HOW CONSERVATIVE LEGAL DOCTRINES HAVE BECOME DOCTRINES OF CONVENIENCE

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• Scalia’s Contradictory Originalism: Justice Scalia’s originalist theory elevated the ideal that judging should be a non-partisan, neutral act; however, in recent decades it has acted as a cover for opinions that were clearly partisan.
  Read more: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/scalias-contradictory-originalism
• Citizens United and Conservative Judicial Activism: “In Citizens United, the Court, in a five-to-four decision, held unconstitutional a key provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA). The specific provision the Court invalidated limited the amount of money that corporations could spend in certain circumstances to support or oppose the election of named candidates for federal office. The decision raised fundamental questions about the nature and legitimacy of conservative judicial activism.”
  Read more: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2954&context=journal_articles
• Erwin Chemerinksy on Conservative Judicial Activism: “Today’s Court — the Roberts Court — is a conservative, activist Court . . . The Court has replaced the deference of twenty years ago with a very different brand of judicial conservatism.”
  Read more: https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol44/iss3/25/
• When it Comes to the Laws of Democracy, the Supreme Court’s Conservative Majority Often Abandons its Own Core Principles: Judicial conservatives have long accused their more liberal colleagues of ignoring these principles, and — especially in cases involving contentious social issues — imposing their personal preferences in the guise of judicial rulings. But that begs the question: Have the Court’s more conservative members themselves been faithful to the principles they espouse? At least when it comes to decisions about the rules of democracy, the answer too often is an emphatic no.
  Read more: https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/when-it-comes-laws-democracy-supreme-court%E2%80%99s-conservative-majority-often-abandons-its-own-core
• Brett Kavanaugh’s Dangerous Right-Wing Activism: Although Kavanaugh would no doubt deny it, his judicial record makes clear that he is a conservative judicial activist whose decisions correspond closely to his political preferences, overturn laws passed by the democratically elected legislature, and ignore and distort precedent.
  Read more: https://prospect.org/article/brett-kavanaughs-dangerous-right-wing-judicial-activism
• The Real Reason John Roberts Just Offered a Low-Stakes Win to Workers: Why did the court grant review of a straightforward case without a circuit split, only to unanimously affirm the lower court? A cynical theory to explain a mysterious, suspicious cert grant.
  Read more: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/01/john-roberts-arbitration-workers-supreme-court-corporate.html?via=recirc_recent
• Conservative Judicial Activism: The Politicization of the Supreme Court Under Chief Justice Roberts: A troubling and unmistakable trend has developed over several decades, and accelerated in recent years, of extreme judicial activism within the conservative bloc of Justices on the Supreme Court — reaching a new pinnacle under Chief Justice John Roberts.
  Read more: https://harvardlpr.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/9-1_Whitehouse.pdf
• The Death of Judicial Conservatism: “One of the lessons we have learned in the wake of the Bush Administration’s appointments to the Supreme Court is that judicial conservatism no longer exists in any significant form.”
  Read more: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=10679&context=journal_articles
• Scalia’s Infidelity: A Critique of “Faint-Hearted” Originalism: Conservative originalist scholar Randy Barnett contends that Scalia is “not really an originalist at all.”
  Read more: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=2ahUKEwiaoYz5jPPgAhXOk1kKHfwMCZ8QFjAAegQIBBAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fscholarship.law.georgetown.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1851%26context%3Dfacpub&usg=AOvVaw2-HqLZukQ8Oqiwo4_z6BPp&httpsredir=1&article=1851&context=facpub

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