In a comment which I posted early this morning, I could not resist using the example of Joe Biden to illustrate how inept we Democrats seem to be in managing the confirmation proceedings for Supreme Court justices.
The fact is, the rigorous preparation by the Federalist Society of young conservatives in law school to build a stable of right-wing Republican candidates for the judiciary has simply been very successful since 1982.
Undoubtedly, Republicans see the politicization of the Supreme Court as necessary because of the far greater number of Americans who find the liberal ideology of Democrats much more attractive.
Conservatives, therefore, work hard and are financed by rich people and corporate interests to put judges on the bench to oppose labor unions, to encourage suppression of likely Democratic voters and to discourage immigration by people of color – particularly non-Christian people of color.
The members of the Federalist Society tend to be well-educated, and they think of themselves as intellectuals.
Do they ever pause to consider why the large majority of people in America and around the world find the radical conservative viewpoint repugnant?
23
I say put up the "NO LGBT Served" signs right now. They're stored next to the "No Coloreds Served" signs. I want it straight, no chaser. Let the exclusion and easy bigotry wash over us everywhere. Let all Americans waft in the odor of what Republicans have done to people in the name of Jesus. Bring it all on. The evangelicals have picked a fight and want us, all of us, on our knees in thrall to their religion and the backlash will be as they cannot imagine. America has moved beyond religion and its youth give not a damn for this hatred of the Other. Put up the signs Republicans. Come out of the closet and own it. Own who you are.
24
“There are so few never-Trumpers in legal circles.” I am afraid I don’t know what that means. Weren’t lawyers the profession least likely to vote for Trump? Weren’t donations from lawyers to Hillary much larger than to DT. (Biglawbusiness.com says 36 million to Hillary and less than 1 million to DT. ). Can someone help me figure what Mr. Brooks means?
I understand that there is a community of conservative lawyers . A village. Raising up their young. There are however, lots of other villages. Maybe Mr. Brooks is less familiar with them.
6
People talk about a "right side of history." The notion that there's a "right side of history" is baked into liberal thinking. I suppose it's part of Thomas Jefferson's legac). It's a small step from inalienable rights to preordained rights. It all sounds great. Intellectually, it's garbage. Morally, it's horrible; for it breeds complacency, which is evil's dear friend. If rights were truly inalienable, we wouldn't need a Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is a testament to the fact that, practically speaking, rights are, not inalienable, but conferred by the state--and are usually hard won. If history teaches anything, it's this: To the victor go the spoils. The sooner liberals face up to this, and stop talking about a "right side of history," the better. If liberalism is ever to rise again, it will require determination, organization, and a willingness to fight like hell for liberal values.
13
Very informative article. I suppose this is the type of "Deep State" the hypocritical Republicans can warm up to!
12
Sounds like a good description of the Ol' (White) Boys' Club. What's new?
13
You didn't quite finish the thought "Then things began to turn around," notably in 1980.
The headline for the rest of your column should have been "Then things began to turn around and retreat from principles people over profits, human rights over corporate greed. The days of progressive thought were over and the descent into a second Gilded Age began."
14
Brooks would not have been able to write this column if the Presidential election had not been stolen through Russian interference, voter suppression, and the relentless lies of the Republican nominee. Gorsuch wouldn't be on the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh would not be the nominee, and the Federalist Society would just be another old white boy's club. It is not a village that is winning, it is the muck of a Republican party that will do anything to win.
19
What Village? Ivy League Corporate backed GOP promoted village? All White Guys in Expensive Suits?
Guys whose pre-existing conditions won't be effected when SCOTUS lets Trump finally dispose of Obamacare? Guys who don't need unions to give them equal pay for their work?
Mr. Brooks, I didn't read past the head-line. Apologist overload and not interested. Kavanaugh won't effect me. But if your kids, David, aren't healthy for life, totally connected and guaranteed secure jobs, you should be. Leaving the environment, protection from rapacious corporations, working conditions, living wage, health care access, at the mercy of anyone vetted by the Federalist group, and chosen by a POTUS facing jail, is not a good plan unless you've got tens of million stashed for your progeny. Do you David? And do they have gills? Ability to deal with smog? Didn't think so.
10
David you forgot "If you suck up to the billionaires and help them keep theirs" you can create a nice little playground for twisted psyches.
5
Elections have consequences. Maybe the Bernie crowd understands that now. While they were clamoring for free everything for everybody, beating on Hillary and dividing their party, the GOP managed to hold their noses and all get behind Trump no matter how uncomfortable he made them. And this is their reward--Gorsuch and now Kavanaugh. And who knows, there may end up being a third and fourth SCOTUS appointee before Trump is out of office.
I am a moderate Democrat but have no patience for my party any longer. This is their legacy as much as it is Trump's. This is the legacy of Hillary, Bernie, Pelosi and Schumer. The GOP found a way to get behind their candidate. The Dems did not. That's why we have Trump and his SCOTUS picks.
For once, I hope the self-destructive Democrats learn something.
.
18
I am so depressed about our country. Obviously the "experiment" did not work. It is a failure. Democracy as we knew it is gone and because our forefathers could not imagine the cruelty and stupidity of the American people. And because Kavanaugh bases his decisions on worn out and no longer viable opinions we are doomed as a country. Bring on the horse and buggies. Forget science. And the richest people here. The rest of us do not have a chance and will be either exported or killed. Have fun, everyone whichever way you go.
5
If you have the backing of multi-billionaires who made their money on the back of racism and a system that ultimately results in a very few being very wealthy and powerful while everybody else gets poorer, then it's pretty easy to build a system that rewards yourself. That is, of course. what citizen's united did. The country be damned.
7
So we have a decision in Roe v. Wade where seven of nine justices gave an opinion. Now we are looking at the possibility of a 5-4 decision, where the fifth judge will be one that was undeniably stolen from the Obama administration.
If there is a reversal of Roe v. Wade, it has nothing to do with the grooming of. conservative ideology, It has everything to do with a ruthlessness by which conservatives have sought to impose their will on the rest of us.
Quite frankly, I don’t know how any man even presumes that he has any right to express an opinion on whether a woman has an abortion.
14
Professional excellence? Uh, right. I've been reading about some of Kavanaugh's decisions and they are just politics disguised as law. The legal arguments are absurd, such as his Orwellian ruling against Net neutrality on first amendment grounds.
A common carrier is a conduit of speech, not an originator of it. This is like confusing a phonograph with an orchestra.
This, however, is completely in keeping with the conservatives on the Court, who ever since Bush v. Gore have completely ignored any kind of legal reasoning and just made unprincipled ideological rulings with results that rival Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson for hypocrisy and ugliness.
Modern conservatism has, in every branch of government, abandoned all allegiance to principle, even to the point of embracing an authoritarian president in thrall to Vladimir Putin. Barry Goldwater must be rolling over in his grave.
14
Well, OK, then.
David ate his Righties for breakfast and The Man Is Back!
No more of his simpering self-doubt-lite. No more wondering how long a person can put up with President Trump.
Full-bore, full-roar, Brooks is Back.
It's kind of a shame...
5
It is the duplicity which infuriates me. Trump is a white-supremecist, an uneducated borderline illiterate ignorant of anything beyond the swing of his tie, a sexual pervert and self-admitted sexual molester, the leader of an organized crime family, and is being manipulated by the former head of the KGB to dissolve the Western Democratic Alliances in order to keep himself out of prison and to keep evidence of his sexual and political perversions hidden. And he lies about it all, anything and everything, large and small, every single day.
You own this disgusting excuse for a human being Mr. Brooks. You own him, McConnell owns him, Sarah Sanders owns him. When you die it is not going to be the sweet blonde haired blue-eyed Jesus you met in Sunday School waiting for you, fluffing a heavenly pillow for your eternal rest. It is going to be an Old Testament God, a Vengeful God, who will with a hearty laugh hurl you into the deepest chasms of Hell. Your God, balancing the scales of Justice .
6
"..but he’s given the conservative legal establishment more power than ever before, which is why there are so few never-Trumpers in legal circles."
Therein lies the problem. When people overlook immoral, corrupt, and inhumane behavior and are not concerned with mendacity, the denigration of allies, the harm to the environment here and world wide, we have a bigger problem than who's legal circle calls the shots, but apparently the conservative legal establishment thinks otherwise. Where oh where are the good people who care for something greater than their agenda?
3
Yes. It is called 'the village of the damned.'
5
In other words, the right wing of the Republican Party threw tons of money at people who believe that individual rights don't matter, that human rights don't matter and that corporations are people. I wouldn't call that nurturing genius; I'd call it finding the most craven and inhumane. Keep in mind that what we got were (at best) Kennedy whose son works for Deutsche Bank laundering Russian money and sucking up to Trump. What a crew of miserable human beings.
5
The core of the matter is power and its exercise. The social upheavals of the 1960s convinced corporatist families— such as the Olins, the Coors, the Mellons — that too much democracy is not good for profits and thus the various conservative think tanks, institutes or foundations were brought into being in the quest to reassert the power that previous economic elites exercised. Successor families came along such as the Kochs and ,perhaps we could say, the Trumps. The conservative establishment's goal is absolute power over the mass of the population to the benefit of those who, by greed and stealth as well as luck and hard work, became excessively rich. They sincerely believe they deserve that wealth and that us lesser folk deserve our servitude. In crude language, make the rich richer, the poor poorer and to hell with everyone else.
3
Yet another one of Mr. Brooks's interesting but Bloodless Beside- the - Point stories as are his Friday Newshour Comments.
He does not raise the issue of what may well happen to wages, jobs, worker rights, abortion rights, the growing Repub corporate state, and the environment, and on and on, in the hands of the next two or three Repub SCOTUS judges -- all more or less impending disasters in the next 20-40 years.
The village this judge was raised in is a deadly poison for the American people.
4
Thanks for the edification regarding how this human virus manifested itself. It is instructional to know how the lowest common denominator flourishes.
What I didn't learn from you is why the mainstream fails to mention that there is a false equivalency between conservative "thinkers" and ever-evolving progressive thinkers. We live in a dynamic universe. These folks are limited by their mental (and religious) stasis.
At least they (members of the organizations to which you speak) are smart enough to realize they are on the wrong side of history and they need the strength of numbers. And, that manipulation of the "system" is mandatory for their political survival.
3
Please forward this to everyone you know:
https://www.alternet.org/history-hypocrisy-evangelicals-used-be-pro-choi...
Excerpts: Randall Balmer's book, "Thy Kingdom Come" - The Christian right was not originally animated by abortion, but by the defense of private, tax-exempt, racially segregated colleges and schools.”
From Jonathan Dudley: In 1968, Christianity Today published a special issue on contraception and abortion, encapsulating the consensus among evangelical thinkers at the time. In the leading article, professor Bruce Waltke, explained the Bible plainly teaches that life begins at birth:
“God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed….… Clearly, … in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.”
From the magazine - “Christian Life” - “The Bible definitely pinpoints a difference in the value of a fetus and an adult.” … The Southern Baptist Convention passed a 1971 resolution affirming abortion should be legal not only to protect the life of the mother, but to protect her emotional health as well.
Paul Weyrich: "I was trying to get [evangelicals] interested in those issues and I utterly failed," What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter's intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation."
That’s when they suddenly got religion about politics — and got political about their religion
2
In 2016 a pastor held up a plastic bag on his podium that he claimed held the remains of an aborted fetus. He told his misguided flock that it would be a sin not to vote for Donald Trump. This religious hypocrite must be in a state of rapture.
3
What Brooks left out of his absurd piece...Please read:
Jane Mayer Dark Money
Lee Fang The Machine
Nancy MacLean Democracy in Chains
Brooks is congratulating a fifth column insurgency bent on undermining our democracy and establishing a formal Plutocracy. Radical, and I mean Radical Libertarian Extremists who necessarily are the top of the financial elite have bought an enormous astroturfed infrastructure for dissembling propaganda meant to turn democracy against itself. Including, most notably, buying (funding) and degrading educational institutions (economics and law) to forward their grotesque Libertarian ideology. The Entire village Brooks refers to is funded and run entirely by the .01% financial elite for their own ends. Ultimately it takes the money of the Ultra wealthy to raise Kavanaugh. The Kochs and their ilk bought and paid for Kavanaugh, and for the entire Federalist Society list.
It is worth addressing publicly the self contradictions, logical fallacies and absurd premises of Libertarian "thought" and it's root, Ayn Rand's appalling "objectivism". (abjectivism) And even more importantly examining the nature of the world these treasonous extremists intend. This must be done setting aside their ridiculous childlike reductionist rhetoric (why should I pay for someone else's ...?) to look at what their world order would actually look like. It is monstrous.
3
A tongue in cheek Washington Post column says it better than Brooks: ' So I have found a replacement who is just like Neil Gorsuch, whom I chose because I was told he had been crafted in a lab designed expressly to produce clones of Antonin Scalia.
1
And what was the impact of the philosophy of James M Buchanan on the Republican Oligarchs? Apparently, Democracy was getting in their way.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/the-architect-of-th...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/19/despot-disguise-de...
2
I don't understand why liberals are so afraid of a conservative supreme court. Conservatives don't want to do anything, just return power to legislative branches.
3
I knew there was a queue of right-wing Judges, but it is appreciated to have a brief explanation of how it came to be.
That you are getting hatred in the comment section for exposition is sad.
3
Sorry David, but these folks are just polite, mild mannered fascists in business suits. They couldn't get a majority of voters to go along with their plans to reduce Americans to serfs, put women back in the kitchen, return to open season on people of color and immigrants, and hand the nation's wealth over to their plutocrat masters, so they devised a long range plan to stack the courts with genial Republican stooges to do their bidding. Republicans - basically a criminal cabal impersonating a political party - rig and or steal elections (2000 and 2004 and 2016) and when that doesn't work they just overturn them (Grey Davis, California). They'd slap on the armbands and goosestep into Congress if they could, but for now, it's bad optics. Like all Republican criminals they have no ethics, morals or values save opportunism, expediency and money. They lie, now openly with impunity, and will stop at nothing, including treason (what were those eight Republican senators really doing in Moscow on July 4th, and why has the Times not written one article about it?). And while you should be apologetic and ashamed for your 40 year role of supporting, excusing, enabling and cheerleading for the destruction of our democracy by your party of liars, thieves, bigots and racists, you're obviously not and the reason why is self evident: you are a Republican, and thus you have are immune from shame or conscience.
1
This is all well and good Mr. Brooks, but building excellence works on both sides and the last time I looked the Constitution and SCOTUS are to represent all AMERICANS -- not just the excellent genius pool of Conservatives. Judge Merrick Garland is a perfect example -- someone who could go down the middle, but partisanship stopped that. The excellence of Kavanaugh does not seem excellent at all -- he's been a partisan all of his career -- groomed for his genius, I guess not by the love and law and the diversity of this great country, but by the very partisan Federalist Society...So the Conservatives got what they wanted, but what about the majority of the American people -- a solid 3 million more who didn't vote for Mr. Trump and expect that their Supreme Court will also represent their interests. The American people are the big losers here and have been since this sham election on November 9, 2016. And no spin about the geniuses who have been plotting for decades to take over the legal system can change that. I'm looking for geniuses who care about their fellow citizens - now maybe the Federalist Society should put that in their dossier of so-called geniuses -- not likely -- heaven forbid that some people might actually think differently than they do -- that would be a little too American and Democratic.
2
There are only "few never-Trumpers in legal circles" if you define the boundaries of "legal circles" at the fringe of the Federalist Society itself. For the rest of us, "FedSoc"'s desire to "encourage" spirited discussion by stunts like inviting Chick-Fil-A to cater a debate on Obergefell were as anathema when we were students as conservative orthodoxy is in practice now.
2
While Democrats were celebrating the historic election, and re-election of Barack Obama, they were simultaneously busy losing seats in the US House and Senate, as well State Houses across the country.
As a Party, the Democrats seemed unaware, and undisturbed, by this massive shift of power. Because all eyes were on the White House.
Of course, States control Federal and State districting, reproductive rights, labor law, firearms legislation, etc., etc.
Why has one of the two major parties ceded so much ground that it is now looking at decades of policies and decisions with which it disagrees?
On the GOP side, there is patience through every election cycle, voting your party, and then once in power, a ruthlessness that makes Chuck Schumer blush. Heck the Republicans are often more powerful in minority status than the Dems are in majority.
Until the Dems understand the importance of state and local elections, they will continue to lose power. And if they are even granted power again, they need to be as ruthless in exercising power as Mitch McConnell.
3
I doubt that Kavanaugh will stray far if at all from the conservative thought womb he came from. He was born for it and falling into the folds of the Federalist Society was likely so very natural for him. For him to do otherwise would require a rebellion against his parents, his schools, and the school colleagues with whom he fit in best. (Had he actually rebelled, became a "traitor to his class," he and the Federalist Society would not have had so much in common.) The Federalist Society is a formalization of the informal old-boy networks that once identified "comers" to promote, and for a small investment, the moneyed elite will reap big rewards. It seems that Federalist Society membership will become essential qualification for judicial appointments in the Trump administration. I wonder what the effect will be of introducing so many judges into the system most of which come from a narrow social and economic stratum. I wonder if any of them have bused tables, bucked hay, or worked any actual normal young person job that provided a realistic view of employment and contact with people unlike themselves. This new importance of the Federalist Society will likely make the judiciary even more tone-deaf to road traveled by the average people Trump claims to champion.
1
The executive, legislative, and judicial branches were all designed to protect the powerful. To concentrate power in the hands of the elite. Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, it doesn't really matter.
The Supreme Court is not looking out for the interests of average citizens. The function is to keep the wheels grinding forever forward. The weak and less fortunate best stay out of the way.
2
"If you emphasize professional excellence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s mainstream institutions, if you build a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, you can transform the landscape of your field."
I like this conclusion very much. But very important ingredients in this successful strategy are missing; argue on behalf of the wealthy and powerful, by way of marginally relevant obscure judicial dogma. The powerful will in return pave and pay your way.
The conservative legal community does not advocate on behalf of the lesser, neglected and under-served of our brethren. We'd be hard pressed to find a case where the conservative community has advanced protection of the rights of the disadvantaged and powerless. Such advocacy is needed. But who would pave and pay the way for such causes?
3
You are confusing the role of the legislative with the judiciary.
1
"The business of America is business." - Calvin Coolidge
Make no mistake about it - while much chaff is tossed about on the influence of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on values issues, and those are not unimportant, their solid track record is that they are doctrinaire pro-business. MLK posited generations ago that the fight for civil rights was meaningless without economic justice, and the trend there has not been at all favorable since the backlashing advent of the Reagan Restoration.
While the parties battle distractingly over social matters, the Republicans have run rings around the Democrats on the economy and finance, inflicting a deathblow on the American Experiment. And it seemed curiously easy for the GOP to do that - curious, that is, until one realizes many of these establishment "Democrats" aren't democrats at all. They, such as the Clintons and Obama, are stealth Rockefeller Republicans. Moles, who abdicated traditional bedrock Democratic constituencies that have been grievously harmed by accelerating inequality, automation and globalization. That's a major reason Hillary Clinton lost the last election, because she's not a democrat.
I wonder how much the "Democrats" will allow themselves to be distracted from the grunt work of the upcoming elections by their agitation over Kavanaugh. After all, this is the party about which Will Rogers said, "I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat." Multi-tasking with any competence is a big ask.
