This op-ed piece on how to change the direction of the Supreme Court with a look down memory lane at the Roosevelt post-depression court-packing scheme should prove interesting reading for those who wish to "impact" our United States Supreme Court as a Constitutionally created co-equal branch of the government.
Or as George Santayana more aptly put it "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." The conservatives lament their caving in nearly a century ago to the pressures of liberalism in the face of a national economic emergency (a/k/a the "depression") and the putative dire consequences thereof, but seem to forget that this same characterization of an "active" court can apply with equal force today. Unintended consequences can occur when constitutional requirements are abdicated for political expediency whether motivated by the right, the left, the progressives, the regressives, the liberals, the conservatives, or whoever and whatever.
If the long conservative era that began with Ronald Reagan's election is over, will the judges appointed during the right's ascendancy be able to block, frustrate and undermine the efforts of a new progressive majority?
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