Any wretch who's been through a year of law school with normal cognitive powers intact knows that the Supreme Court is not a court but a priesthood. They don't do law there. They enforce economic orthodoxy. There are occasional spasms of conscience where crumbs from the table of plenty are allowed to fall on the masses, but you'd be foolhardy to rely on anything good coming from that venue. Recall that it was a majority of political hacks on that court who installed the monster war criminal who rules us today.

If Toobin believes that, he's clearly a fool. And probably a fool with an agenda.

Over at TPM Cafe, Charlie Savage has an interesting take on Bush's Supreme Court nominations:

...the Bush-Cheney legal team’s strategy of picking presidential lawyers to fill court vacancies has been an integral part of the groundwork it has laid for a long-term expansion of White House power.

Savage uses the term "Presidentialist" to describe Roberts and Alito (and Harriet Meyers!) - as in someone who will cede to the White House discretion in most matters involving presidential authority.

Go have a read - it's an intriguing look at what this White House has always been about - unfettered power exercised as it - and it alone - sees fit.

I not sure how one tells when Scalia acts strangely vs his usual irrascible self. Perhaps he has a brain tumor...it would explaing so much. It would be my fervent hope that it would be a rapid growing malignant one.

Yes, I know thats cold. It was meant to be. I just would prefer to have judges that didn't decide everything based on a rabid Catholic Doctrine.

I would like to take issue with a touch of chauvanism early in this otherwise fine piece: the U.S. Supreme Court is neither uniquely powerful nor uniquely American. From Virginia to Nova Scotia, the early Supreme Courts of the English colonies were established, naturally, by the English; you'll recall the seven centuries of consitutional evolution that occurred in the British Isles prior to 1776. And a completely unscientific guess on the current world: virtually every country going has some version of a Supreme Court. Thus, I'm not sure how you are intending "uniquely".

As for power, that must partly be in the eye of the beholder but I will observe that the Canadian Supreme Court rules directly on provincial appeals without complications of the Eleventh Amendment variety. It is explicitly the general court of appeal for the entire country (and can also issue advisory opinions, unlike the U.S. Supreme Court). To quote the court's description of itself: "In contrast to its counterpart in the United States, therefore, the Supreme Court of Canada functions as a national, and not merely federal, court of last resort."

How can he seriously say that the liberal wing of today's court are "old-style" judicial conservatives? These four are classic liberals in the mold of william brennan and thurgood marshall.

The court is taking small steps to the right at this time; good old-fashioned rule of law and common sense are returning to the supreme court. Of course, liberals don't like this and they're screaming to high heaven.

If you look at the outcomes of the cases, more often than not they support government power and presidential power. The Court has not been particularly respectful of precedent. BUSH v GORE was a total switch for most of the justices. I'm just glad I don't teach Con Law any more, b/c I cannot imagine how I could construct a story that would make that case sound principled or based on precedent.

Political Science literature is quite clear on the point that precedent is overturned most often in the wake of personnel change on the Court. Anonymous is nuts if he thinks this Court has returned to the rule of law. These guys are twisting precedent around or ignoring the parts they don't like--view the partial birth abortion decision, which totally ignored the "threat to the life or health of the mother" doctrine established in ROE and reaffirmed until O'Connor left the Court.

Souter may be a liberal conservative, but he is not a liberal Democrat, not that there can be anything wrong with either.

The right wing has simply strayed so far to the right that he might be demonized as a "liberal" for adjudicating basically with plain good sense and a healthy respect for the Constitution.

Though Kelo v. New London is a bit of a mystery, unless we ascribe it to NeoLiberal tendencies.

you two are proving my point. This court is not violently overturning precedent and or turning hard to the right. There has been liberal activism on the court for years and i'm sure you two loved it. And now that the shoe is on the other foot, you're crying to your mommas since that liberal activism is no longer in place. We will be a much better country if and when one or two of the remaining liberals retire and good common sense guys like roberts and alito replace them.

I know, relative to the other Supremes, Roberts is comparatively young, but at 52 years, "young man" seemed a stretch. But like everything else with the Supremes, it's all relative, right? Relative conservatives, relative liberals, relative moderates, relative reactionaries? Well, no -- the latter are pretty clear, the RATS of this court: Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia -- they're sure to surprise people, if only by how far they'll go to bat for a Republican president. I have no doubt that, should the Democrats actually win the White House in 2008, the RATS will work hard to oppose that new president; they know which party they represent. Rehnquist certainly set that mold for them, and Roberts will follow it. Their creed:

concentrated Republican executive power good,

unchecked corporate power good,

environmental law/regulation bad,

human rights bad,

property rights good,

free speech bad,

economic speech good (e.g., being able to pay for the privilege of said "free" speech, like campaign donors)

That's a pretty reliable barometer of their approach, and I doubt they'll stray from the script much, unless a Democrat wins in '08, then they might oppose concentrated, unchecked executive Democratic power. But we'll see; they might, in principle, maintain that in hopes that the GOP is able to seize power again.