3
America is a country full of law and lawyers, and has been since virtually the very beginning of the republic. However, as an academic trained in political science rather than law, I find establishment law, incarnated in someone like Mr. Kavanaugh, both over-intimidating and ridiculous. The problem is, under Trump (and even before Trump), the barristocracy has had the power to make our lives significantly worse (e.g., Citizens United). It has stirred social unrest and bitterness without offering reconciliation (e.g., Affirmative Action), and the economic school of law personified by Prof. Posner has been a handy ally for business interests, without which the robber barons could not carry on with a very successful theft of resources from the great majority of our unfortunate citizens.
Mr. Kavanaugh is, like most of his colleagues, a graduate of that Hanlin Academy of lawyers (the Hanlin Academy was a fast track school for elite Mandarins during the Chinese Empire), Yale and Harvard Law Schools. The assumption behind establishment law is the more exclusive and elitist it is, the better it is. But perhaps the graduates of humbler law schools in "remote" parts of the country might have more understanding of ordinary Americans and how they struggle to live. Like the Hanlin Mandarins, Mr. Kavanaugh and his fellows dwell in the Heavenly Realm. There they will remain, wreaking havoc on the humble while loyally serving those who pay them their huge salaries.
It would be too easy to say, "It took a village to raise a right wing Supreme Court and the American public is the village idiot."... So, I shan't do that.
Rather I'll just say it seems quite a bit like a vast right wing conspiracy.
3
Conservatives are taking advantage of a corrupt and unwitting POTUS much the same way a thief steals form the drunk asleep in an alley.
3
But you left out the part about the #StolenSeat.
Was that moral?
What a privileged, rose-tinted view you have of your corrupt party.
3
And you get support from those who backed the war in Iraq.
1
hm there is one other cause for white flight that you didn't name...and it is definitely a part of conservative jurisprudence on voting rights and affirmative action...
Mr. Brooks:
Ever seen the movie "Brotherhood of the Bell"? You always make cheating sound so reasonable.
1
Yeah, and that village is missing Its' Idiot. HE is in the Oval Office.
For now.
4
Ethical dilemmas are fine, Mr Brooks, providing the moral absolutes they endeavor to frame long for a scaffolding of consistent choices which can't skew off course. Like for whom the Civil War, for example, had been won. Otherwise those lost along the way CAN'T be spared from having died in vain IF morals are unduly imperiled. That THIS so-called POTUS has absolutely no redeeming qualities for yet another rebirth to test whether we, so conceived, and so dedicated, can somehow STILL endure is indicative of nationalist bents precluding the very values for which patriotism truly counts.
In this quick history, Brooks doesn't mention once the business interests that have supported this organization with their money. You don't have a bunch of lawyers working for nothing. A lot of money went in to develop this juggernaut.
3
"It’s a lesson for everybody. If you emphasize professional excellence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s mainstream institutions, if you build a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, you can transform the landscape of your field."
Yes, instead of stupid, morally bankrupt people, you now have plausibly intelligent, morally bankrupt people that know how to put lipstick on a pig and can even go a step further and dress it up in designer clothing.
3
A community of interest, at the least.
2
Well, put your tongue back in your mouth, Mr. Brooks. Is it really so inspiring to see an entire generation of judges who are in thrall to the privileged, moneyed interests that made this country what it is? What courage! What integrity! It comes as a reminder that for most of our country's history, the composition and conduct of its Supreme Court has been a national disgrace.
3
Sounds like a Deep State.
2
'It took a village' .... Sounds so wholesome, David Brooks ... American as apple pie and the lure of big money. Let's get real ... that's the real motivator ... social justice is only a stumbling block to be surmounted and forgotten as quickly as possible.
2
It takes a village? A hillary saying that I thought was buried after she was buried.
1
No.
"This phrase is attributed to an Igbo and Yoruba proverb "It takes a village to raise a child". The origin of the popular saying is a mystery. Some people believe the saying originated in an ancient African proverb; others believe it came from a Native American Tribe."
1
He’s the product of a Jesuit Education , hostile to abortion rights . That’s all you need to know and that’s was why he was picked . A catholic majority Supreme Court .
2
'It took a village' .... Sounds so wholesome, David Brooks ... American as apple pie and the lure of big money. Let's get real ... that's the real motivator ... social justice is only a stumbling block to be surmounted and forgotten as quickly as possible.
David Brooks, as always, stunningly avoids understanding any systemic power in this insipid op-ed. Brookes notes the conservative legal community's amazing reversal of fortune and names such some of the many foundations and societies responsible for legitimizing these fringe views -- but stops far short of acknowledging that these foundations were floated in a vast sea of dark money that sought to make the judiciary serve the interests of corporations and property owners. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are not products of some decades-long intellectual movement or honest yearning from the demos -- they are a return on investment for the Scaifes, the Kochs and the rest.
4
It also takes a village to have a village idiot. Not Kavanaugh but Trump. He wouldn't know a good judge if one bit him in the leg -- all he did was cater to the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation in hopes that that will please his base, a largely ignorant base of high school graduates who know nothing of good jurisprudence. Would you trust a judge who believes the consumer protection agency is a Communist plot? Who thinks environmental protections are unconstitutional? Who spent years working to indict or impeach President Clinton, then turned around when that was all over and said no American president should be investigated, subpoenaed, indicted or impeached. I think that's called HYPOCRISY.
1
Assuming conservative views are 'smart' is itself a misjudgement.
On the other hand, if you just go out in the streets and blow off steam, or act obnoxious around people with whom you disagree - how well is that working out? This, I believe, is the unspoken subtext of what David Brooks is saying.
1
It is interesting that a generation of white haters believe that they are going to move the court in the direction of the neo right.
What did this country do to these rich white guys who believe everyone else is their "white man's burden" theory.
Citizens who think will keep moving this country into the light while the rest of these haters stay in the dark.
We all thought that maybe we could stop making the same racist, mistakes but we haven't learnt a thing.
Thank goodness the swamp king of stupidity is gone for a few days and the criminals he pardoned will be on the Fox news heralded as freedom fighters instead of what they are people who have committed treason to this country.
Where are those three thousand children? why did the government miss the timeline did they think that no one would notice?.
As concerned as I am about all the hot-button issues the far right is target, such as the unborn having inalienable rights while the born are ignored and maltreated, there's one thing they're doing that makes it all worse.
It's the vote cheating.
It's the vote cheating.
It's the vote cheating.
Private for-profit prisons with quotas, extreme drug sentencing, school-to-prison pipeline, it stops people who deserve a chance to vote.
Racial profiling, it prevents voting.
Getting rid of the voting rights act, ignoring the obvious.
Ohio just got permission to throw 2 million unfortunates off the voting rolls. Poor people have to move. Poor people have to work. Poor people get fined for living. Poor people don't have transit. The elderly, veterans, others, often don't have proper records.
Crosscheck is evil.
Stop the vote cheating!
2
One must also remember that they have a lot of money behind them to support the schools, universities, societies and foundations.
3
Once in a while, David Brooks scares the bejesus out of me: a 'village' of self-grooming judges from the Federalist Factory.
Isn't a secret fraternity of power, created TO MANIFEST as Supreme Court power and, consequently, as "the" political wellspring that wins national elections - supposed to be kept secret?
Now, Columbia graduate and co-founder of "The Federalist Paper" Neil Gorsuch's 1988 YEARBOOK ENTRY makes prophetic sense:
"The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little a little longer." - Henry Kissinger, August 29, 1967
It did not take a village. It took his education and schooling to make him. Apparently chief among that was his schooling at his prep school the motto of which he repeated, "men for others." It was promoted by the then leader of the Jesuits, Father Arrupe, and served as the basis for liberation theology, a Marxist inspired movement which called for Catholics and others to put their beliefs into practice rather than words. Father Arrupe was eventually forced to recant Marx, but not Marxist principles, and died a broken and paralyzed man.
But the phrase survived him. For Kavanagh to repeat it with such obvious ignorance puts the lie to both his supposed intelligence and possible ethics. He is certainly ambitious and dishonest and knows no shame. Thousands died for that phrase. He treats it as if it were a Trumpian fake phrase.
1
mostly it took citicens united
Mr. Brooks is paid to be a conservative writer. He has been having a hard time writing good things about current conservatives although he does his best by concentrating on what he believes to be the noble intellectual and moral underpinnings of the conservative white, right wing Republican Party. Kavanaugh, a typical elite, white, right wing Republican is not yet a SCOTUS (in)justice). Brooks can get a lot of glowing, laudatory opinion pieces out of this ideal conservative if he refrains from scrutinizing Kavanaugh’s past decisions.
When Reagan was elected President in 1980, I told myself that it would take 30 years for liberalism to make a comeback. Well, we are now approaching the 40-year mark and I am hoping that we are finally on the verge of the fall of conservatism. Mr. Brooks correctly stated that the conservative foreign policy and economic policy are being abandoned by the GOP. Although the conservative legal establishment still looks to be in control of one branch of the government, the over-turn of Roe v Wade may catalyze the downfall of this last leg of conservatism. We shall see!
Let us be very clear. The origins of conservatism were in the feudal structures of the powers of the kings and aristocracies to preserve their wealth and influence. This origin is profoundly undemocratic and resists change. The status quo let them make decisions and denies others their ability to participate in society except as peon labor. Conservatism resists the arc of progress of democracy. This progress is the expansion of rights of all citizens without regard to gender, color, ability or sexual orientation. It is now being turned back as conservatives use religion as a bludgeon and tool of the state. Conservatism is profoundly undemocratic.
Conservatism now is about the power and money of the 1 percent. Citizens United is the ultimate reflection of this philosophy. We see money buying congress and there is no money trail about where money comes from and what it is buying. The Federalists et al are the tools of the 1 percent and inherited wealth. What "merit" does the Trumpster represent?
We see McConnell staging a constitutional coup in denying President Obama his responsibility to nominate a Supreme Court Justice and then smirking Neil Gorsuch, Citizens United Roberts and now another soiled position occupied by Brett Kavanaugh taking an illegitimate seat on that court. And now another smirker on the court.
3
Whatever excellence these studious products of the Federalist Society exhibit, it is in the service of Greedy Rich donors who do not want government to work (and so taxes will not be raised). There is nothing to be proud of. If these folks get their way, they will stop legal abortion, but not abortion. They will kill Obama care but that won't provide better or cheaper health care to anyone what cannot pay their own way. And the air and water will be ruined.
Is this an achievement? Or is it rather debasement of what conservatism should mean?
2
The Federalist Society did not create Kavanaugh. He had already been moulded before joining that. He was created by the American Catholic Church. He went to a Jesuit academy, for heaven's sake: give us the boy and we'll give you man! And just as smart and just as conservative: that sounds like a serious contradiction. Conservatives are running America back to the dark ages.
3
Really surprised by the number of comments turning this opinion piece on how the conservatives built a cohesive, integrated approach to influencing the judiciary into a screed about the President, etc. We liberals need the same systematic, rigorous, and sustained approach to the levers of influence in government that conservatives have demonstrated here as pertains to the judiciary. Don't necessarily like where the status quo sits right now, but we should appreciate a cogent and articulate analysis of how it came to be.
3
Yes, excellent organization, Mr. Brooks. As Brent from Boston points out, the morality of the right's legal "excellence" is that of Machiavelli. The Bolsheviks were organized also. So was Fidel Castro.
No question the Democrats have been demolished by GOP and Federalist Society superior organization. To me, conservatism and libertarianism is an every man for himself way of seeing the world, with undeniably paranoid components, always enemies, always conspiracies. Conservatism is largely about conserving the ruling class.The essential contributions of everyday non rich people are of tiny value in the elite right wing mind.
The huge majority of legal decisions decided by a conservative majority expand privilege for big business. Professional excellence can be found in hit men also.
2
I remember reading about this in The Yorker over 10 years ago.
I get it - conservatives set up a system to groom conservative legal minds for judges’ seats all over the country. They’ve worked hard and they accomplished what they set out to by careful, slow, determined work.
I am concerned that the effort has been bank-rolled, perhaps taken over by corporate interests. And corporations have gotten their “money’s worth - with interest) - decisions that have severely undermined workers, the environment and unions. I doubt corporate folks care about abortion - wealthy women have always been able to get safe abortions - they use the abortion issue (and anti-LGBT) to get the religious-right to vote for Republicans- usually against their own interests.
The answer lies with people who care about progressive ideas (workers’ rights, women’s ability to choose, climate change) to vote!
3
“This community didn’t just happen; it was self-consciously built. If you want to understand how to permanently change the political landscape, it’s a good idea to study and be inspired how it was done”
I did not know the Supreme Court was a “political institution”. Thanks for admitting the obvious, Mr. Brooks.
This description of the conservative movements legal maneuvering makes the Federalist society members appear as a bunch of sheep following a Pied Piper, with none capable of fundamentally independent thinking.
Thank you for shedding light on the Federalist Society. I had no idea who or what this group is. Nevertheless, there is something familiar about it. Once you take away the legal veneer and high-powered connections, what remains is a right-wing organization with depth and a long-term agenda. No cranks or conspiracy theorists here.
1
So, Mr. Brooks would have us believe that the Federalist Society is earnest, noble, honorable and pure--more boy scout than reckless hooligan--in their pursuit of an America guided by and forged through conservative laws and principles. It begs the question why a society that emphasizes such professional excellence, according to Mr. Brooks, would even associate themselves with a morally and ethically bankrupt Donald Trump, currently drowning in so much corruption and scandal within a swamp he promised to drain. Trump, who regularly flouts a couple centuries worth of protocol and standards for the most prestigious and respected elected office in America and who frequently boasts about being above the laws of our land, hardly seems to meet the unimpeachable high standards of the Federalist Society.
That "cohesive band of brothers and sisters" described by David Brooks is decidedly more brother than sister, more white than representative of the current or future faces of American citizens, not to mention more rigidly Christian. So, the prospect of transforming the Federalist Society's own narrow landscape vision into the entire country's is looking highly achievable. Listening to probable new Supreme Court Justice, Kavanaugh gush over mob boss-in-chief Trump while claiming to be so humbled being chosen by him, was just one more disturbing and surreal Trump moment, resembling a scene from the Godfather movie. Meanwhile, we "showy" liberal humanists collectively despair.
3
David, You neglected to mention James Buchanan and the Koch brothers. They bear major responsibility for the extreme right-wing libertarian dystopia we're headed toward. Kavanaugh fits perfectly into their grand design. See Nancy MacLean's excellent history of this movement to replace democracy with a plutocracy: "Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America." Truly frightening!
4
David Brooks weaves an Alice in Wonderland story of the founding of the Federalist Society and its goals. Its premise is that so long as corporate capitalist interests are advanced this is all to the good of the country. Along the way the judges emerging from this Society seem committed to voting to endorse policies committed to restraining voting rights, sustaining criminal laws barring sex between consulting adults, denying same-sex couples the right to marry and be protected from discrimination in their lives. These Federalist Society judges have allowed secular businesses hiding behind freedom of religion to justify denying women access to contraception under their health insurance programs as mandated by the ACA.
In the field of criminal justice they have given prosecutors and their supervisors immunity from punishment for wilolful violations of the Brady rule that denied wrongfully convicted defendants access to evidence that would have vindicated them. They have repeatedly made a mockery of every person's right to Life , Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. What is their to celebrate in the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh? Nothing!. He joins the chamber where ideas that threaten are everyday well being are the warp and woof of Roberts, Thomas , Alito, and Gorsuch.
David Brooks once again proves himself an apologist for the status quo. We needed a moderate like Merrick Garland and were given more of the same with another Alito-Gorsuch look alike.
1
Brooks being bombastic here talking about "conservative legal infrastructure" and "nurturing genius". Obama had his Supreme Court shanghaied by McConnell. Trump loses the popular vote, yet gets to nominate Kavanaugh. More like norm breaking in Congress and voter suppression, not "legal infrastructure" that gets these guys on the Court. Democrats need to fight back.
1
They do set a moral tone. Not to do so is impossible. The morality they propound promotes lying, cheating, stealing, kidnapping children and war without end. It values money above all else. It promotes the division of society into discrete individuals who cannot band together for the good of everyone. It places no value on educating the masses.
This is their morality. And their proud of it.
2
"They could have just hosted events with like-minded speakers, but debates were more interesting and attracted better crowds."
Better crowds with better ideas. Ideas like moving the nation backward to the point that Putin's poodle is allowed into the White House and celebrated. The lawyers (some judges) on the Federalist list have promised to go against the principles in the American Constitution, and the Bill of Rights and other amendments. This is what happens when you let the Dixiecrats take over your party.
1
Mr Brooks
After your column was printed Ken Starr gave his resounding approval of Mr. Kavanaugh in another publication. I thought it was heart warming that Mr. Starr who was last removed from Baylor University for covering up rape by the football team lent his time to add to the professional luster of Mr. Kavanaugh.
Is this what you mean by the professionalism of the republicans and the federalists society? I think we can safely say the smell of the swamp is now suffusing the Supreme Court. After Trump if there is an after-Trump any appointment he made will be considered an act of evil disparagement of the law. People will not forget this moment in time.
1
It took a village... oh, and money too. Lots and lots of money; that helped.
3
All of this time, all of this money, all of this effort, all of this discipline, all of this talent, the sole aim of which has been to hand our country, our living country and its people over to a gang of corporate vandals to be used, exploited and tossed away, in exchange for money. To have wasted one's life in such a way, to have destroyed so much for so little, Lord, have mercy on them.
2
The Federalist Society certainly does sound like the conservative "Deep State".
But, what is the difference between a conservative justice and a liberal one? Should there be any difference?
Conservative justices are often referred to as "Originalists" - as if that was the best -and the liberal judges as "activists" - as if this was an insult. Yet, when recently discussing gerrymandering, Gorsuch was said to have claimed the court should not hear the case.. and RBG responded: what of one man one vote? Who here is the Originalist?
Yes, "you can transform the landscape of your field." but, this also disenfranchises those who are neither conservative nor libertarian. Liberals are not invited to the party. Merrick Garland did not receive a hearing because he was a centrist, not conservative enough. And by conservative, I mean willing to support the wealthy and powerful against those who are not.
Mr Brooks, what about the common good? The GOP has worked hard to restrict voting rights and deny a voice to many in this country. You now stand with McConnell and Trump to grab all the power possible while you can.
2
More incisive than usual from Mr. Brooks.
He has been intermittently hysterical in the Age of Trump, comparing the decadence of Trump rallies to late Roman bread and circuses (but rarely our collapsing journalistic standards, corrupt intel chiefs, or ever-coarsening comedians as totemic of decline).
Brooks often likes to elide legal and illegal immigration, as befits his humane internationalism, citing polls about the electorate's affinity for immigrants. (But he rather dislikes similar polls that show 3:1 support for stronger border enforcement.)
Brooks does make angular points from time to time, as when he acknowledges that our elites are pretty rancid, ergo no wonder the populist allure of such as Trump.
There seems a vast disconnect between the need for our elites to engage in self-criticism and their (properly held) homiletic that so does our Chief Occupant need to register at least the slightest sign of introspection.
I don't see the media investigating its 25-30% rating with much more elan than Trump might interrogate his marital conscience.
1
Yes. The conservative establishment, which was constructed and funded by wealthy plutocrats from the hey-day of unregulated capitalism in the first half of the twentieth century - Koch, Welch, Olin - all so they could keep more of their money. This establishment has systematically worked to roll back worker protections, overtime pay, progressive taxation, environmental regulation (though that came later), the social safety net, unemployment insurance - all the things that made America great, that made it the land of opportunity, where one could work hard and rise. They did it through movements like this one you talk about here in the legal profession.
