Tuesday, July 01, 2008

US Constitution, RIP

History will show that George Bush killed it. But he had help. Yesterday brought an interesting parallel in opining writing: Both Jim Manzi (of the National Review) and the FT's Clive Crook made a very similar argument that the US Supreme Court has become pointless as a supposed arbiter of disputes between the other branches of government and instead is just a mirror of those disputes, with the tiebreaker being whatever mood one particular justice is in on a particular day, which is a strange way to run a country.

But Manzi is the one writing for the National Review and therefore a bit more locked into the Republican taboos, so it's only Crook who can make the obvious link from this argument to the most atrocious, most partisan Supreme Court decision -- Bush versus Gore. Crook also points out that Barack Obama is the only one showing a glimmer of a vision of the Court as something other than another legislative branch of government.

No comments: