Politics, the Constitution and the Roberts Court
The "conservative" justices on the Roberts Court are often passionately restrained in their interpretation of the Constitution in precisely the cases in which a more muscular form of judicial review is most appropriate -- those involving discrimination against African Americans, women, Hispanics, religious dissenters, gays and lesbians, persons accused of crime, and denial of the right to vote to minorities and the poor. In these cases, our contemporary "conservative" justices often err on the side of upholding laws that even Philip Kurland would have found unconstitutional. This is, in my view, a sad state of affairs.
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