As for your lesson for everybody, you mention professional excellence, a foothold in mainstream institutions, and a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, but you forgot the hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars from rich industrialists who have a stake in the outcome.
7
So, we have a group of associates initially funded by elites that has grabbed the judicial reins of power and does not answer to voters. Sounds a lot like a group the fringe right would call a "deep state" organization if it were organized from the left.
8
So, we have finally found the "deep state" that reactionaries have been talking about for several years. Thank you, Mr. Brooks.
3
The Conservative system of developing judges works even better when there's a Republican Party willing to bend the rules of the Senate and the Constitution to the breaking point in order to install reactionaries on the bench.
7
you left out one thing - the Federalist Society is anti-abortion, and will NOT put up a judge for higher office that doesn't agree with that.
This is true - just look it up, along with Leonard Leo.
5
So Mr. Brooks, I am better off?
I can learn something from the Conservative Legal Establishment?
OK here is the first lesson I have learned from these so-called brilliant, yet Conservative legal minds.
The Unitary Executive Theory is now embraced by 4 out of the 5 Conservative Justices. Roberts is a maybe, but the vast majority of his rulings lean in that direction.
I am sure you are familiar with the theory Mr. Brooks...the one where Trump would have full control over the Executive Branch, thus equating the President with being the law itself.
Some might even say above the law, but I will leave that thought to better legal minds than yours truly.
So explain to me how we are better off embracing this kind of a theory?
What is the purpose of supercharging Executive Orders?
Better yet, would this not be a form of fascism? Singular rule?
You see Mr. Brooks, the end result of this kind of theory is hoping that a president is responsible enough to understand that kind of power and use it judiciously.
Instead, your team gave us Donald Trump.
What joy!
Now we get to live through trade wars, maybe a real war with Iran (with Putin as our tag team buddy), swap spit with Kim, no more allies, fewer individual rights and expanded corporate ones.
Then there is Roe and a radical expansion of the 2nd Amendment.
Hey, maybe these brilliant minds are building a private army as well?
Or, I have nothing to learn and I'm waiting for Canada to open its borders.
7
Many people consider Richard Posner to be the most brilliant legal thinker of our generation. 40 years ago he was considered a foundational member of conservative legal thought. Today people think he is a liberal. Posner would allege he hasn't changed at all.
1
Please . . . . let's stop all the tortured logic, solipsistic rationalizations. "Originalism" and "conservatism" are merely legal cover for the interests of a well-heeled class that wants to rewrite America's contract with its citizens that emerged out of 20th century industrialization. As society advanced during this time with education and economic security, legal scholars viewed the Constitution as a living document that embodied the rights of citizens for a modern, advancing society, much different that the rigid class system of landed gentry of white men that existed at the time it was written. That there are those who believe wealth and privilege entitle them to the power to rule is as old as mankind. That they would use the Constitution to give their private interests a patina of intellectual credibility shows the corruption of our system. That they would use it to deny the suffering and sacrifice of our citizenry during last century, from which emerged the recognition of their rights in our more egalitarian society -- and from which these men derived the means for today's wealth and power -- shows, above all, their true hypocrisy and shame.
5
More importantly it does not matter what the voters want, nor does it matter who they have voted for, nor who they would vote for if they were allowed to vote.
Candidates that have lost the election have been put in office. The Supreme Court ordered that votes not be counted in Florida to put Bush in office.
Trump was put in office by a foreign state that is a hostile adversary, by gerrymandering, voter suppression, purging the rolls of registered voters, gutting the Voting Rights Act and limiting access to the ballot. Trump lost the election by 3 million votes and was put in office anyway. The election system does not provide a means of determining whether hackers changed the vote count to scrape by in the Electoral College.
It is not an accomplishment to appoint a judge who does not support civil rights, women's rights, the social safety net, medical care, nor voting rights.
Turning the clock back to the 19th century is ill-advised and wrong. Rome fell because of inequality and corruption.
3
Gorsuch wouldn't have passed if McConnell had not got rid of the 60 vote requirement.
Same now for Kavanaugh.
3
You have thrown up an impenetrable smokescreen of ill-defined terms and failed to mention the influence of far-right Christianity in the conservative court picks. It is no longer possible to tease the religious influence out of conservative politics.
Our president ,"chosen by God', chases after dictators, lacks any discernible moral center, shows no inclination to uphold the Constitution, and values himself above all else.
Justice, if it is served at all under this court, will be for the few.
7
David Brooks has at last done us a favor. Though he frames it in his usual dewy-eyed salutation to 'community' , what he's really described is a true 'deep state' of ideological judicial conservatives that's successfully entrenched itself in our government over forty-some years. The 'lesson for everyone' he cites, to establish 'professional excellence', a foothold in 'mainstream institutions' and 'a cohesive band of brothers and sisters' leaves out one crucial and sinister element: the actual cause(s) your 'community' is committed to. There's a lesson in that, too.
5
More milquetoast from Casper Brooks. "Talent?" "Rising stars?" "Nurtures genius?" Really? How about Mr. Brooks actually discusses what the actual results of this lurch to the right will be on actual, everyday Americans who will live under the machinations of the conservative cabal which foists these nominees towards sadistic and brain-dead public officials like Trump, who can then claim victory to his equally myopic base? My LGBTQ neighbors and friends in unions will be living with the consequences of these great legal "geniuses" who are sending our society backward for the next 40 years. Maybe Brooks could write about that, instead of taking us on yet another tour of calm historical legal-splainin.
4
Kavanaugh represents a community alright. A very small community of entitled white males. Georgetown Prep, all men, an 18 hole golf course, and then Yale.
A community indifferent to women, minority and workers rights. God help us.
6
If my college classmate, Sam Alito, (or Clarence Thomas or any other of the recent Justices, for that matter) in any way represent the cream of the conservative judicial crop, we might as well put a fork in the Republic.
Whizzer White might be dead, but he'd still be a better sitting Justice these days than these folks.
3
This band of Brothers sounds more like the Deep State than anything else all these conservative and libertarian are railing against.
5
Sounds like a vast right-wing conspiracy to me.
4
This village was not built; its inhabitants were purchased by rich donors and moved there.
6
Great. They work together to uphold "the rule of law," which means always siding against the people,
4
. “He is the product of a conservative legal infrastructure that develops ideas, recruits talent, links rising stars, nurtures genius, molds and launches “....Donald Trump.
4
According to Mr. Brooks, the "conservative legal infrastructure ... develops ideas, recruits talent, links rising stars, nurtures genius".
Can Mr. Brooks present the name of just one conservative legal genius? I remember when Mr. Bork was called a "conservative legal genius", but soon after his nomination was turned down he wrote a NY Times op-ed claiming that the US Constitution must be interpreted in exactly the way that "Uncle Harry's will" should be interpreted. Stupid idea -- a will is not supposed to last for eternity.
4
Nice history lesson. Now..if you have a daughter...and she is child bearing age....kindly do something more than providing us with historical perspectives. You do know that human beings are miserable failures at learning from history...they keep repeating same mistakes and going down the same paths leading to erroneous outcomes. Head slap.
3
All your recent columns of the past several months have been arguing what appears to be a humanist position. Your discussion today affirms that you are indeed devoted to the neocon brotherhood. Be happy, I won't be looking forward to your future columns, as its just part of the depressing US shift toward an extreme position.
3
All I need to know is should I pay the "brothers & sisters" on an hourly basis or on a percentage of the take if they win. Please advise, Mr. Brooks. RAW
3
I wouldn’t call that a community. Maybe a machine.
4
It's a shame the left cannot separate the nominee from the man who nominated him. I agree that Trump is the bum many observers here suggest. But there's no evidence that Kavanaugh is that kind of person at all. On the contrary. Much of this leftist groaning is of the ilk of those who opposed the nominee before they even knew who he or she would be. They can't let go of Trump. And they want the Court politicized only if it does their bidding. Good Presidents nominate bad justices, and bad Presidents nominate good ones. People should judge Kavanaugh on his legal knowledge and skills. Not on who nominated him or what McConnell did with Garland (a rotten trick, in my Republican opinion.)
As Brooks describes it, that's more of a cabal that raised him than a village.
6
President Trump’s appointment of *Insert Name Here* is the greatest threat life in the entire galaxy has ever faced! All life in the universe will come to an end of this nomination isn’t derailed!
1
Contrary to the rants of "pro lifers" and certain NYT Men, Abortion is not a cause for shame OR pride. It is simply a private medical procedure. NOT your body, NOT your business. Why is that so difficult to comprehend ? Seriously.
6
David - Thanks for your revealing description of the "Deep State".
2
I am not sure who David is trying to inform here. At the same time that Conservatives have been building up their own communities, haven't they been rallying against similar supposedly liberal institutions of excellence in academia such as Harvard and Yale? Is David really suggesting that the whole community thing is a Conservative invention, as opposed to them creating their own parallel institutions to those that already existed? Of course, their institutions are even more insular and less diverse than the ones they criticized, but they are certainly not a new concept.
David's point about a generation of legal scholars no longer influenced by the New Deal bringing about this conservative renaissance could also be applied to politicians as well. Republican politicians who were alive in the pre-Roosevelt era had clear memories of what reliance on community and family looked like - children being sent to live with grandparents while their parents looked for work in other parts of the country, or, failing that, put in orphanages or up for adoption, while those who were unadoptable- the mentally or physically disabled would typically be institutionalized. Grown children, in turn, were expected to care for their elders - perhaps by forgoing college to join the family business, or possibly forgoing marriage. These politicians had enough understanding of what "self reliance" actually meant to have a more favorable view of gov't assistance. Now they are gone, and woe unto us.
1
Any what specific right wing Republican capitalist plutocrats and their tax free foundations have in the past and continue to generously fund the Federalist Society, Heritage, and many other arch conservative institutions, mainly existing to protect and extend their controlling benefactors' economic power in our society? Brooks of course, being Brooks, would never reveal the "powers behind the thrones", merely casting these think tank pursuits as intellectual, academic exercises.
3
A really rich exclusive village.
4
Mr. Brooks, thank you. One of your best essays among a large body of excellent writing. At least I understand better how we got here. Don't like it much, but I understand.
"Lawyers who had begun their careers during the New Deal were at the height of their power and prestige."
....from which I infer, it may take another Great Depression for pro-worker thought (as opposed to business-first thought) to be valued again by people who do, or aspire to, work. Maybe Mr. Obama could have sped things up by not rescuing the country from a Great Depression in 2008. Apparently living through a Great Recession didn't quite sink in.
4
"If you emphasize professional excellence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s mainstream institutions, if you build a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, you can transform the landscape of your field."
No need to bother with all that, just rig elections, say the President is above the law, take Russian money for political campaigns, take away health care and control women. No professional excellence involved.
11
Brooks is gloating over 2 points: 1) another conservative on the Supreme Court, and 2) his pet theme of “community” has been, in his eyes, affirmed.
But Brooks ignores any value consideration, positive or negative, of an “effective” community. The “conservative legal infrastructure” is composed of cultural ideologues. In effect, this “village” is nothing more than a warlike tribe hell bent on conquest and domination, and willing to stoop to sociopathic lows to accomplish their goals. Effective – yes; valuable – no.
Brooks is correct about one thing: they have been effective in creating an assembly line that cranks out programmed Terminator-like automatons. But the creation process leaves out a human gene, and instead coldly wires the robots for greed and lust for power. They are programmed to perceive the world as a Darwinian landscape that hasn’t fundamentally changed since the beginning of time, where tribal chiefs divide the spoils; humanity is “naturally” ordered into classes; individualism and property are worshiped; and unfettered capitalism encompasses all else. And justifying all of this is an unchallengeable, infallible force; one eternally flexible to accommodate any situation; one that can be used to drug individuals to allegiance and also allow for their exploitation - religion.
As Brooks rubs his hands with delight, his “community” is creating a dystopic nightmare and forgetting an essential characteristic of “village”: the meek shall inherit the earth.
4
As Senator Booker noted, there should be no appointments to the Supreme Court until the issue of Trump and Russia is resolved. Any appointment will be contaminated with the possibility of a member of the court who was appointed with a specific purpose in mind, no matter what the candidates qualifications are. If Mr McConnell can stop the appointment of a justice based solely on politics, the specter of a President who has colluded with a foreign power should be more that enough to put the brakes on this until Trump is cleared or convicted. This is a good reason (among many) all Republicans need to be voted out of office.
6
The difference between a nominee proposed by Democrats and one proposed by the GOP is quite clear.
The Democrat nominee can be pick on the basis of their rulings.
The GOP nominee must be raised in a Federalist test-tube, pass purity examinations, agree to counselling and their rulings can be scrutinized.
4
The political pendulum does not swing without effort.
The lesson here is that the Democrats and extreme left tried very hard with the ABA and in our Universities to take over the law and the courts. For decades the extreme left/Democrats were successful, and they began to rely far more on the undemocratic courts for their victories rather than the Democratic process. That's why Democrats are having hysterics at the fact that the courts might actually obey the Constitution and defer decisions to the Democratic process where democrats would actually have to win elections to enact their extreme left win agenda. America should rejoice that America is being returned Constitutional Democracy where voters not judges will make decisions. What we should all question is why Democrats are so hysterically opposed to that?
7
A conservative legal establishment was founded decades ago and has now matured and gained power. from only an institutional viewpoint, that's correct. but what you didn't note is that, beginning in the early '80s there was also a reactionary conservative drift in thinking, in many areas of the society at large. probably blow-back against decades of liberal post-New Deal/anti-Carter thought and laws; not to mention the perceived weakening of White privilege as a growing grievance. the reactionary conservative legal institution could not have developed without the more general simultaneous societal drift toward more 'conservative' thinking. Reagan's election was the gale-force wind still blowing.
3
It's a shame that everything has become a political matter. Instead of appointing the best candidate, we see that the label "conservative" must be attached to a person instead of "respected authority". In contrast, I have noticed in Canada that the corresponding court is not populated by political clones - the justices are expected to base decisions on the legalities of the case, not some set of ingrained prejudices. Senator McConnell felt so strongly about the need to ignore an examination of the candidate that he was able to block the required chance to hear Mr. Garland. The shipwreck that followed as an election is evidence of the collapse of anything that is positive without being political. There is no end in sight.
5
The thing that matters about this nomination is that it is a test of Democrats unity. The important thing is winning the midterms, and hopefully retaking the Senate. It is not worth defeating one conservative judge if Democrats can’t control future events. This is a judgement call by Schumer and each candidate.
1
Several things disturb me about the conservative bend of the court and the partisan divide in SCOTUS decisions. Social conservatives for instance are for "individual rights" wrapped up in a blanket of religious liberty - but their version of it is to limit the rights and civil liberties of things they don't like/agree with such as the right of gay people to marry (life,liberty and happiness does not apply to them) or a woman's right to choose either to take contraceptives, or have an abortion...one could say the road blocks put up by some religious conservatives against contraceptives and other safe sex materials, lead invariably to the need for an abortion or birth of a sometimes unwanted or unaffordable child. They same people espousing "individual liberty" are against civil right and voting rights of many minorities because their idea of liberty is freedom from the "other" in their school, neighborhood or government. In the establishment conservative bend, there is a decided preference for the "rights" and protections of business interests over and above the rights, safety and welfare of the people. Citizens United poisoned our politics with the big money of corporate power, the rulings against unions, against worker pay, against EPA regulations designed to protect our air, water, soil, food supply and natural beauty. It's as though their reading of the constitution goes back to the rights of property owners - i.e. the wealthy over everyone else. To care, is liberal.
10
One important factor here is that the Federalist Society was fundamentally a debating society and that it did not take stands on policy issues. Another is that the tent has been big enough to sustain open questions around libertarian/conservative and other differences--but strong enough to keep people with different ideas working together and debating with one another. This is the kind of village in which you can live and thrive. You can ask real questions and you can say what you really think and support it with reasons you really accept. This is a village in which you would want to live. There is liberty.
Meanwhile, on the far Democratic cultural left, we have people who want to restrict speech, people for whom real questions must be suppressed because they might hurt someone's feelings or have deeply challenging answers or might challenge presuppositions that are dogma. In this village you cannot say what you really think. In this village, reason and debate are not practiced--not because the other side won't debate with you, but because reason is known to be just a form of power anyway--in some parts of this camp it is said to be a power of "whiteness" itself. The politics of this village is grounded in power and indoctrination and social threats that keep people in conformity. There are questions you just don't ask. Answers you just don't seek. People you dare not disagree with.
4
The conservative movement gained power by manipulating the people who would rather not think too hard to vote according to their primitive racist, xenophobic, homophobic instincts. They did this so that the wealthy could get even more money - eventually depriving even their own constituency of social security, health care, union power, and education. Yes, they have been very good at doing this. I admire them the way I admire a criminal that pulls off a complicated heist, but I don't equate their success with "professional excellence." How excellent is it to scam your clients??
7
Actually, it takes a thief to steal a nominee from a president.
It takes decades of lying, cheating and stealing by the GOP, gerrymandering, false propaganda, fear-mongering, voter suppression, and a stratified society rife with class, racial and gender discrimination, to come to this high, dry plateau where we now have Sean Hannity and the Federalists [what no 'Freedom' or 'American' or 'Patriotic' in that name?] to pick our supreme court.
The GOP did it by stealth, lies, cheating, and bullying. They got your president for you, Mr. Brooks, and he is no product of any village, except maybe zombie village at Universal Studios.
It takes the morally bankrupt, intellectually comatose robotic GOP in congress to goose step behind your president, Mr. Brooks. And bring us to the 15th century.
Get ready for punishing pregnant women, ridding us of affirmative action, turning back Roe and Ledbetter.
I think it would be wise to invest in a burka business.
13
"...It’s a lesson for everybody...if you build a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, you can transform the landscape of your field..." [op cit]
But just remember, that Donald Trump is capable of blowing-up anything at any time, on the slightest whim.
No matter who you are, or where you come from, nothing is safe, even that which is sacred.
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty." [attributed to Thomas Jefferson]
"...It’s a lesson for everybody...if you build a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, you can transform the landscape of your field..." [op cit]
...just like the Mafia.
Then came Citizens United, and here we are today.
12
This so-called conservative legal community is really just a school for reactionaries.
6
"This community didn’t just happen". Right it was bought and paid for by multimillionaires.
10
As a retired lawyer from a supreme-court feeder law school I’ve followed Supreme Court cases somewhat knowledgeably for decades. And, I just don’t get what the “conservative” legal movement is about. For example, from a purely technical point of view, how does the First Amendment dictate the rights of big business to make unlimited campaign contributions, or allow the court to destroy the funding of labor unions? To get there from Madison and Jefferson just doesn’t work any way you slice it. In addition, consider the policy effect of such decisions on our country. How can any conservative judge explain—to himself or anybody else—how these decisions make the USA a better place? Many other examples could be given. From any rational point of view, these conservative opinions just seem, well, wrong. What the heck is going on? I’d like to give such smart guys (and a few gals) the benefit of the doubt on the purity of their intentions, but I’m not the first to note that the Fed Society’s views always seem closely aligned with the interests of Big Business and the rich.
8
More like a well funded mafia. A village will encompass diversity of views, not surrender to a uniform dogma. That fiction spinner Mr. Brooks tries in vain.
1
Where is the democratic equivalent of the Federalist Society? Liberals need to develop and nurture future judges in the same way conservatives have. Why do conservatives seem to think and plan for the future while liberals seem to be reacting to the moment? It's like being caught with your pants down!
