I’m not a fanatic about precedent for any court, at any time. I think precedent is important, as legal predictability is a value worth preserving, and so precedent deserves weight, but I don’t think it is ultimately paramount (the precedent of Plessy, for example, was rightfully overruled). The flip-side is that I also don’t mind “policy” reasoning (insofar, at least, as the “policy” argument flows out of a constitutional value — it can’t be totally free-form). And of course, I believe law is always at least somewhat subjective (a bounded subjectivity, but subjectivity nonetheless). Altogether, I believe that proper legal decisionmaking occurs by applying and balancing a variety of competing, relevant values. None of this is indicted in my post.

My ire, then, isn’t that conservatives sometimes disobey precedent, nor is that they sometimes use policy reasons. It’s that they say they don’t do it. They are rather nakedly lying through their teeth. Were they to be honest and say “I don’t care what originalism/precedent say, this is inconsistent with X constitutional value and thus needs to be struck down”, we could argue fairly. Instead, I’m forced to deal with smug claims about how theirs is “objective” law-making, because it relies on stable formulas like precedent or original intent, except when it doesn’t. And when they’re called on it, they just make everything morph into “precedent.” That’s dishonesty. And that’s what pisses me off.

Hopefully that clarifies things.

All four decisions took positions severely at odds with the on-point or controlling precedent.

Isn’t it the case that the determination of whether a given precedent is “on point” or “controlling” or not is itself a matter of legal opinion rather than, as you use it here, an objective fact?

Also, would you please clarify whether you extend your distaste for policy-based reasoning and your love of precedent to include the Warren and Burger Courts or whether you apply it only to the Rhenquist and Roberts Courts?

The point of which to say (and SD’s flurry here justifies) that for all their talk about “rule of law” and stare decisis, conservatives are just as willing to run to “pure policy” rationales for their decisions as liberals are–including in cases where it means overturning democratically enacted statutes. And when precedent gets in the way, precedent gets jettisoned.

Sorry, no liberal activist training, I just went to University, read books, and come to conclusions. Everything I said is related because the entire issue is a complicated one and does not have just one simple cause. There is a sequence of events that leads to the imposition of the definition of the different races. This starts way back during Reconstruction, and with the foundation of such misconceptions being established well before the Civil War.

Now, the riot in Atlanta was just an example off the top of my head of racial tensions. My point was to show that predominantly around this country racial violence was for the most part started and perpetrated by whites, and not the other way around as myth would have it. If white flight from cities was due to violence, it was due to violence they created.

For example, your inference that blacks, as a race (and due to their race) are more likely to commit a crime. This is false and is only an illusion created by our society. First off you have the historical base that during slavery and afterwards the white south especially painted the black man as a dangerous beast who was on the prowl and after their women. This translated into laws that specifically punish blacks for an activity that was not limited to them, but they were more likely than others to use certain drugs. Today you see it in the difference between punishment for pure cocaine and crack cocaine, the punishment for the latter being harsher.

Crime is also more likely to be committed by the poor because it becomes necessity for survival. Again, blacks were made poor by this government which through its policies denied them the ability to move out of the city, while subsidizing the white flight. When the whites left, so did many factories and businesses where blacks also had jobs, and thus the creation of a large, now poor and desperate group who are often without work and if they want work they are unable to move where the good jobs, which they previously held, now are.

HUD I don’t see as causing this but trying to address the problem. It likely would have been more successful if better funded.

You must have gone through some sort of liberal activist training where they teach people who to nitpick their opponents and how to misrepresent things by stringing together unrelated facts. How does a race riot in 1906 in Atlanta have to do with white flight from Prince Georges Country Maryland in the 1960′s and 1970′s.

Are you really trying to argue that blacks from the 1960 to the present commit felonies at the same rate as whites? I would love to see that data on that.

However, back to many of the reasons of white flight. I notice you totally ignored the government efforts of HUD housing, race based busing, and the lack of crime enforcement in the 1970′s. Just look at the murder rate in 1979 versus 1999 in the U.S.

Also, most of the violence in cities wasn’t the problem of minority races, but of whites. Race riots were the predominant form of violence/crime cited for whites leaving cities. What is ironic is that whites typically started the riots generally because of racist attitudes. I cite the Atlanta and Philadelphia riots as good examples of this.

Also, blacks were sometimes able to overcome the financial obstacles and purchase homes in wealthy white areas, but this would often be met with vandalism to the house and even violence towards the minority individuals and murder. The white community, overall, used terror tactics to frighten and keep minorities out.

The consititution does not permit the government to go on racially based social engineering programs because of the sum of people’s individual actions.

Bill and Hillary Clinton did not want their daughter to attend a school that was majority black. Justice Ginsberg sent her daughter to a virtually all white school. So, why should the government force blue collar whites in Louisville to do something that the elite would never do with their own children?

First, there is the long drawn out process of the lawsuits that will force someone to try and fix the problem. There is the actual repair, rebuilding and resupplying which takes more years. Then there is the far more difficult task of re-establishing a reputation as a decent school district. And none of this will be any more perfect than any human endeavor tinged by race and politics.

Yet there are those who say that after all this if we just ignore race, pretending that all of these things aren’t baggage that still weighs on our society things will be OK. Somehow I just doubt that.

The reason areas are overwhelmingly black is because whites left for the suburbs. The government helped with that by subsidizing home loans to only whites and making it a matter of policy to deny blacks access to those subsidies. That is why we have such sharp racial divisions now. In fact, I would be willing to argue that these racial divisions, promulgated by a government dominated by whites who wished to protect their power against minority groups, are worse than anytime in our nations history. The government created these conditions so it is legitimate that the government take steps to correct these conditions.

Also, the reason people commute 30 miles (or more) is because of the residual ideal of owning land in this country. It has become a part of the middle class ideal to own your own piece of property and once transportation became more efficient and affordable then people left the cities. Also, it became more ideal once services traditionally only in the city became available in what has become the suburbs. The problem is, again, the government subsidized the attainment of this ideal almost exclusively for whites.

Neither Louisville or SEattle argued in any court that their racially based social engineering program was needed to offset past government actions. The argument was that social engineering was such a compelling state interest that racial discrimination was acceptable.

If you look at a place like the DC metropolitan area, Prince Georges Country is not overwhemlingly black because the government made blacks move there. It is overwhelmingly blacks becasue the government made whites unwelcome in the county.

People do not commute 30 miles or more because the government told them where to live. They move there to get away from many of the problems that previous attempts at social engineering has caused.

Once again, if you want to discriminate, amend the constitution to make everyone a ward of the state and to put the government in charge of running people lives. If not, then agree that the constitution says the government cannot discriminate without due process.

That is the precedent that that is what the government should be held to, period.

With words and reasoning twisted without conscience, the very meaning of ‘meaning’ is disappearing.

Preserving precedents, my foot~

Both terms can mean different things depending on your perspective, carry different connotations or be spun in different ways depending on the messenger.

Instead of worrying about judicial activism or adherence to precedence, we should focus on whether or not judges are making good pragmatic decisions.