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Originally Posted by *KK*
I think that perhaps in some cases the term conservative is being misused here. A political conservative is one thing, a conservative Supreme Court is something else entirely.
A conservative Supreme Court is one that tends to rely on precedent to define its rulings. It really has little to do with the political leanings of the members on the court.
A liberal court, on the other hand, tends to create "new" law with its rulings. A liberal court would be more likely to decide that something like the Miller test or Roe v Wade was a bad precedent and want to overturn those rulings.
Just thought I'd bring up this point.
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Bullshit.
NOTHING would please many conservative jurists than the opportunity to overturn precedents such as Gideon, Sullivan, and Miranda. There's even some that would welcome a return to Plessy from the "excesses" of Brown v Board of Education.
The arguement over stone tablets or living document has been going on since the time of Andrew Jackson; the only reason the level of debate is so shrill today is that the so-called mainstream right is much
further right than it was 20-30 years ago.
The reason that many on the right have their panties in a knot is that the two Bush appointees have THE APPEARANCE of being traditional Republicans, and traditional Republicans are far too moderate on social issues for the knucke-dragging neocons and cross-clutching Republicangelicals. They will strike a moderate course on social issues that will equally piss off Orin Hatch and Ted Kennedy (not really a bad way of finding the right course, maybe); meanwhile, the rights of capital and corporate "citizens" will trump the individual almost every time.