2
We (Dems) may need an equivalent, for organization's sake. But perhaps they need one because they are on the defensive. Good ideas, like social justice, peace above all, health care and environmental protection, have a decidedly liberal bent. They are organizing principles in their own right and have tons of organized, private non-profit support. But I do agree, we can't be complacent. Especially to the extent of poor voter turnout. Throw in the electoral college and...
3
Very informative. Thank you.
1
There are no patriotic Republican Senators with the courage to reject Kavanaugh despite all the pained speculation to the contrary. Kavanaugh will be confirmed, Roe v. Wade will be overturned.
These unconscionable acts by Republicans in the current one-party state need to become a rallying cry for justice. Turncoat Democrats who roll over for Trump must be tossed out by the Democratic base.
We must take to the streets if need be and protest like the days of Vietnam fighting for the rejection of Trump and his Republican corporatists, These stone age despots not only steal children from their mothers arms, they want to steal away the most personal rights of any woman.
Get out the vote like never before and send these anti-Americans packing
5
Any women in that "community" of yours? Just because something is a "community" doesn't mean it's good. This particular one does not seem to view women and their concerns and their BODIES as deserving of autonomy and fully equal considerations.
You should talk to more women; we are the canaries in the Federalist/evangelist/nationalist coal mines.
Kinder kuche kirche indeed.
4
NPR interviewed the Federalist chief Mr. Leo this am, and he spoke in moderate, measured tones, downplaying his ultra-right agenda. He even sounded reasonable. He must have practiced! After reading this column, I might guess he and David Brooks were following the same messaging strategy.
But Brooks goes way too far here with his aspirational tale of brotherhood, professional excellence and determination of the "little engine that could" legal community fighting for their authentic voice against powerful liberals. Gag!
Be honest, Brooks. It's all about money and control for the rich and powerful. Kavanaugh sounds reasonable, too, but he was chosen to protect these interests--and of course to protect Trump.
4
If he was raised by his village, we should be scared, very scared. Maryland has some of the highest rates of violence against women, and his birth state isn't much better. Given what we know, with more women being slaughtered by domestic violence then all the US servicemen who died in combat since 9/11, all the domestic "terrorist" shootings, school shootings, combined. Yet, this nominee is from a village where women aren't appropriately represented in the courts, public safety, police, or the apparatus of justice and they are being beaten, sometimes to death, 46 in Maryland last year alone. While the NYT has kept women focused on various red herrings, start asking why we still need so many domestic violence shelters and billions spend on related services services in Mr. Cavanaughs state if his village is so good at producing honorable men for the supreme judiciary? Why, if women are six times more likely to die of gun violence when a gun is present in a home, and 75% of all female murders in Maryland are by someone the victim knew, a man, a husband, intimate partner, isn't Mr. Cavanaugh standing up for the women of his village and doing more to protect them, their safety and very autonomy? Seems to me his village, given their rates of violence against women, have spawned yet another powerful white man to continue the patriarchy just as so. Like David Brooks, another third base starter rises to the top, what an accomplishment, what a surprise.
3
Lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court MUST be curtailed to some number of years. Maybe 12.
This lifetime appointment is another holdover from the old days, and it doesn't belong in our world.
NO ONE in this country deserves a job guaranteed for the rest of their life, and a lifetime pension after they decide to retire.
1
Or of course, if you have a lot of money, and change the constitution's original concept of rights to include not people, but rich people and rich businesses, you always get what you want. Money annihilates intellect, respect, service, and morality.
5
David: Brett Kavanaugh's fawning attempt to trump Trump.... words to the effect that the Trumpian search for the right Court nominee was the most extensive, far-reaching search ever.... place Kavanaugh firmly in the Trump constellation of party-liners who will do anything for power.
Expect the continuing collapse of liberty and justice in the land of the once-free and formerly brave.
3
What David Brooks is praising here is nothing less than a systematic ideological conspiracy, backed by mega money, against the “delicate balance” of the Constitution. The Founders intended for this balance to have as its final arbiters an independent and, as much as humanly possible, a politically neutral judiciary.
One can agree with Brooks on only one thing. The stacking and political takeover of the federal judiciary, now including the Supreme Court, was, like McConnell’s theft of the latest Supreme Court vacancy, politically clever. And, as Brooks also notes, it was a planned and incremental process.
It deserves not praise but condemnation. It is nothing less than an insidious attack on the original intent and design of American constitutionalism. Right-wing ideologues in judges’ robes, bought and paid for with rich men’s money, justifying themselves by prating on about “strict constructionism” and “judicial originalism,” all the time they have been shredding the original fabric of the Constitution. So much for the false flags of “original intent” and “strict construction.”
4
It's Faustian bargain they struck with Trump.
Silence in the face of racism and incompetence to cement control of the federal courts. One of the worst aspects is the acquiescence in any exercise of military or national security while expanding judicial power to void regulations. That's because the fundamental objective is to dismantle the regulatory state in favor of markets rather than protecting social welfare programs.
2
"It’s a lesson for everybody. If you emphasize professional excellence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s mainstream institutions, if you build a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, you can transform the landscape of your field."
Mr. Brooks, I submit for your consideration the case of one Donald J. Trump, who took on the best the Republican Party could produce, and beat them all for his party's nomination.
I submit for your consideration an administration of crooks, incompetents, sexual predators, and corporate shills - and the resolute backing of the "band of brothers and sisters" who used to lecture us about morality and responsibility.
I submit for your consideration a Congress of naked partisanship and extremist views under one-party control. A congress that abdicates its responsibility to serve as a check and a balance. A Congress of complicity.
I submit for your consideration a President at the focus of an investigation that has resulted in multiple indictments and convictions, and an ever-expanding body of evidence of corruption and collusion not only on his part but on that of the party that has reshaped itself in his image.
This is not about professional excellence - it's about power. It's about gaining footholds in our institutions to subvert them. The question for the Federalist Society is, was this their intent all along?
It's a lesson for everybody all right. Will we learn its true meaning in time?
4
...libertarian versus conservative lines, or, ... social conservatives (vs) ...establishment conservatives.
C'mon David. Speak plainly. I honestly don't know in this Trump era what is "conservative". Libertarian I get: minimal government. Social conservative I get: government in the bedroom. The two are opposites. But just plain-old conservative? It doesn't mean the dictionary definition of "disposition to keep to established ways"; such would never endanger the Republic supporting a president who claims he can pardon himself or tear up the Senate-ratified NATO treaty. It can't mean "constitutional intent"; such would never refuse a due-process hearing for asylum. It never had anything to do with conservation of clean air and water. So pray tell, what does it means now?
2
"The people who built the conservative legal establishment built a community over several decades — with deep roots and strong fraternal and professional bonds."
These conservative legal establishments are taking over in ways facilitated by shady elections (Bush 2 and Florida, Trump with the Russia'a help) and corrupt nominations (McConnell refusing a Grarland vote). Gaining power like this should not be considered conservative or legal or established. It is "fraternal" but in a creepy way. There are "deep roots", but more like a deep state type thing to keep the power by any means necessary way.
4
The man who has nominated him lost the popular vote in November 2016. Don't forget it took a village to give Hillary Clinton the majority of votes cast in the Presidential election.
4
An insightful piece. I learned something from David for the first time in a long while.
You can pretty much divide the court into those whose first principles are driven by christian dogma and those whose primary worldview is based on objective reasoning.
Voltaire talked about absurdist thinking evolving from belief in the absurd ( ie religious indoctrination) and you can see it writ large in Alito and Thomas and of course the dearly departed bible belter Scalia.
Noone who believes life begins at conception or gays choose their sexual orientation or the founding fathers had eternal moral clairvoyance belongs on the supreme court:
They put faith before humanistic analysis - The bible before objective reasoning.
2
Another lesson to be learned from this is that by lying, cheating, and reneging on their constitutional duty,
Republicans now have an opportunity they would not have if they had adhered to some kind of regular order.
What do Democrats do in response? I myself don't know what the right steps are to take, but I think we should recognize that there is no nobility and no future in losing.
2
Well said Mr. Brooks! Though certainly not a fan of the prevailing nativist Conservative doctrine, I'am a fan however of the process of the type of tripartite government we call 'Democracy'.
So, yes occasionally we have glitches and blips in that process -like the McConnel steal of a Supreme Court nomination away from a Democratic President, or the earlier Joe Kennedy steal of a Presidential election. But as you pointed out in your insightful article: In the form of democratic government laid out by our Founders, the political Party that disciplines itself enough to play the long game (yes, like the GOP has) usually has a better chance of influencing policy for a longer period then a Party like the current Democratic Party (who are obviously undisciplined, and seem to be satisfied with the occasional big win resulting from voter disgust with the almost inevitable overreach by the Republicans).
The Federalist Society, the village that grooms conservative judicial ideation, is naught but a 21st century version of the John Birch Society; geared to take down Roosevelt era values of 'lift all boats'. If you liked the Supreme's Gore v. Bush decision you're going to love the gerrymandered village that will erode our constitutional right for fair elections. They may be outfitted with impressive judicial credentials, but thugs nonetheless. Susan Collins, please take note.
5
How will liberals react when Trump picks two more justices when Ginsburg and Breyer step down?
At some point, liberals must come to terms with the fact they let a failed and greatly flawed candidate put them in this position...
And I hear she's thinking of running again...
3
"If you emphasize professional excellence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s mainstream institutions, if you build a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, you can transform the landscape of your field."
How a quote like this lands itself in a conversation involving the most morally bankrupt Presidency in our history boggles my mind.
How Brooks can sanctify the elevation of a bunch of reactionary goons in this manner is beyond belief.
5
Conservatives seem to be more cohesive now. They fight, together, on common principles.
The left is fractured. Every person has a unique perspective. Principles are based on narrative- which is based on race, sexual orientation and historical grievances. There is no over-arching concept of fairness or policy. The left cannot even agree on basic rights. Each persons right should be based on their identity.
Conservatives will continue to win because they are basing their movement on principles. Anyone can support a principle. The left is basing everything on personal perspective- and so everything is fractured to the level of the individual. It is perverse and destruction.
There is no reason why any individual should support the left because tomorrow the policies of grievance may change and the individual may have one of the traits that are, now, considered 'evil' or 'privileged.'
1
Thanks for telling us how ultra rich people solidify the preference the courts give them, funding anti consumer, anti worker judges.
2
SCOTUS is the legal branch of our government that ensures that the Executive and Legislative branches protect our bill of individual rights and ensures that justice is fairly and equally applied through our courts on a case basis. The benchmark SCOTUS uses is the US Constitution and the entire body of US Law and legal court precedent, a huge and complex data base. Integrated into their analyses are normative legal conventions, developed over the last two hundred years, that form a loose consensus of accepted legal reasoning.
There's broad latitude for different perspectives among judges sitting on SCOTUS, and has been for the court's entire history. Kavanaugh was appointed to Harvard's faculty by Kagan. He clerked under Kennedy. He'll fit right in among his colleagues without a ripple. But he is going to adhere to the Constitution as it was originally intended, not as a charter to change our republic into a collectivist autocracy managed by a cadre of all-powerful, unelected technocrats.
So the people who want Socialism Now are faced with some difficult choices: go public and try to win 270 Electoral College votes; unseat Trump, work with the MSM to elect a leftist Demagogue to rule by fiat, and pack the SCOTUS; or take to the barricades. None sound very compelling...
2
Not sure that I agree that Kavanaugh will stick to the Constitution as originally intended. He has praised Supreme Court judges for trying to remove the separation of church and state as it applies to schools. He ruled in 2015 that the ACA birth control mandate infringed on “religious liberty,” which strictly supported the religious values of corporate owners, not their employees.
Most frightening is his current position that sitting Presidents should not be subject to civil lawsuits, criminal investigations or prosecutions.
This definitely is putting a President, any President above the rule of law. However, his position on this may change, as he was part of Kenneth Starr’s investigation into Bill Clinton. Oh, wait; Clinton was a Democratic President.
The common goal of conservative driven chaos on the world stage while conservatives are sure they got their Supreme Court pick right this time around is indeed an ongoing saga to be resolved once the public finds another president.
They do not quite "emphasize professionalism first". They emphasize conservative ideology first, professionalism second, and broad concepts of justice not at all.
3
The negatives are so shrill. They need to get a grip and concentrate on the midterms. In fact, Kavanaugh was an excellent pick. In spite of the hysteria, Kavanaugh is no bomb thrower. He respects precedent. Roe will remain. Gay rights will remain. Civil rights will not be turned around. Maybe the hysteria will turn out the left to vote, but Trump actually got this one right. The next one, Judge Barrett, may be the problem.
3
From the sound of it, if we were to have another Conservative on the Supreme Court, we would be better off with an Establishment Conservative than a Social Conservative. At least the Conservative Establishment nominee gives one hope that they would take legal grounds more seriously and keep separation of Church and Stare uppermost in their mind when making legal decisions.
Although for once it would be nice to have a plain old Centrist appointed.
4
Yes, Mr. Brooks, it took a village to raise Brett Kavanaugh -- a village of white privilege and wealth. His mother taught for a while and then became a judge, just like his father was a judge.
He was raised in Bethesda and attended Georgetown Prep, then on to Yale. Did he work hard academically to get into Yale and Yale Law? Sure, probably.
But looking at this guy and reading how he has ruled, he definitely strikes me as someone who was born on third base, and doesn't give a hoot about those who weren't.
Kavanaugh wants to end protections for those with pre-existing health conditions. I'm gonna guess that Kavanaugh doesn't have a pre-existing conditon -- unless you count being born on third base and not giving a hoot about those who weren't.
Is Roe vs. Wade important? Yes it is. The Russia probe? Yep. But this fight for Democrats should be mostly about health care. We Democrats have the remarkable ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but let's try something different and not screw this up.
HEALTH CARE, HEALTH CARE, HEALTH CARE!
10
Interesting idea, but too facile. This is a lot more complicated than that. I was in law school when the Federalist Society was formed, and was the second member at my law school. We didn't do any debates. And the group merely gave formal structure to what already existed.
Truth is, the difference between liberal and conservative is just a difference in world view. Like the difference between optimists and pessimists. Freespenders and tightwads. Men and women. There's a spectrum -- it's not just black and white -- but most people fall into one category or another, and then stay there.
David Brooks doesn't come out and say it, but he implies that there was some big conspiracy to take judicial power by the conservatives. I don't think so. It just naturally happened. And it will be fleeting. Things will change. Conservative power will wax and then wane. Life will go on, much the same.
I'll a conservative libertarian in liberal California, right smack in the middle of the San Francisco Bay Area. It used to bother me, being here.
Not anymore. Life is little different here than in the conservative state where I was born and raised. It doesn't much matter who is on the bench or who is in the White House. Same problems in life. Only your viewpoint changes.
12
Brooks makes reference to the 70's being liberal in the legal arena, as if by that we are to suppose it was always liberal. Sorry David...there are still many of us older types that recall the imposition of the "Warren Court" and the major swing toward the Progressive Opinions. The politicalization of the Judicial Branch, and the stacking of these unelected judges to interpret the Constitution as they saw fit, and with a leftward bent and a "Living Document" twist may be coming to a close.
2
It helps if the "cohesive band of brothers and sisters" are empowered by the money of big business and radical religion.
See Jay Michaelson's article in the Daily Beast about the interlocking function of the the Federalism Society with extreme religious and cultural elements.
The Federalist Society is only part of the network to move the country rightward. Its the relatively benign face of something much more troubling.
8
A good article and it shows the power of a strong professional force which had alot of internal debate on what it means to be a conservative or libertarian in court circles. We have to remember though what precipitated this. The Justice Souter appointment revealed to conservatives that they had no coherent judicial worldview. The result was a movement to liberal or conservative policy based interpretation (Culminating in badly written rulings, Kelo v. City of New London could only come from a Souter, Kennedy court.)
Now the show is on the other foot. Years of allowing the liberal law schools to calcify with little debate has resulted in weak activist oriented rulings easy to shoot down. A dependence on courts over the ballot box has not helped. It will take years to bring back golden years from 1968-2000.
5
What Brooks leaves out that views of the various groups he discusses are minority views. They have been supported by a GOP that is also a minority party that wins elections in party via voter suppression. We now have the second Republican president elected by a minority of voters. It is time Democrats wake up and go to the polls.
14
I enjoy reading David Brooks and agree with him 99% of the time. This time he is way off. Grooming future justices by the super elite is immoral and they can do it because we allow it.
Maybe we should begin to question the legitimacy of the sorting and selecting process of American capitalism?
Maybe we should reexamine the authority and control mechanisms used in our corporations and government to allow Citizens United to thrive?
Everything in America should not be seen as a commodity. Where's our sense of common decency? Certainly not with today's 30% of Americans.
22
Are you kidding? Grooming future justices by the super elite is exactly what Democrats have been doing since FDR. And what they are still doing.
3
I took a different point from this article. I doubt, having been one myself long ago, that law students forming organizations are mere puppets of some corporate conspiracy. Law students are mostly career oriented.
Brooks message is that liberals rested on their dominant laurels in the 70's and early 80's and conservatives worked like crazy to change the narrative. Brooks suggests conservative tactics in building a legal juggernaut may be a template for the mainstream liberals to recover over time.
1
The Federalist society has exercised their freewill and constitutional rights and because you don't like it you call it "immoral". What is immoral about advocating your belief in a democratic Republic?
Who is "we" and what right do you five them to allow freedom of assembly? I assume you mean the Government. Your comments could be interpreted as support for Fascist policies.
Despite the rationalizations for some bad judicial behavior, Brooks is right on the core fact. Republicans are good at using power because they plan and prepare to do so.
The Republican right has been steadfast and organized, in their judicial efforts, and in their state government efforts. They have done this over decades.
The ad hoc Democratic left - you're kidding, right?
This level of organization means the Deep State Conspiracy, to the extent it exists, lives on the right, not the left. And it's why it's laughably hysterical to hear that charge leveled. Right now Dems couldn't organize an office Christmas party.
If changing this is important to the left, a similar long term commitment and organization is required.
The organizational anarchy in the Democratic Party keeps leading us to the same place. Maybe it is time to try agreeing on core tenets and an actual plan plus follow-through that extends beyond next November.
Or, we can just keep whining every time conservatives hold the reins of power, and use them effectively.
14
David Brooks is so confused. He is claiming that conservative ideals are good and that Brett Kavanugh is good. And yet, we now have the most unequal society since the Gilded Age, with 40 million people living in poverty. Is that what Mr. Brooks is celebrating? And asking for more of the same with this nomination? If conservative principles had given us a more equitable, fair, just society then I would applaud these ideas but the facts show exactly the opposite. So on what principle does Mr. Brooks hold onto his conservative beliefs?
15
Actually, he is not doing that. He is showing us how the conservative movement cultivated a deeply rooted legal community which is now bearing fruit.
9
" nurtures genius", can you please tap the brake lightly on that Mr. Brooks!
8
It takes cheating to raise a Conservative SCOTUS in 2018. Cheating that you, David Brooks, are complicit in. Please just go away...
7
"Professional excellence" really belongs in quotation marks, dear David. What sort of excellence in matters legal so blithely disconnects law from justice. I see no Solomons here, only baby bisecters.
11
It is a mystery to Canadians that SCOTUS justices are selected on the basis of the colour of their political blood rather than their record of jurisprudence and political neutrality. I am lucky to live here, where a judge's political leaning or affiliation is not even known. We can count on our Supreme Court appointees to be pillars of the justice system, where clear eyed legal and ethical thinking is the only quality that really matters. Why is the process so highly politicized and tainted by drama? Like so much else about our giant of a neighbour, it seems to be about winners and losers rather than what about what will produce a society that is as fair as possible, and one that is willing to examine its flaws.
