acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration, said in an online conversation on Slate. Mr. Dellinger’s point was that “there can also be a significant cost to the coherence of the system” if lower courts are in the dark as to which precedents they must still rely on.

Chief Justice Roberts, operating on a long timeline at 52, may be responding to a different imperative. Openly overturning numerous precedents early in his tenure would invite criticism that the Roberts court has an agenda to “radically shift American law,” said Thomas C. Goldstein, a student of the court who argues there often.

The conservative alliance at the court may be fractious but not fragile, strong enough to withstand Justice Scalia’s “tweaking and needling,” as Prof. Richard W. Garnett of Notre Dame Law School describes it.

“I look at it as a bit of a kabuki dance,” said Professor Garnett, who clerked for Chief Justice Rehnquist and is close to the court’s conservatives. He said he had no doubt that Justice Scalia had “huge respect for the new chief as a person and as a lawyer.”

What is visible now, he said, is the latest iteration of the endless struggle between the need for stability in the law and the desire to correct previous mistakes.

“Different people who call themselves conservatives resolve that tension in different ways,” Professor Garnett said, adding that Justice Scalia was “laying down markers, making sure the arguments are out there to be used in later cases.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/28/washington/28memo.html

[Demeter]

3. Restraint? Extremists Don't Know the Meaning of the Word

They live in the ever-present Now of a two-year-old, screaming in a tantrum for cookies.

[fasttense]

4. The Dancing Supremes are nothing more than another

right wing tool. They started with stopping the vote count and selecting our president for us. Now, they have moved to making us a fascist state.

The next decision will be even more ridiculous and again no one is protesting them.