23
Don't need a Constitutional amendment to go to 11 justices. Add two to offset the stolen seat.
7
I agree with you, lets add those two seats right now so they can be filled with conservative judges.
2
I assume that David Brooks is much too busy having opinions to read these comments but there are some excellent ones here today. This whole article sickened me and apparently I am not alone.
9
David, so how does this help our country? Would it not be far better for our country if all federal judge nominees were centrist in thinking and had a record thereof? Doesn't this lurching from right to left to right provide further fracturing of our perception of an impartial judiciary?
All you write is correct, but not helping to fix our thoroughly broken system; instead you appear to give lessons on how to perpetuate the problem.
13
The current crop of liberal justices have indicated that they will rubber stamp liberal policies regardless of the law or the constitution. In the case of RBG she said so openly in 2016 befo backtracking and apologizing. In the recent travel ban ruling the liberal justices said, again openly, that they could determine the law based on the president's motivations which they could decipher from comments made on the campaign trail, the written letter of the law and the constitution be damned! We need more conservative justices simply to remain a country of laws and not people, particularly when obviously smart justices simply say that they will allow their ideological views and personal feelings to override the law as legislated. The current liberal view seems to be that in all cases legislation can be interpreted rather than followed. This is a dangerous road to travel for the entire nation.
1
So what I got out of David's column today is that the secret to taking over this country's judiciary for political gain is to get some very wealthy business types who are ideological extremists to give lots of money to set up lots of highly partisan advocacy organizations to tilt what should be a relatively objective, fair minded, democratic judicial system in its right-wing direction.
Truth and justice have nothing to do with it; it is all about biasing and rigging the system in one purist political direction to achieve a judicial coup of sorts.
But don't dress or act like a bunch of right-wing radicals (a la Trump, the tea party, crazed libertarians, and white nationalists). Always dress and behave like a professional--even if you trample all over the ethics of the judiciary and the values of genuine professionalism.
It didn't take a village to raise Kavanaugh. It took a lot of money and organization to implement a highly partisan and business-oriented agenda. And the well being of all the people and good of the country and planet had nothing to do with it.
The Congress and the Executive branch may be all about ideology, power and winning, but the Judicial branch must not, for it is the real check on the other 2 branches--or was.
37
"Chief Justice Like Me." Supreme Court Justices have to wear black. So, in sense, they are colored people. They have to belong conservatives movements. So, in another sense, they are closed minded.
What they aren't, like most of thier consrvative brethren, is representive of the people they serve.
5
Shorter David Brooks: `To raise a conservative jurist' it takes a community... bankrolled by the Scafies and Olins' (and the Kochs)
11
Well said, thank you for that. I would like to add one name to your list-the Mercers, with Rebeka Mercer as their head tyrant.
I wonder if Trump has more respect for the conservative legal establishment because of his sister.
At no point, David, do you spell out what this group of conservatives stand for. It's in keeping it seems with the general tenor of your writing of late--which consists more of narratives of how we got where we are rather than any real analysis.
12
Brooks presents a limited and naive history ....
for a more astute and follow the money version of trumps pick , this is a better reference:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-secrets-of-leonard-leo-the-man-behind-...
4
Interesting how using the constitution to decide legal issues scares liberals so much.
4
Interesting how conservatives find complex questions and issues so hard to grasp, and how learning and growing as a nation to fulfill the promise of a great nation ... scares them so much.
Interesting how some conservatives approach the Constitution the way literalists approach the Bible. The Founders lived when men often died in their mid-30s. Guns were flintlock rifles. Media, business practice, technology, and social relations were radically different than what they are now. Yet the 'originalists' think the 'original' meaning of the 18th-C text (as interpreted by them, as it's far from always clear) define the limits of the Constitution's application today (though in practice, as per Justice Scalia, only when it suits them).
No mention of Leonard Leo and the Judicial Crisis Network? Instrumental in appointments of Roberts, Alito, and Gorsuch. Helped squelch the nomination of Garland. See:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-secrets-of-leonard-leo-the-man-behind-...
8
Dear Dave: there's also a community of men who have sex with animals. They are so proud, and thoughtful about their love for animals. So much so that there was even a documentary made about them. Maybe one day their values can enter the mainstream as well. Maybe they'll have their Citizen's United moment someday. Isn't community wonderful? Just say community. Say it about anything. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz says, "There's no place like home." Just say community. Community. Community! It will bring us together. Yes, we're communing. Isn't it wonderful?
4
All this "conservatism" is the reason we have the liar, con man, sexual predator, and ignorant fool in the White House. That's enough "conservatism," no more please. Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress are giving "conservatism" a bad name. Sorry for the quotation marks, they imply that these present day men (mostly) wouldn't know conservatism if it came down crashing on their pointy heads.
6
You praise the well-oiled machine that apparently produces pre-approved, highly conservative members of the judiciary to the courts with no opposition in sight, effectively reducing our republic to a dictatorship and you offer no insight or rebuttal to this architecture. So what's your point?
13
Unsafe abortions count for 13% of all abortion deaths. Women drink bleach and other poisons. They use knitting needles and other sharp instruments. They have been known to jump from high places.
Hope we don't have to create a nickname for the newly nominated Supreme Court Justice. "Killer Kavanaugh" may sound cute, but this stuff is serious!!!!!!!!!
5
That’s not a village Mr Brooks. That’s a cabal.
27
And then came .....And then came .....A and then came Trump, Mr Brooks, your president. You helped that.
6
David says: “If you emphasize professional excellence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s mainstream institutions, ... “
David makes this all sound very considered and above board. I’ll give you that it was planned and carried out with acumen, but just how such a lop-sided anti-human ideology grew is more about how weeds take over the garden than about gardening.
19
What is it about a metaphor that drives ideas home? Perfect, John Brews. Just perfect.
And:
If you think you are too small to make a difference, try spending the night in a room with a few mosquitoes.
(Poorly paraphrased, but I hope the idea comes through. VOTE.)
1
Thank you, Mr. Brooks. That was interesting. But I have a question:
Why does the word "conservative" raise my inner hackles?
In your piece, Mr. Brooks, I cannot avoid the sense of something CONSPIRATORIAL. We gotta get our man IN. There are levers of power all over the place. We gotta get our HANDS on those levers. Start PULLING 'em.
The Koch brothers expect no less of us.
Gosh, that was below the belt! Granted! And yet. . . . .
. . .the deep sense so many of us have--expressed vividly by a man I know (himself a diehard conservative).. . .
. . .that conservatives are "shills for the rich."
You speak of the "administrative state." My! What a sinister sound. And all those Yale professors. Veterans, many of them, of FDR's New Deal.
Wait a moment! I thought the New Deal was supposed to HELP people.
Like those well-dressed women Mr. Ickes saw foraging in a garbage dump. And he asked himself, "Is this AMERICA? How did we GET here?"
But the all-but-unfettered capitalism I associate with "conservatism"! It seems untroubled by such questions.
And so much of this is s so-called "gut instinct." A visceral reaction. Not diligently thought out.
But lots of us FEEL that way, nonetheless.
And Mr. Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court? What's he gonna do? Or--pertinent question!. . . .
Who's he gonna serve? The rich? The plutocrats? The Koch brothers? Mr. Donald J. Trump?
Or us?
The people of the United States.
4
A piece of advice I'd offer "Federalist Society types," and "Conservatives" in general: don't go overboard.
America is in its present state of fracture in large measure due to Obama/Liberal overreach, notably Obamacare, but also things like "carbon tax" proposals. Things belovèd of the Left but despisèd by the Right.
Don't go that way, Right. You can't pass enough laws or make enough court rulings to get people to agree with you about abortions--all you'll ever do is alienate people who otherwise agree with you. Which is more important: imposing your minority opinion about abortion? Or keeping control of Congress and the presidency? You can't have both; if you manage to "win" the former, you'll ultimately lose on a lot of other issues.
1
"Even Republican Supreme Court picks like Harry Blackmun and Sandra Day O’Connor tended to drift left because the prevailing winds in the whole profession were strongly heading that way."
Mr. Brooks, you could have added John Paul Stevens and David Souter to the list of Republican justices who moved - or were perceived to have moved - left over their years on the Supreme Court. You have the reason for that shift, however, entirely backwards. If they did move left, these justices did so during the time period when the Federalist Society - as you essay demonstrates - was taking over the legal profession. Far-right justices, such as the Federalist Society member Antonin Scalia and his compatriot Clarence Thomas, began to remake the high court's jurisprudence. Other Republican justices who did not share the Federalist Society view of the law pushed back against what they saw as a misguided extremist agenda. Justice Stevens, who served thirty-five years on the Court, said that he did not change his judicial philosophy but the Court like the country moved in a far more conservative direction. The more right the Court moved, the more "liberal" justices like Stevens appeared in contrast.
5
Per usual, your left-leaning readers (of which I am one being planted in the far left) harp and whine and complain instead of being pro active. We need to rebuild the liberal structure and you have supplied us with a blueprint. Instead, most of my fellow liberals relentlessly vent via social media instead of doing the work. This liberal structure needs rid itself of its geezer (hey, I'm 64) and quite rich leadership. Now. We have met the enemy and he is not Trump, but us. We're a very large part of the reason why he was elected and remains in office.
2
This would make a great preface to any number of forward-thinking Atwood or Butler novels, David.
3
This nominee is a sham. Truth is outed in his statement about how busy the president is: "...is elected by and serves the people." Nice thought, but untrue: We have had 5 presidential elections since 2000. Two of them were decided by the Electoral College, which does not even pretend to be "the people." Dems were accepting of this in Bush v Gore, because it seemed a one-off, and instead of having a rightful fit this time, they turned on the candidate, blaming her and her team for the loss, even though she won by over 3 million votes-- from "the people." Twice in 16 years is a trend, and illustrates the point that we the majority do not have a voice in our government. Eventually, the pitchforks may come.
4
Thanks for explaining how to buy a Supreme Court.
10
Don't forget the dishonest hatred and outright lies aimed at Obama and HRC. Sure does seem fun to be racing headlong into robber Barron days, with morals and ethics completely absent.
3
I cannot help but wonder whether or not it was autocorrect that chose "Barron" in your post to create a rather sobering irony about Trump's plan for a political dynasty.
2
For good or ill. Power is all. America is doomed.
3
So Brooks admits that Kananaugh is a product of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.. Who knew that it even existed?
3
Mr. Brooks may call it a community; I call it the legal arm of a far right wing movement to remake America into itself, trampling American democracy, government and institutions in its zealotry.
This movement has other components as well; its religious arm - radical right Christians, its propaganda arm - right wing talk radio, Fox News, internet media, its business arm - including members members of what used to be ALEC, its political arm - the politicial arm - including the bizarrely named "freedom caucus," with subgroups like the NRA
6
And, if you are willing to use sophistry in the name of ideology, you destroy the thing you claim to cherish.
"After you've sold your Mother, the rest is easy." - Anonymous
4
Is the point of this "editorial" to show us how incredibly cloistered, rarified, and out of touch judges are in our country? Has one of them ever suffered an hour of hardship or uncertainty (other than waiting for that acceptance letter to Harvard or Yale)? Has one of them ever had to go without health insurance or worried about paying rent?
So the "anti-elitist" billionaire (or whatever lie he purports about his worth) nominates white men who only care about maintaining their own status quo. His base are utter fools.
6
This is actually part (a leading part) of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy---yes Hillary was prescient. It is VAST, it is R-W and yes it is a very organized conspiracy--collusion, machination, etc . What are we to learn from this model?
3
Poppycock! This group demeans the whole concept of federalism, and has many members who are intellectually dishonest in their approach to constitutional issues. Brooks can try to clothe them as perveyors of the wisdom the judiciary deserves, but the it is a cheap suit that never fit in the past, and appears to have shrunk even further in the past five years. Partisanship is not wisdom except to a blind partisan.
5
Brett Kavanaugh is headed to the Supreme Court! Who cares? Change the name of the institution to the Supremely Owned By Special Interests Court. Kavanaugh, Smavanaugh. Just another crack in the wall.
2
Which is exactly what the cultural Marxist left did to the colleges and universities.
You cannot be an academic sociologist today if you do not subscribe to the idea that all differences between little boys and little girls is the result of socio-political structures and that hormones and biology mean nothing.
1
Maybe Kavanaugh grew up in a village somewhere. What it took to for him to get Trump's nomination to the Supreme Court was a right wing political coup in 2016. He is the culmination of years of systematic voter suppression, gerrymandering, collusion with the Russians, Jame's Comey's brutal lies about Hillary Clinton.
The people who couldn't be bothered to vote in 2016 had better wake up or continue to live under a one-party fascist state.
5
Thanks for this piece of history. Two things come to mind?? What are these (greedy, selfish?) people afraid of? and then if so conservative why not invoke the emoluments clause.
Hypocrisy and hubris -- delicious tog??
2
Hooray, for a party that hasn't won the presidency with a plurality in 30 years, a party that maintains power with spigots of cash, voter suppression and gerrymandering, a party that would gladly move toward fascism if they gained power, and a party that Brooks shamelessly supports, deigns to criticizes, but has become a reliable cheerleader in between his monthly cotton-candy columns about puppy dogs and avuncular grandads.
5
Then all you have to do is rob a Supreme Court seat from a duly elected Democratic President and then pretend you respect the law. What goes around.....
7
This sort of reminds me of how liberals have overtaken education--little by little--from Kindergarten right up through the university system. Our children are all being brainwashed in socialist training camps--and I'm wondering how we change that. Perhaps we can take some lessons from the legal community.
1
David, it did not take a village it took the money from Corporate Criminals that gave us Citizens United. I know you secretly love Trump, and this pick as you are for all that they have done. This column is nothing more than veiled, rather thinly I must say, gloating.
2
Or, Justice Kavanaugh is a product of the reasoning of his human mind. Like all individuals are. They can be influenced by ideas and events around them during their lives. But rational individuals make decisions on their own. Otherwise, you assume everyone is just a tiny cell in a huge organism. This is what the Communists think. This is what National Socialists think. This is what Liberal Progressive Democrats think. It. Is. Wrong.
2
I simply cannot read a David Brooks' column anymore without becoming angry.
Between the dark money from the greedy Republican billionaires and the soothing tones that Brooks uses to promote his Republican party, there is nothing left of our democracy.
Thanks, NYT!
7
The best thing that ever happened to the conservative legal movement was the election of a feckless, unprincipled imbecile to the presidency. Trump's childish addiction to the adulation of the far right, and his complete indifference to what they stand for, makes him their perfect tool.
5
Ah, the Federalist Society. Thomas Jefferson is rolling over in his grave. And Brooks can hardly hide his glee.
2
The Court has become a joke. A moderately intelligent high school kid could decide how "Judge" Kavanaugh will vote on virtually every case for the next 20 years. Like most members of the Supreme Court, he's an ideologue in a black robe.
2
Brooks acknowledging the value of community organizing after his party ridiculed President Obama for his experience as a community organizer? Rank hypocrisy and despicable irony.
7
You'll notice Brooks fails to mention why a mature conservative legal establishment might be good for society. He applauds the process but never explains the mission statement. The short answer: The Federalist Society and others like them don't benefit society. Their actions benefit a narrowly defined subset of the population at the expense of everyone else. Not surprisingly, that subset mostly includes the people who would attend Ivy Law Schools and own corporate assets. A social networked, wealthy elite.
This is their foothold into the "mainstream institutions". The "fraternal bond" that binds them together. There's no other reason for their existence expect for them to help each other help each other. There's a narrow ledge for the vast majority of Americans and conservative lawmakers are working hard to make sure they're the only ones standing on it. The conservative "community" willfully destroys other peoples' communities. Brooks is patting them on the back for it.
5
David's summary of the evolution of the conservative legal movement is accurate. I graduated from law school in 1980, at a time when conservative legal scholars were a joke. I wish they had remained a joke. Unfortunately, they did not. They have given us Citizens United, with political donations out of control. They have given us Heller and a Second Amendment "right" that never existed, with guns and violence spinning out of control. The have fought against the right to vote, freedom of choice in abortion, efforts at rational health care reform, environmental protections. I for one am not proud of this "movement." It has turned us in the wrong direction. And we will now be stuck with a "conservative" Supreme Court for a generation, one that will give lip service to Constitutional text and judicial restraint, but instead will be activist in promoting an agenda that does not serve us well. I hope the 54% of the electorate who did not vote in the last Presidential election bothers to get out of bed, pull away from their TVs and cell phones, and vote in November.
11
The American political system is like an airplane with four right wings and no left wing. No wonder it doesn't take average folks where they want to go.
4
Let's remember that it was the "elves" from the Federalist Society -- and perhaps the lawyers in Ken Starr's office which may have included Brett Kavanaugh -- who seemed to have early knowledge that a woman was BREAKING THE LAW to get evidence for Ken Starr when his years of investigation into fake scandals (remember the White House Travel office?) were finding nothing.
Let's not forget that Linda Tripp's illegal taping of Monica Lewinsky abruptly changed in tenor right after she met with a Federalist Society lawyer. Instead of having Monica recount salacious details of the affair, Tripp started egging on Monica to ask the President to get her a job. Coincidentally, that was exactly what Starr needed to turn an embarrassing affair into a so-called "obstruction of justice" crime.
The Federalist Society are the perfect Trump minions, since they are fine with anything illegal that gets them what they want.
6
Did you notice Brett Kavanaugh’s nonverbals with regard to his wife, during the presentation last night?
The family steps onto the platform. Brett Kavanaugh puts his arms on the shoulders of the two daughters as his wife (Ashley) is the last to step up. (Why was she placed last?) She looks down, sees his arm around the elder girl, and moves closer so her husband can put that arm around her (Ashley). Brett tightens his arm around his daughter, and Ashley looks uncomfortable for just an instant, then realizes cameras are on all of them, and assumes a plastic smile.
Then, as they’re leaving, Ashley tries to hold Brett’s hand -- but he moves his hand away and again reaches for the elder daughter's shoulder.
Those calculated moves spoke volumes about Brett Kavanaugh’s character.
Whatever their problem (perhaps it's chronic, perhaps recent; maybe Ashley wanted Brett to decline the nomination), Ashley Kavanaugh didn't deserve that nonverbal slap in the face.
The best gift a father can give his children is to truly love their mother, and to demonstrate that.
Also, when someone shows you their true self, believe them the first time.
9
So, Kavanaugh is the very epitome of an elite insider. Wouldn't want anyone on SCOTUS without a Harvard/Yale law degree.
3
The fact that there are so few never Trumpers in the legal "community" would certainly suggest the complete moral bankruptcy in the community.
4
Mr. Brooks's mash note to those who would afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable is disgusting. It is one more indication that, for all of his professed admiration for Reinhold Niebuhr, Brooks understands nothing about justice and the propensity of those with power to veer in the direction of tyranny.
7
You present this like Kavanaugh is a robot programed by conservative doctrine. He isn't a pre- programed robot. I am pretty sure he is human and could change his mind in an instant if he wants to. Like every other human I have ever known you can't really tell what they are going to do until they do it.
3
"If you emphasize professional excellence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s mainstream institutions, if you build a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, you can transform the landscape of your field.' Actually what you outlined sounded more like cronyism. It is much like the evangelical movement.
8
David Brooks. This is descriptive of a process, a history. But this is the Opinion section. What is your opinion? Is this a "good" for our society that this has occurred? You may be inspired by these methods and can provide this as a primer to those who wish to "change society", I get that. But has this taken down a path that honors the original values of the founding fathers, the constitution, and of decency as a society? I would like your opinion on the matter, please.
6
I was at Yale Law School when the federalists were getting started. His analysis of their tactics and strategy is correct, but his assumption that their is no liberal counterpart is incorrect.
As is so often the case, the liberals are not as centrally organized or disciplined, but getting a judgeship at any level from the Bronx to Berkeley depends on getting into the Democratic networks.
They are, however, less focused on a central ideology--contrary to the Times, what wins in the Bronx loses in western Pennsylvania--and more focused on skill at fundraising for officials and getting media hype. And one Federalist will not attack an incumbent Federalist, but just wait for the next opening.
2
Brooks has given us a list of facts regarding the genesis of the Federalist Society and the SCOTUS nominee. He has detailed their development and productivity.
Sorry David, we can get that anywhere by reading articles or doing some basic research.
You have neglected to provide what is the only raison d'etre of Editorials/ Opinion.
What is the meaning of this movement? What does it bode for our country and its citizens? Is it the dawning of a new age of a genuine conservative rebirth, or simply a new political tool for nominating like-minded sycophants to the bench?
Maybe there is something good and cleansing here that will refresh our Democracy but alas there may be something sinister as well. Could this be another step toward co-opting our Judicial system to advance a Trump evasion of the Mueller probe?
David, we ask these questions and expect you to take a stab at the answers.
So far you have failed.
13
I find the word “originalist” misused. How can an “originalist” define corporations as “people”? How can an “originalist” interpret the Second Amendment as “The people have no right to regulate a militia of one person”?
But many Supreme Court justices surprise the presidents who nominate them. Eisenhower was very disappointed by Earl Warren. Now “The Warren Court” is a pejorative to many “conservatives”.
Kavanaugh could be a surprise and an annoyance to Trump. There is a reason that the writers of the Constitution gave Supreme Court Justices life terms. The Justices will have a better institutional memory than Congress or Presidents.
2
Democrats have always been the less organized party. See Will Rogers famous line about belonging to the Democratic party. But that's no excuse. What Dems, Independents, and all who oppose Trump must do is hit the streets and not leave them until Trump is removed from office. Where are today's versions of the SDS/Weather Underground? They are needed not more than ever.
DD
Manhattan
2
The brilliant men who founded the USA were free thinkers. The smartest of them were Deists who were not atheists but were opposed to the organised religions.
If we need to belong to an organised religion then we are conceding that we lack the wit and the courage to figure out our religious position for ourselves.
If a person is a Roman Catholic and has integrity, then he or she must must abide by the teachings of the Church of Rome or leave the Church.
If he or she stays in the Roman Church, and has integrity, then he or she does so because they have decided to be bound by the teachings of the Church on abortion and on marriage.
This is not quantum mechanics, David, but elementary logic.
2
And they helped to give us the President we have today. Thanks so much, Mr. Brooks. You are the people who killed this country.
8
Very nice of Brooks to use an African proverb to describe a "community" who systematically wants to disenfranchise and impoverish people of color in particular and poor people in general.
4
There are two type of Trump people out there: True believer Trumpsters who come to the rallies and cheer and meal ticket Trumpsters who are smart enough to know that he is a pathologic liar and infantile ranter, but whose success makes it possible for them to pursue their agenda. The conservative legal establishment are almost certainly meal ticket Trumpsters. If they can't see Trump for what he is, they don't belong on the Supreme Court or any other court. Honest conservatives, including meal ticket Trumpsters, will at some point disappoint the true believers because what they believe is fake. The real question is whether someone like Kavanaugh is honest enough to stand up to the dishonesty of his meal ticket. Is he "conservative" with a legitimate judicial voice or just a shill for the people who got where he is?
6
Has Mr. Brooks described the Deep State?
5
How many "sisters" in the Federalist Society?
7
To a lawyer, truth and reality are debatable concepts, no wonder there are few never-trumpems amongst the Federalist Society members...
3
Nope, David.
It took a village [of closed-minded contrarians] to enable Kavanaugh.
It was his closed-minded contrarian parents who raised him.
4
This is a nice victory lap piece, affirming the vast right wing conspiracy that the Clinton’s warned us about. But now that you have your prize, why not tell us what you plan to do with it? Privatize Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security? Eliminate the EPA? Establish Evangelicalism as the state religion?
12
"Establish Evangelicalism as the state religion?"
Do you progressives have a moderating bone in your bodies? Over the top rhetoric like yours will keep Democrats in the minority for the foreseeable future.
4
Republicans got their perfect patsy in Donald Trump. Trump could care less about the issues at hand. His hard right tactics were brought about by revenge for the Manhattan Social scene that did not welcome him because he was a skirt chasing boor.
This is his way of getting even just as he is getting even with President Obama who made a comment about him at the writer's dinner. Vengeance, thy name is Trump.
2
If you emphasize professional excellence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s mainstream institutions, if you build a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, you can transform the landscape of your field.
--------------
He's not confirmed yet, David.
Humble thyself, sir. Many of us still remember your incorrectness on Big Issues of establishment conservative thinking, like your glorifying the second U.S. - Iraq War. We're still paying for that, and the refugees flooding out of those regions are leftovers of Bush's establishment conservatism in action.
Brett Kavanaugh was a big part of the Bush administration. Young fella had a political career before he had a judicial one. Trump is playing a long game. I don't expect a Coney Barrett to be nominated either, but I do think you ought to reread some of your old works, sit down, and take a lesson yourself perhaps.
3
Kavanaugh is a funny guy. He has recently stated rather forcefully: "There's no such thing as a conservative judge or a liberal judge..." etc...he's a "constructionist", "originalist".
On the other hand, he doesn't think the President should be bothered with investigations and such...unless they're Bill Clinton in which case he took the lead role in writing the Starr Report.
He was also a member of the whiz-bang conservative legal team who stole the 2000 election.
And as Brooks so ably points out he was nurtured, networked, aided and supported by this genius-nurturing community of legal scholars.
But heck--he's just a judge--an originalist. Preserving the Constitution. Nothing partisan to be seen here.
7
Stop legitimizing these political hacks masquerading as judges! They happily cross-over to judicial activism whenever and wherever it advances the oligarch's agenda. Most recent example is Gorsuch voting to overrule the 41 year old (aka settled law) Abood with the despicable Janus decision!
1
Just a matter of time before the court rules 14th amendment unconstitutional; figuratively speaking of course. Happy birthday 14th.
We will determine your right to equal education.
We will determine your right to health care.
We will determine your right to abortion.
We will determine your right to vote.
We will determine your right to marry.
We will determine availability of jobs.
We will determine the temperature of the planet.
We will determine...
However, maintaining class order is paramount.
Sorry David, conservative legal morality is an atrocity! You are right that most of the populace assumed these battles were over and were moving on to better things. Fools.
8
I thought according to you community was supposed to be a good thing.
Oh I see.
According to you, this is an example of community actually being a good thing.
1
The majority of Americans favor a woman's right to control her own body. It is absolutely sickening to see these white men trying to force their religious beliefs about abortion on all American citizens! The rest of the World is moving in the right direction, and yet Trump and some Republicans want to take us back fifty years. If the Supremes overturn Roe V. Wade, you will see an angry revolt from the women of this country, and it will send men to their knees!
3
Favoritism, cronyism, elitism mixed with an open conspiracy. The Village is corrupt to the core.
7
True- and democrats are left wondering “what happened “?
3
And you thought that the law was a tool of society to produce a more just, productive, stable and happy populace. Oh my no - nothing so plebeian. The law is a noble, intellectual quest (game?) that great societies provide for their more able and more worthy citizens. And in the process construct a societal fortress that assures the continuation of wealth and power thus assuring that concepts such as equality and opportunity are kept in their proper (low level) place.
5
Strange number of commentors missing the point of the essay.
Brooks is recommending a similar strategy to us liberals. Since we don't seem to be able to deal with our present situation and seem to be digging a deeper hole for ourselves every day, it's quite generous of him.
6
Conservative has become synonymous with corrupt. Tump manifests this. Will millions of American citizens not rebel against Supreme Court rulings that do not reflect their reality and beliefs? Not mention of outcomes David.
1
What's with the Village metaphor? It's more like Racketeering- a take-over by a minority by whatever means at their disposal. Kavanaugh will serve the interests that put him there.
4
If the Federalist Society were a left-leaning organization, the right would be completely apoplectic about a deep-state conspiracy and renting their garments about the nation being destroyed by a shadow government.
4
David Brooks equates "professional excellence" with "passing the conservative litmus test" combined with blatant exclusionary tactics. Diversity, equity, and inclusion has no place in his vision of excellence. How long? How long must we sing this song? The wealthy white guy cabal may be professional, but it is far from excellent for the good of our nation.
5
No surprise that such detailed coverage is available within minutes of President Trump's announcement of his Supreme Court nominee. After all, the NYT and all the other media have had these stories and editorials ready to go for days.
There were 4 "top picks", and a week is more than enough time for the media to prepare detailed condemnations of 4 people. It's like having canned obituaries for celebrities; the boiler-plate text and images are already done, all that is needed is a bit of updating before the final product is ready to print, post or broadcast.
Here's my own prediction, written hours before the President's announcement (I swear it's true):
It doesn't matter. Whoever Trump picks, the NYT and other mainstream media will launch a salvo of articles and opinion (scare) pieces explaining why the pick is terrible for women, LGBTQs, migrants, poor people, abortion supporters, in fact pretty much everyone else except the notorious 1% and big business. The media will also say the Supreme Court will now be biased or even irrelevant.
The purposes of the barrage, of course, are to draw all but negative attention away from the nominee and to agitate the Democratic/liberal/socialist/radical base. In fact, there is little the roused rabble can do about this; Trump pretty much has the votes needed to confirm. However, stay tuned for the mass breast-beating, hand-wringing, wailing, virtue-signaling, "spontaneous" protests, and accosting Republicans in restaurants.
2
"Then came the ... " regressive, "conservative" Congress willing - all too happy - to corrupt legislative and constitutional processes to forward ideas whose days were done in the 1890s.
3
Money
Money paid for this institutionsl change because it benefits money. The powerful are using their power to rig the system in their favor. The rest of us have neither the time nor the money to do this.
David Brooks should follow the money instead of pretending this is some great achievment of Tochevellian democratic associations.
5
Sounds so noble but grooming and buying court appointments isn't. I think the Daily Beast has done a better job of showing how the conservative money machine really works.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-secrets-of-leonard-leo-the-man-behind-...
3
If you followed the Supreme Court, you'd notice right away that this idea that there's a conservative judicial philosophy premised on adhering to the Constitution as written is a myth. The worst violator was Antonin Scalia. He never saw a constitutional provision he liked "as written." He prefered his own, "original" understanding to that of the Founding Fathers. An "Originalist" describes someone of whom you find yourself saying after having read his opinion, "Oh, that's original. Never seen that before." Don't buy the conservative-judicial-philosophy meme: it's a lie. IT'S ALL ABOUT POLITICS!
4
OMG, my dear dear New York Times, how much longer must we suffer these columns of Mr. Brooks. I am sorry but they are just not very good. They don't pass the intellect test. I suspect this post will not make your cut but I wish you would be open-minded about it.
The Federalist Society has been responsible for some of the most backward-thinking, bigoted judicial appointees of the last several decades. On gay rights, women rights, voters rights, gerrymandering, healthcare, you name it.
If it takes a village to create these folks the village needs to rethink its priorities. The U.S. and the world is a big, interconnected place with tremendous issues related to the race, environment, human displacement, poverty, and resource impoverishment.
Brooks seems to stand in awe of the thinking of a society that often wants to dial back intelligent, creative, and, yes, heartfelt, legal solutions to these problems or to ignore them all together. Pray tell, how does one champion something like that? Using words like "genius" to describe such folks is comically absurd.
6
The conservative village is more complicated than Mr. Brooks would like to admit. While the Federalist Society drove the conservative legal community, and a thousand privately funded "think tanks," or varying integrity drove economic thinking, the political power of the conservative movement has been driven not by debate or policy success; it has been driven entirely by the demagogues, conspiracy theorists & ideological thugs of am radio, Fox news, Breitbart, and their thousands of imitators. Whatever debatable intellectual integrity the Right has, its public face and its claims to political power are based entirely on lies, bigotry & fear-mongering. With one of the most shameless & dishonest demagogues the movement has produced now in the White House, it is hardly becoming for Mr. Brooks to idealize the movement's integrity, as if it's fascist underbelly were not now its brain. Whatever intellectual integrity you attribute to Mr. Kavanaugh, like Gorsuch (or, for that matter, like Thomas), he will owe his seat to fraud.
5
Mr. Brooks, this piece is just backing into the supposed process after they named "your guy." Why not write an article on the national scope--why keep talking about partisan tribes...why not mention the Constitution? I'll tell you why, because the SCOTUS nomination is nothing but partisan Kabuki Theater. The goal is to load the bench with political and partisan judges. This is the precedent. Not a village.
4
No mention of the Koch brothers and "conservative" efforts to thwart integration in public education ???
5
"If you emphasize professional excellence first"
Translated: The ability to manipulate a documented steeped in racist, sexist, class privilege and make sure that it is implemented in the cruelest way possible.
4
Brilliant? Highly doubtful. They're all right-wing ideologues who have sold their souls to the devil to aggrandize themselves and their hollow ambitions Compare Clarence Thomas, who has no moral compass, with the man he replaced, Thurgood Marshall, a towering giant of the civil rights movement. Just what the judiciary in the US categorically does not need is a judiciary filled with reactionaries who cannot discern that Trump has no understanding and no regard for the rule of law. And no mention here by Brooks of the Republicans fascistic maneuver to steal the Supreme Court that should rightfully be occupied by Merrick Garland, and not the smarmy, Cheshire cat Gorsuch,
7
Biblical or legal fundamentalism is a power play to justify and maintain white male supremacy. Originalism or textualism is simply racism, sexism, homophobia and corporatism disguised. Magical thinking and received wisdom held sway pre-enlightenment and apparently will in post-America.
"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." Oscar Wilde
4
The turn Right began as a revolt against the events of the 1960’s.
4
The it takes a village to raise a child mantra is a black Sub -Saharan insight and value brought to America by enslaved black African property and their separate and unequal black heirs. Brett Kavanaugh is the heir to the color aka race that made and sustain that inhumane inhuman hypocrisy.
There is another African proverb that says that the higher a monkey climbs a tree the more of it's behind you get to see. That is the essence of Donald John Trump and the village that he was raised in.
5
Kavanaugh strikes me as a guy who offered himself as an intellectual fig leaf for the two worst presidents in my lifetime: W Bush and Trump. More than anything Kavanaugh strikes me as ambitious and willing to do the dirty work for his masters; he not gets his reward.
2
On criminal justice "reform," the libertarian wing will eventually learn that all the virtue signalling in the world will not gain affection from leftist obsessives, and once reality mugs enough innocent victims due to their ignorance of the realities of criminality and criminal law, they will slink away to avoid responsibility for the lives they have needlessly broken.
2
It was not the highest well-educated Village, for sure. Clearly, Kavanaugh was not on the most prestigious academic track at Yale. Clearly, the Ivy League needs to do, some further description on a Student's Achievement Level. Perhaps they do, but the media does not report it. Perhaps it is on his School Report Card/Resume./Transcript.
Kavanaugh would definitely be in the Lower Class, and not the Upper Class. Right now, they just report Yale. They don't say, what rank position at Yale. Low Class, Low Level Higher Education. The bottom. Maybe he shouldn't have even received a Yale Diploma, or an undergraduate degree, at all. His Literacy Standardized Test Scores, Reasoning Scores are too low. Certainly, not Upper Class. He can't compete at The Top Level.
The USA Supreme Court should require that high level ability of intelligent thought. Right now, it doesn't. The Brilliant IQ Score is the Top Score in Higher Education. Kavanaugh is far below the Top Score.
Mr. Brooks, your 'connect-the-dots' is a tad too simplistic. Maybe Judge Kavanaugh is, and will be, a conservative member of SCOTUS. We need that. Not now. But soon. We all know that changing demographics will eventually lead to the Californication of the entire country. Article I and Article II will become liberal or "progressive." It is inevitable. What is wrong with having Article III protecting us from the tyranny of Article I and Article II?
"The Ford Foundation funded a series of legal aid organizations to advance liberal causes and to dominate the law schools."
Helping the poor is a liberal concept? Well, yeah, I guess so but that doesn't mean the laws were being interpreted in a liberal way.
Brooks is back with his dichotomous thinking once again.
2
Great minds often get lost in the woods of their own ideology and can identify every tree, but yet not see the forest. These jurists on the Federalist Society list seem like brilliant, scholarly jurists...no doubt. However beneath the cloud of "upholders of the constitution," a banal and inane talking point, these jurists are lawyers for the wealthy donor class of America. The same forest that Mr. Brooks doesn't see as he holds on to the conservative ideals that set him apart from contemporaries when he was in school. We all get gaga over abortion, but for the right it's but a part of the fog machine. You know get these sheep hysterical about abortion while we get elected and cut taxes to make us more wealthy. It's the donors that nurtured this court, not the village. Two thirds of the village oppose the rulings of these stuff shirts who went through law school thinking legal aid was a beverage. When I was in law school the young liberals dreamed giving access to the legal system to the disenfranchised. The conservatives yearned to fight against the legal tide. Now the court reinforces minority rule. Protects the donor class. Keeps us distracted with abortion issues as Citizen's United remains safe, along with union busting, anti science protection for industry against the liberal do-gooders who want clean air and water and a viable earth to sustain us, carte blanche power to a tyrant liar in the WH.
3
Right Mr. Brooks. None of this happened because of Koch Bros. funding.
6
It is puzzling that Mr. Brooks did not include the blockbuster history of the Koch brothers in his explanation of Cavanaugh’s “village,” as documented so fearlessly and brilliantly by Jane Mayer in her book “Dark Money.”
4
How could Brooks ignore mentioning Leonard Leo and his list? It was a given no matter what republican became president that judicial nominations would come from the list.
Rowe Vs. Wade is the least of the issues of settled law that will disappear. Consumer protections, environmental protections, workers rights, voting rights, and public institutions will be eroded. This is a big win not for moral conservatives but for the rich and powerful. Forget about a just society or any hope for campaign finance reform. We ordinary citizens will lose our right to redress our government, it will become a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate Inc.
10
While I agree with Mr. Brooks' assessment of the Federalist Society's advocacy, I fail to see how their work benefits American society as a whole. Does a small group of elitist lawyers know what's best for the average citizen? I think a good case can be made to the contrary Mr. Brooks. Ostensibly many of Trump's voters supported him in response to this experience. In the future, I hope voters will make this clear to elitist groups of all ideological stripes that this not who we are.
3
Does anybody really buy David Brooks’s white privileged garbage? What kind of man goes Hillary bashing in October of 2016 then disavows himself of his beloved Republican party’s
President?
3
Another way to look at this, of course, is that the right wing, lacking the intellectual heft and respect for facts necessary to succeed in real academic institutions, turned to billionaire business people to fund shadow institutions without the respect for history or persuasive argumentation, but rather focused on finding "intellectual" cover for predetermined right wing views. And over a period of decades these right-wing "think tanks" and such became a kind of establishment of their own, producing people who could be promoted to Supreme Court seats, even as they ahistorically found, for instance, a private right to bear arms in a Constitution that speaks only of a well regulated militia. As the line in the great movie "Chinatown" has it: "Ugly buildings, politicians and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." You can add the various John Olin funded right wing legal organizations to this list.
2
Very nice of Brooks to use an African proverb to describe a overwhelming white racist mob.
8
Then came the cheaters....... You do realize, SIR, that the last two GOP
" presidents " were installed, and NOT elected by the majority of voters. If that's the village you're referencing, it must be located in either a time warp or alternate universe. And the " cohesive band " is winning at all costs: ethics, fairness and justice be damned. Seriously.
2
It's nice to see our political leadership figuring out ways to game the system, our forefathers be damned. What an un-proud moment for America.
2
You are the 'gateway voice' for that community, in that you support radical right ideas and ideals in your column, masked as popular and populist. Supporting this court, which allows legislators to step between the thighs of married women, old women, women who have had 4 children, raped teenagers, and also to weigh in on corporations that dump toxic pollution into our rivers and streams to protect short term profit, and also support the idea that corporations get massive profits by stripping down US workforce, and sending work overseas, and also show belligerence in dozens of countries that continue wars. Thanks Brooks. Do you see your part in this? Are you the town crier, or the village idiot?
1
So, David, are you fur him or agin him?
2
I saw the movie. It's called "Village of the Damned."
2
There is nothing wrong with a conservative judge, there is definitely something wrong with a Judge who's first words out of his mouth are to suck up to the man who nominated him by proclaiming, this President is the most thorough and well equipped President in the history of the United States of America as if Barack Obama's choice of Merrick Garland, his current superior, was a whimsical pipe dream. It is wonderful to be raised by a village but if it is a village of Cannibals and their prodigy eats the citizenry and buns down the village for his love of the chief, it is not so good.
1
Would Brooks admit that the terrifying convergence of unprecedented income inequality and the Citizens United decision, is a consequence of conservative ideals?
Maybe not. It's Donald Trump that is a radical, not the people who ruined representational government.
According to he and his gang, ideas about the allocation of power and property or how we acquire or are removed from them, always remain ideas. They certainly don't put kids into concentration camps.
That takes a village.
2
Change a few of the particulars and one might have thought that this justification of a "vanguard" was written by Vladimir Lenin. You can bet that this vanguard will act in the interests of the people to the same extent that the one Lenin installed in Russia 101 years ago did.
2
vcbowie, the problem that your comment infers in its subtext is this: 1) the trump supporters do not know what you are talking about, because they sat in the back of the classroom during world history and have never opened a book since; 2) those among the educated GOP see what you describe as a horror as a good-- because it's their vanguard; 3) the monied interests are motivated by more money, period. They have no heart, compassion, nor interests beyond the zeros in their bank accounts. (swiss, no doubt); and 4) the GOP senators and congressmen have cushy jobs they want to keep, and they lack the soul or sense of history that could motivate them to try and right the ship now, while it might be possible.
I guess I have a question: Why is it great, good for the country, for power to accrue in a professional organization which grooms the future of our court system, and changes the way I get to experience Democracy, but unions, which accrue power to labor, are bad? Why are think tanks and political 501c's good, but labor terrible for the nation?
Are organized power brokers only acceptable if they organize and broker power in a certain direction?
Can't I live in another village, please?
Most of what I want from the government is the opportunity not to lose my house, to be able get a job with healthcare since they don't think I deserve it otherwise, and to not spend my carefully saved retirement before I ever hit 65 because ageism is the last bastion of truly acceptable "isms."
But instead I get the freedom from abortion, the freedom of knowing my daughter will have to pay for the birth control that keeps her endometriosis in check, the freedom to bake for only the people I personally approve of, and the prospect of another global meltdown driven by insane trade practices and underlying tendency towards fascism growing globally. But no worries because the air, the water and the climate will take care of everything anyway.
It takes a village ... to what? Pillage the village next door?
9
If by community you mean a small bunch of extremely rich men looking for ways to control everyone's lives. Then you are correct.
I don't think that wits are a requirement for the Federalist Society. Falling in line is.
Not sure what debates you are referring to. Do you mean the debates about who will server those rich men best? The one who can best express
CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE, PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS
?
3
"there are dozens more who can fill the vacancy, just as smart and just as conservative."
i don't see intelligence in the conservatives on the court i see ignorance and blindness. the adherence to an ideology in the face of cultural reality requires both.
4
It took a bank to fund the takeover by the plutocracy and it takes masterful writers to provide the halo for their faces to society. This man may be a wonderful candidate but he is nurtured to a side of law that does not exist in the Constitution. Corporate money is now a voice, concealment of hand guns is common, associations of workers with a common purpose is not a right, actions by Cambridge Analytica and i360 will not be a crime, and a real freedom to make your choice outside of the noise of various religious laws will vanish. The Court is now the property of a movement begun almost 50 years ago by the Kochs, Olins, and others to ascend to a plutocracy and it has worked with your help. You have done your share.
9
Kavanaugh's nomination is another manifestation of government of the wealthy, privileged people, by the wealthy, privileged people, for the wealthy, privileged people. And it's all enthusiastically supported by the impoverished, powerless people. I doubt you'll find many Yalies in West Virginia coal mines or Indiana factories.
2
There is nothing noble that Trump did in picking this candidate. He picked the guy who doesn’t think the POTUS is above legal scrutiny. This isn’t decades of grooming in play. It’s about a guy who will burn the institutions of this country to the ground to save himself. Nothing more. Which by the way is a conservative ideal. Save myself first.
"he’s given the conservative legal establishment more power than ever before, which is why there are so few never-Trumpers in legal circles."
Two conclusions jump off the page with this remark: "power" implies that the capacity to be active is prized by a group which by its role as impartial arbiters is supposed to be reactive in the best interests of the country; "so few never Trumpers" indicates that the group has a cynical disregard for the competence of one third of the government provided that the President is an ally.
So at this point our country is led by two cabals and an aspiring dictator.
5
Let's not forget that all this was possible due to the Powell Memo back in the 1970's whereby he encouraged corporations, the Chamber of Commerce, and other business leaders to band together to control America through its corporate interests. This, along with the Reagan Revolution, has turned this country into an oligarchy, now quickly running towards fascism with 45 & his minions leading the charge.
6
Today's conservative justices are sadly political hacks who seek to distort the Constitution in a way to inject their views of how America should be. Many of their more controversial decisions (Citizens United, Kelo, Obergefell dissents) are wildly inconsistent with the strict constructionist theories they claim as their guide.
4
And the point of this decades-long coordinated effort is to remove health, environmental, and safety regulations, increase inequality, force women to bear unwanted children, who can be the targets of mass shooters after they are born, all of which seemingly has some sort of Constitutional rationalization.
Hey, David Brooks, thanks for all that info. Hey, what's the motive behind all this?
9
The people you think want to trash this country as you say also live here. Raise families here and want the country to be clean, safe and equal too.
I have been hearing Democrats tell me that members of the GOP are for dirty air, water and and an unsafe environment for decades. In spite of all their dire warnings I look outside and see that the sky has not fallen as they warned it would.
When you attempt to use fear to get people to vote your way and what you are telling us to be afraid of never comes to pass you lose credibility.
2
Don't tell other people what they think and I seriously doubt that people with "Democrat" on their name tags are telling you anything.
Mr. Brooks seems to suggest that Judge Kavanaugh's candidacy can be better assessed on the basis of a stereotype rather than his judicial record. Bigotry can always be used to vilify & defeat a candidate with no examination, but should it be? Judge Kagan seems to think very highly of Judge Kavanaugh. If the senate confirms him, will anyone accuse the confirming senators of practicing "racism"? That's the most fashionable label..., right ?
Infrastructure? Such a neutral word to describe an extremist, well-funded cabal whose single purpose is to politicize the federal courts into a right-wing, deeply extreme, authoritarian judicial system to give carte blanche to 15th Century Roman Catholic theology.
Brooks passes over any mention of the funding sources behind this takeover. If he had done so, readers might better understand the spreading influence of right wing family fortunes of the Scaifes, the Mellons, the Koch boys and dozens of others.
Nor does Brooks observe that this takeover was implemented largely in secret, through a network of (overwhelmingly) white attorneys and law professors who obtained their funding through secret donations outside the purview of the general public and the news media.
Trump’s startling election was, to this cabal, manna raining down from heaven. He was, and is, the quintessential empty suit in the one position to see this takeover to fruition.
The damage to American society will be incalculable.
5
The only reason Gorsuch passed and Kavanaugh will pass is because McConnell got rid of the 60 vote requirement.
Where is the outrage.
The whole purpose was to get judges that would pass with some compromise.
1
I take your point. The Yankees have a solid farm system. The Mets keep thinking that they can buy proven talent on short notice, but 'proven' usually means spent. Add to that their long-hair and beards and the team should call themselves "The Disciples." Whereas the Yankees are military precision sans the arm bands of yore.
...
It took a village in you-know-where in the early 20th century too.
5
Of course, Brooks ignores how these organizations are all supported and funded by very wealthy, incredibly selfish and could care less about most in society. Under the guise of cleverly coined "Individual freedoms" they oppose taxes, environmental regulation, labor rights, gun control, and health care for the poor, public schools, and, frankly, anything that benefits society as a whole except the military. The lawyers and politicians who support these groups, including the federalist society, benefit personally from corporations and wealthy individuals who support these selfish ideas. They sicken me and are very bad for America. If you choose to support society rather than selfishness, it is much harder to make a living or fund a think tank.
3
A more accurate headline: "It Took a Well-Financed Corporate/Oligarchic Campaign to Raise Kavanaugh and His Ilk." Private "think tanks" paid for by same. Elections financed by same to appoint those thus groomed.
6
David’s pithy summary of 30 years of lawyering is brilliant and it reveals starkly how far some of the best legal minds have capitulated to an ideology in order to get funding and build what may be an almost unstoppable “village.” David’s journalism may even deserve a special prize, not the Pulitzer, but a new one, named the Prince, you know for the philosopher who elucidated how to maximize power.
I seem to remember David agreeing with Mark Shields on the PBS News Hour not so long ago that there were just too many fancy lawyers’ lawyers on the Supreme Court from the same schools & backgrounds, and wouldn’t it be refreshing to have someone who represented the interests of ordinary people … oh well.
To attempt David’s verbal logic, is a gated community of the legal mind really a village?
3
Spare me. White Christian males won’t let go even as they dwindle in numbers and ability to represent a majority. This isn’t the result of an evolving strategy beyond that of an entrenched and cynical manipulation of politics whose core reflects the original framers’ limitations.
1
I encourage one and all to read "WE THE CORPORATIONS" subtitled "How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights" by UCLA law professor Adam Winkler. Published earlier this year. Corporate money is changing our country from a democracy to and oligarchy.
2
What I find most disturbing is the nature of the group that did the shaping. It is a monotone, single minded white male group determined that change will not come. Of course, change comes and they have no means to support it intelligently and compassionately. The call themselves originalists but in fact have moved farther and farther from the words and intentions of the Constitution. Control turns to obstruction and cruelty, and Donald Trump is the result.
4
"Judge Kavanaugh would shift the balance of constitutional jurisprudence to the right, creating a solid right-wing majority on the court possibly until the second half the 21st century." (NYTimes, 9July2018) Indeed. "Kennedy often bridged the gap between the court’s liberals and conservatives ... Trump's nominee ... will be backed by conservative legal organizations." (USA Today) Approximately a third of Americans consider themselves conservative, the rest moderates and liberals. This nomination appears to appeal to a minority of Americans, as did the last one. "Never in modern times has an occupant of the Oval Office seemed to reject so thoroughly the nostrum that a president’s duty is to bring the country together ... Mr. Trump has made himself America’s apostle of anger, its deacon of divisiveness." (Peter Baker, NYTimes)
2
What does this mean? Such stinted speech to show a definite class distinction between them and us. What universe does Mr. Brooks hail from? Why doesn't David spend his valuable forum in a major U.S. newspaper to tell it the way it really is? Donald Trump nominated Kavanaugh for one self serving egotistic purpose-Kavanaugh does not endorse the criminal investigation or indictment of a sitting president. A nail in the coffin of Democracy is about to be hammered. What is the response from the majority of its citizens? We are witnessing the fast unraveling of a country that is quibbling over bathroom placards and nursing babies. So much is at stake. We need a blue tsunami that is undisputable and undeniable. Can we do it? Or will we be under the rule of Trump indefinitely?
2
"He is the product of a conservative legal infrastructure that develops ideas, recruits talent, links rising stars, nurtures genius, molds and launches judicial nominees."
And I add:
Allows corporations and dark money to hijack the country's political system and buy elections (Citizens United), suspends the democratic electoral process to deliver the Presidency to the Republican nominee (Bush vs. Gore) and, of course, creates the ideological foundations for the ascent of Trump.
Not to mention, the production of ethical and moral giants like Robert Bork, who fired Archibald Cox after his two immediate superiors at the DoJ refused and resigned or were fired.
Or, that other legal giant, Clarence Thomas, who, after 28 years on the court, has coughed once, and asked for a pen a couple of times.
You have entered Hunter S. Thomson territory: writing while hallucinating.
10
"Allows corporations and dark money to hijack the country's political system and buy elections"
Hillary outspent Trump by well over $1 billion. (The "Left" outspent the "Right" by $2 billion.) If elections were for sale, she'd be President. (That's why it's ridiculous that the Left is claiming $100,000 in Facebook ads changed the election's result. That's 0.01% of the candidates' difference.)
The reason the Left believes elections go to the the highest bidder is because they confuse the cart and the horse. Well over 95% of elections are won by the incumbent, who (after the initial win) rakes in far more in donations from rent-seekers of all stripes than the incumbent's opponents. I guarantee you that 2 years from now, Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be the best funded candidate in NY's 14th.
1
Once again, Mr. Brooks sentimentalizes a nasty phenomena. The Federalist society isn't a village, its a soft path for middling law school students. It's not competitive, if you play by its rules. It offers a safe future to people without the brains or stomach for corporate law, or the intellectual heft of those who challenge the powerful.
The Federalists attract scared Americans, who recognize, if unconsciously, they're the beneficiaries of privilege. With America changing ethnicity and norms, they fear that privilege eroding, leaving them unmoored and unwelcome.
There's a myth that members like Scalia were heavy-weight thinkers. Please, read his gun rights decision to see how foolish and poorly researched "textual" decisions can be. Being boorish and opinionated, he thrived in the cable new era. History won't be so kind. Posner, the most interesting of the bunch, is no towering intellect. As even he would admit.
I hope progressives don't imitate the Federalist Society. But, as others note, they couldn't. There are no wealthy liberals willing to undermine democracy the way Koch, Scaife, and Mercer do.
Mr. Brooks can't see the Federalist forest for its trees, perhaps because he himself entered the workforce this way - appealing to Wm. Buckley's ego, stepping into the Nat'l Review, and living a nice life.
8
We can only hope that our villages have done their job and created a few new Solomons whose approach to saving a baby's life is to find out which woman truly loves it as much as herself.
1
David Brooks is taking an idealistic ivory tower view of the Supreme Court nomination. I think it’s clear that Donald Trump will nominate the candidate that will help Him the most if he gets charged with committing crimes. It’s also obvious that Trump will try to please his base and to heck with everyone else.
1
Conservatives played the long game starting at a time of liberal dominance. I doubt democrats have the patience to now do the same, hence calls to enlarge the courts and pack them with liberals.
Kavanaugh wrote the Ken Starr report against President Clinton and yes, that was truly a witch hunt.
Kavanaugh also has written that a president cannot be indicted for criminal or civil offenses while in office.
Trump receives great comfort from knowing that a Justice Kavanaugh will not intervene even when thempresident’s actions are despicable.
Throw this nomination back to Trump by reacting him during the senate confirmation.
"Ken Starr report against President Clinton ... was truly a witch hunt"
If my memory serves me, President Clinton admitted to perjury in the Paula Jones deposition, and surrendered his law license for 5 years as a consequence. If what you say is correct, it was the first witch hunt in history that caught an actual witch.
2
Let’s remember this “brilliant” strategy on the right would have failed if not for Mitch McConnell’s shameful handling of Merrick Garland’s nomination and a flawed electoral college allowing once again a loser to win. Oh, and let’s not forget voter suppression and the Russian interference. It appears the conservative strategy required embracing the manipulation and distortion of our democratic principles while showing disdain for voters.
-
15
Excellent analysis. We’re going to see a lot of whining about how the majority lost, winning the popular vote, etc., etc., All true in the case of the popular vote for president. But, NOT true in every other election that mattered. Republicans understood the electoral system, but Democrats blew it off. So, for decades Dem/Lib/Progs ingnored boring small local elections. They ignored elections on the state level, didn’t vote in congressional elections, etc. Instead, they marched, “occupied”, fragmented into smaller and smaller “identity” political groups, scorned and sneered at the legitimate concerns of more conservative citizens (aka: deplorables) and tried to recreate the 60s. Well, now they’re reaping what they sowed.
They are a a cabal, in the most essential meaning of the term. It took them forty years to consolidate their stranglehold on democracy. Their supreme court majority will set the corporate and evangelical agendas for another forty years.
We deserve it all, because 48% of those can vote, don't.
2
How does one write an opinion piece like this and simply ignore the money sources that fund the enterprise? The Federalist Society would not have the influence they have without the Koch Brothers, Scaifes, oil companies etc - this is hardly the pure intellectual coalescing you describe.
5
President Trump, the vociferous, erratic, bombastic, boofonist, deplorable, fill in the blank...president, has hit a second home run in the Judiciary world plus all the other appointments in it. Looks like in this particular area he went with the advice of the real establishment experts, instead of “only” his guts.
I feel a sense of relief and admittedly subdue yet positive reaction from the likes of David Brooks. Mr Brooks just went through an extensive excersice of intellectuality to tell us “see conservatives are great people. Wonder in their magnificence and spectacular strategizing prowess”.
I look forward to see the reaction for the other never trumpers: bill Kristol, George will, joe Scarborough, and the rest. This should be fun.
A Supreme Court Justice should be apolitical, period !
Meaning Donald J. trump may not be able to bully them to his whims and jealousy.
The previous one is totally disappointing, he is always standing next to trump and follows what he says.
Hope Democrats could delay this nonsense until the upcoming election in November.
3
What is just or fair about a small group of influential and wealthy people cunningly protecting and increasing their influence and wealth? Does their self interest and self dealing have anything to do with the good of the country or the state of the law?
Conservative? What a ding a ling of a word.
It took that lawless Republican Party, focused on the needs of its donors, to hijack the Supreme Court. It took the Republican Party, as corrupt and self dealing as the leader of their party, to elect him. It took Donald Trump to get these curated conservative nominees to the Supreme Court.
Remind me, what was the day, when conservatives stopped being Republicans, or was it Republicans who stopped being conservatives, you know, when the greed and the selfishness, became so extreme as to necessitate a cover story?
Because I don't see a difference between any of the right wing. Donald Trump is crass and dangerous, but even the conservatives who complain of that, don't mind so much that he's effective at funneling money to the wealthy, and they don't protest that he gives more power to the entitled. After all, it's good for them, even though they've distanced themselves from that nasty man.
How nice to have someone to lecture us about villages and gloat.
9
The complete capture is now ticked off, unchecked authority will now breed more unchecked crimes on humanity; but this one will go down as a dumb submission, almost like a surrender to the most obscene display of coercion, unchecked by the traditions of self-righteousness, that which sows the seeds of its own destruction but not this time.
When you do not have the numbers, there is no need to despair over it or be ecstatic as this piece of Brooks attempts, what is important is to get back to basics, start from where conservative roots have the strongest admirers, donors included.
The irony of the establishment is overtly palpable in its seemingly vacuous postering from immigration to conservative judicial capture, just to woo the same base; the donors on the other hand are carefully nurtured with care as private profits at the expense of all else is catapulted to the stratosphere.
The liberals have a choice, to surrender to this plunder, is not one.
1
To the Democrats braying that SCOTUS will now be a political court: Tell me what it was under Earl Warren? The only difference was you liked the political leanings of the Warren Court.
If as the left believes there is only power and the exercise of power why does the left believe that only its exercise of naked, unfettered power is just?
2
Really Frank, I guess you are saying our schools were better under Plessey than under Brown. You preferred it when interracial marriage was illegal, before that pesky Loving decision. The Warren court was not about "naked unfettered power." It was about America living up to its mission of "a more perfect union," and "liberty and justice for ALL." Power to the People.
1
Notice how Brooks slides in these:
"The Ford Foundation funded a series of legal aid organizations to advance liberal causes"
and then "Horowitz suggested, for example, that conservative legal organizations pick cases in which they represented underdogs against big institutions associated with the left." "This [conservative] movement was funded by groups like the John M. Olin Foundation."
Notice the "left" supported legal aid organizations, helping those who are needy, the conservatives opposed big left-leaning organizations (which are what? -- labor unions and civil rights organizations that supported those who are needy).
In other words, the conservatives found front-men (a few women) to justify serving the wealthy and powerful while the left was helping the poor and those discriminated against.
Oh yes, and the left were therefore incompetent while the conservatives were clever and deserve their victory (over good and the American way?).
1
This might be the most preposterous fantasy that David Brooks has ever attempted to foist on the readers of the NYT. His description of the Federalist Society's underpinnings differs little from dozens of other ambitious projects of the progressive left, except in one regard. It had the backing of the vast economic might of the wealthy elite of this country. Not surprisingly, this society, which Brooks cast in such idealistic terms, finds common cause with rich Republicans in such areas as: Corporations are people, states can and should restrict access to the ballot box, employees must cede all access to the courts with regard to employee "rights", employees have no right to organize, employers can discriminate against any potential employee or customer, as long as they claim they are Christians, just to name a few.
So, in short, all it takes is a few dedicated hardworking "folk" , backed by those who already wielded the predominance of power in the country since it's founding. A uniquely American success story, indeed! Keep shoveling, David!
"nurtures genius"? For geniuses, these guys have some pretty backwards ideas.
1
"If you emphasize professional excellence first" What in the world does that mean? Logic chopping literal minded often stone hearted nonsense. Cold hearts and hot air binds those brothers and sisters in their endless pursuit of fostering social misery.
The wild card here are Kavanaugh's daughters. They looked like they had some real quality to them. The possibility of losing their love and respect could have a greater impact than people realize.
.
1
He was selected for two reasons: for Trump to avoid indictments, and to criminalize abortion. The first is entirely self serving. On abortion, Trump doesn't actually care one way or the other. However, his evangelical fans certainly do. Bigly. So prepare yourselves for Saint Donald, the Emperor of Wombs. November. Seriously.
1
New Deal Supported Liberal movements, Reaganomics, this. What next, when the National Debt becomes unserviceable?
1
The village looks more like an ivory tower from out here. I hope for an outright siege from the millions upon millions of regular people who hate the oligarchy, and the cynical way they prey on the poor and uneducated. Government by the rich and for the rich will not stand.
2
So are we supposed to be elite or not elite? Elite some of the time? David Brooks has me very confused.
In closing today's dreary review of how a cadre of well-connected, small-minded lawyers plotted to and succeeded in hijacking America's legal system, columnist Brooks gleefully writes:
"It’s a lesson for everybody. If you emphasize professional excellence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s mainstream institutions, if you build a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, you can transform the landscape of your field."
For Brooks and his ilk, it's just wonderful that such "professional excellence", "mainstream institutions" and the "cohesive band of brothers and sisters" can systematically dismantle a woman's right to choose; devise clever ways prevent those not in their largely white "band" from voting or having decent public schools; marginalize the LGBT community and people of color; deny nourishment to children and deprive the odious rest of affordable health care.
Brooks wants us to embrace this America writ small and celebrate it.
How loathsome.
1
David, too bad you didn't delve into the folks that have funded these activities. An intertwined network of RW groups working in the background to advance the views of a limited group of wealthy businessmen set on protecting how they define the 'American Way'. A 'Way' that does not protect the rights of people over property; a 'Way' that does not protect the environment over people; a 'Way' that does not protect the right of all citizens to vote; a 'Way' that does not protect the right of poor people to have access to healthcare; a 'Way' that does not protect the rights of women; a 'Way' that does not protect the rights of LGBTQ people; a 'Way' that does not protect the rights of people who practice a non-Christian religion; a 'Way' that does not protect human rights over the rights of a non-human legal entity called a 'corporation' and a 'Way' that does seem to protect the rights and privileges of white men over all others.
What a shame you just gloss over any of that.
1
With Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court, it is a very good time to take a close look at the role beliefs play in our lives. Most of the unnecessary suffering and deaths of humans can be traced back to beliefs of one form or another, and yet beliefs are still considered necessary and good. They are neither. With Kavanaugh on the court, we will have the opportunity to witness first hand the devastating effects of beliefs in our political system. When we finally program the human mind in a computer, we will have proof of the negative influence of beliefs on a brain programmed to survive and then tricked about what is supposed to survive.
See: RevolutionOfReason.com
1
Here’s another version of this story: follow the money.
3
I understand why the billionaire class wants judges like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh .
They will vote for things like Citizens United and against unions and voting rights and universal healthcare. For the billionaires, it's more money.
But why do Gorsuch and Kavanaugh want these things that hurt the US and make us more like a second world country.
It's one thing to relate how a 'conservative family of jurists' was built and nurtured' and quite another to suggest that these are 'geniuses'. There's very little 'smart' about being conservative. And insisting on going backwards, like riding a horse buggy instead of driving a car doesn't make one a 'conservative.' It's time the mask of conservativism be stripped off what are simply mediocre minds and it's time the rest of us took back the title of being conservatives.
1
Doesn't seem Yale has changed much. Perhaps we should be grateful for real diversity from folks like the Federalist Society.
Mr. Brooks has really lost it.
“The Ford Foundation funded a series of legal aid organizations to advance liberal causes and to dominate the law schools.”
Evidence?! None.
Proof?! None.
“dominate the law schools”. Hyperbole of the highest order. Funding a handful of legal aid groups has nothing remotely to do with DOMINATING law schools.
Stare decisis—the law is conservative by nature.
OTOH, he is right that there has been a concerted, massively funded effort by right wing corporate leaders and zealots to remake the judiciary, state policies, and national directions.
4
Oh please, another right wing theocrat to help end the American experiment.
The only thing left now, is to have a revolution, and not the one Trump wants.
3
I am skeptical about Judge Kavanaugh but I have to agree with Mr Brooks in the sense of the judge just doesn't come out of thin air. Whether you like or not, the conservatives, conspiring with the social reactionaries and the financial plutocrats, have spent decades to grow Mr Kavanaugh, never mind the same efforts have also produced Trump. And the dems, whether they be regular liberal, fringe progressive or blue dogs and southern dems, are still clueless about it. And that is the saddest part of all.
Why did I pivot from Mr Brooks's crowing to my disrespect [let's call a spade a spade] the dems? Because if the dems don't wake up now, things can only get worse.
During President Obama's time, I watched in horror Sen Elizabeth Warren attacking one nominee after another. She is my senator after all. I voted for her. And sadly, I may very well be voting for her again, out of the lesser of two evils principle. But the dems bungled it as much as the Grand Obstruction Party won it with the Trump takeover.
The progressives did not help with their OWS. And it doesn't help now with those "Abolish ICE" campaigns now. No, I am not a fan of ICE under Trump. But it is just an agency serving its master. The movement may be spontaneous but going after it doesn't help with the greater agenda, namely to counter the conservatives' organized campaign to take over of America by brute force and lies.
So people, attacking Mr Brooks's column may lift your own spirit but it does nothing else
2
I am deeply saddened by this announcement, although expected, even if he had chosen any of the others. Most appalling is that Trump chose him, knowing his opinion of unlimited Presidential power and that his statements that a President cannot be sued while in office for either civil or criminal offences! How can a Senate body, of whichever party can accept that?
3
It takes a liberal thought, a liberal ideal such as democracy, to create a bring and shining light on a hill. Democracy is a liberal concept.
And then come the conservatives to tear it down. To remake it into their own. To control. To extort. To profit from it and lie claim to the idea as their own to defend. Conservatism can never create. It can preserve. It can destroy. But it can't create. And it can't have hope. Remember the mockery conservatives made of hope in 2008?
This essay supports my reply to those that hope that the old conservatives will die and go away, as we did in the 60's. I tell them conservatives have children too. And they grow up with their imparted conservative beliefs.
6
It Took a Village to Raise Kavanaugh."
And it will take the same village to defeat his nomination.
7
Yet another white middle-aged Catholic male. Is that what we can expect from conservative intellectual heft? I worry that the court is going to be more conservative and retro than the majority of the American people. If Roe is overturned, what then? Will poor women in red states once again die from “coat hanger” abortions? Can we tolerate that? Elections have consequences, but Trump did not win the popular vote. The constitution is only a piece of paper. If the American public begins to believe that the Supreme Court does not support progress in areas of social justice and economic opportunity for minority groups and women, rulings could become irrelevant. I heard Justice Breyer speak recently, and he spent some time talking about times in our history when rulings of the Court were ignored and it took the army to enforce them. If the conservatives continue to prevail and shift America too far to the right, the outcome might be serious civil unrest.
14
I take issue with this statement of yours, lifted straight from traditional conservative dogma: "[The Federalist Society] did not rate judicial nominees the way the American Bar Association did."
In rating nominees according to their qualifications for positions in the judiciary, the ABA was not making political judgment, as conservatives love to claim, but ensuring that the third branch of government maintained its standards of excellence, and primarily did not become a backwater of patronage-style appointments, for political hacks of dubious legal acumen and accomplishment.
In this way, the ABA, the largest organization of law professionals in the country, was performing a public service for the rest of the country.
Although there are accusations of liberal bias, the ABA never has been as consciously partisan in either direction as the Federalist Society, and therefore, in my opinion, is the more mainstream and trustworthy of the two.
16
So you agree with the ABA's assessment that Robert Bork was "exceptionally well-qualified?" Thank you. I am glad to hear it.
1
I thought that the phrase " it takes a village" was demonized when used by Hillary Clinton. Now it i OK to explain the rise of conservative judges. The same process of slowly building communities may be used by liberals --as it is happening right now owing to the extreme positions taken by conservatives in the judiciar. What is ABSOLUTELY wrong is the politicization of the Supreme Court--when judges vote along political parties and presidents choose nominees to fulfill their ideological stand. That is a shame to this country.
8
In a genuine democratic republic, the Federalist Society would be an appropriate counterbalance. It certainly has a right to exist.
They are not the problem. The problem is that we don't have a genuine democratic republic. Now, due to gerrymandering and big money, we have a very different kind of system and the Federalist Society is there to offer the plutocrats their public servants.
It remains to be seen - and I am not sanguine - whether we can ever get our genuine democratic republic back.
13
Yes. It was a machine built by a group of extremely wealthy individuals who wanted to protect their interests at all costs. It marks the end of a once great nation.
13
"If you emphasize professional excellence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s mainstream institutions, if you build a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, you can transform the landscape of your field..." and render decisions contributing to the disenfranchisement of marginal populations.
What an inspiring story, this conservative community of law!
18
And the conservative legal establishment differs from the liberal/left/progressive legal establishment precisely how?
Your expose, Mr. Brooks, is presented with one eye closed.
Perhaps your next editorial can describe for us all the left-wing pressure groups forming in lockstep to oppose the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh. And the tens of millions of dollars that will be spent to attempt to derail the nomination of a man who is generally agreed to be the most qualified candidate in decades.
3
Overreach much? When you refer to him as "generally agreed the most qualified candidate in decades", that would even include past Judge Scalia, patron saint of conservatives.
If you really think it's "generally agreed", you should find a bigger bubble.. yours is way too small.
Wait, I thought Neil Gorsuch was the "most qualified candidate in decades." At least that's what conservatives were saying last year.
Interesting Cripps Notes on a slice of history. Still not sure what Brooks was trying to say. The "community" that I heard last night from the man himself started with a strong two-parent family that worked hard, studied hard, and handed down those same work ethics to their only son. What I heard was a man firmly grounded via his own family and a lifetime of living his values, the ones taught him by others in school, church, and, community.
This guy wasn't raised by a "village." He was raised by two individuals, each who developed their own skills and accomplished in their own right. It wasn't the "collective," some commune, some kibbutz.
6
Nice try.
Follow the money, especially the NRA money. Look at the donors, especially in the early years.
It is the same story with the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.
First comes the agenda of low taxation and gutting of regulation and pro-gunmakers.
Then comes the philosophical basis ( really, more dogma than philosophy).
What we have now is a bunch of trained parrots.
38
" . . . trained parrots." Perfect description of the liberal bloc on the SC
Of course advocacy groups organize to affect the political landscape. This is what they do right, left and center. It's just that in this case, Mr Brooks, the organized advocacy is for bending the law to meet a political agenda that is hardly about justice and fairness for all.
15
No doubt Kavanaugh has excellent credentials and the intellectual heft to do the job. But yet another Catholic and another Yale or Harvard graduate? Why isn’t that the bigger issue here? Why not somebody from The University of Texas or Temple University, or Rutgers, wherever? Are judges from those schools incapable of tying their shoes?
It would be nice to see somebody not churned out by the likes of the Federalist Society and whatever the current elite liberal legal establishment is. A solid judge with life experiences in the trenches instead of the ivies could be a welcome breath of fresh air to the interpretation of the Constitution.
18
Bemoaning another Yale or Harvard grad - I'm with you on this. But 'yet another Catholic' - I won't go down that road.
1
Ironically the rise of the conservative justice circle has coincided with the decline and decimation of America. Eventually Americans will learn but likely not until it's too late.
8
It's always interesting to see conservative politicians versus the legal minds that back them up. The contrast between Trump and his nominees is stark. These are professionals and intellectuals whose expertise is respected even when disagreed with. It would be nice if other politicians could command respect, but often times on both sides of the isle they look like bafoons.
Professional excellence...our government could use a lot more of that.
6
If I understand the point here, it is groom smart lawyers to impose highly partisan political points of view onto neutral judicial institutions and ruin its objectivity.
47
Oh please. The left has been doing that unabated since the 30s.
1
It didn't take a village to build this "band of brothers and sisters", it took decades of corporate money to build this judiciary that will now keep their benefactors' interests as their highest priority.
73
Or, as Will Rogers once said (roughly), he didn’t belong to an organized party. He was a Democrat.
Organizers will (almost) always win. The Democrats need to reassess their own identity. The Republicans have not only out-organized the Democrats, they have also out-populized (OK, I made that word up) the Democrats. Dems were once the great populist party, back when populist meant democratic, before the word was smeared by the Republican machine.
This loss, and it is a significant loss, should be an alarm. Democrats, and what few thoughtful Republicans there are left, had better wake up.
10
David,Your history of conservatives plan for the courts is enlightening, but just confirms that conservatives care little about morality or social issues except to use them for political purposes. Their concerns have always been economic and protection of the wealthy class.
40
Didn't conservatives make fun of those who said that it takes a village ... If you look at Trump appointee's background one thing stands out: he as much a conservative legal mind as he is a Republican Party operative. Democrats may not be able to stop this nominee but Republicans will pay a price over the next few decades. American democracy that is at a breaking point because of voter suppression, redistricting that favors a certain kind of a candidate, a relentless war on women's and minority rights can't take it anymore. GOP's glory days will be over sooner than you might guess. You can go against the will of people only up to a limit. With Trump, the limit is going to be reached very soon.
19
hope ur right.....cause it's getting scary out there in the hinder land.
1
Well Brooks aught to know. He's been shilling for them for over 30 years although he's lately taking to posing as some sort of philosopher king.
26
Right, so right on!
Spot on. Brooks has is the self-appointed conscience of the GOP. Now there's an oxymoron.
"Aught" is surely the correct word in this case.
David
You write that..."you gain a foothold in society's mainstream institutions....and ...you can transform the landscape of your field". This is absolutely true, the Republicans have made a crucial decision that they will do whatever is necessary to control the dialogue and amass total power to push their Conservative perspective into American politics.
Since the 1970s they have slowly infiltrated Local, State and Federal Government. Gingrich separated the Representatives and demanded party allegiance. Compromise was no longer an acceptable word in their agenda.
Trump was the culmination of their work, with some assistance from Russia, perfect for the Republican party and control of the Executive Branch. A reality flim-flam "star" that could ignite their base over fear of those "others" and certainly with sufficient corruption and lack of knowledge to fit perfectly into their agenda as well.
The loyal base was created by using three buzzwords, Abortion, Guns and Religion. Not to mention the sanctioning of racism.
Your piece adds the astute decision to generate and groom judges that would adhere to the Conservative agenda.
Finally, the SCOTUS crowned the project with Citizens United, allowing money from the donor class and Corporations to totally control their agenda.
But Trump's lack of knowledge is truly dangerous on the world stage. If and when that occurs, their actions might cause reactions that will change the trajectory.
13
"It Took a Village to Raise Kavanaugh"
That may be true, but the particular "village" that raised Judge Kavanaugh is a gated community with large, multi-million dollar estate homes, chauffeur driven limousines in the driveway, and 70 meter yachts moored out back beyond the pool, guest house, and tennis courts.
The legal minds that come up through this judicial farm system can't help but be aware on which side their bread is buttered, (not to mention who ultimately owns the butter as well as the bread). Once they've made it through the system, they know they might not be where they are in life without all of that multi-layered support. They also know which team they are on and will act, and rule, accordingly once their name has made it to a list of approved nominees at various levels of the courts system.
Illegal? No. Unsettling? Of course. No need to reinvent the wheel to counter this.
Progressives can find a way to do much the same thing given time. Best means for the rest of us to counter the stacking of the judicial deck immediately, however, is to vote, vote, vote!
31
Oh those crafty Republicans have already gerrymandered safe districts and require unnecessary ID to vote stopping minorities. Thus you argue to bring a knife to a gun fight. You lost and don't even know it. America: delimit civil rights; corporations are paramount; Jesus is your master. We are a sordid little enterprise masquerading as a superpower democracy. If it's White, it's Right!
The minority Republican party is on the verge of privatizing the US government for the personal use of conservative interests. All with the blessing of the American people. And all this will have been established while the GOP has masqueraded as the 'government is the problem' party. Touche.
Since Democrats and their supporters have become so effete and confused, most likely there will not be a successful opposition party to the GOP until the populace has its 'back against the wall'. We live in interesting times.
42
This movement to create a legal establishment is important and it's part of a larger enterprise to shape public opinion. Brooks makes it sound spontaneous and benign, but to me, it is the work of big money interests shaping the way our nation operates.
One underlying principle that drives this legal leviathan is property rights. Conflict between those rights and the rights of people who may or may not have property has plagued the US right from the beginning.
The Civil War was fought over property rights. During the Gilded Age, the property rights of the rich dominated. The reality was quite different from life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence. Legal decisions against unions made organization difficult. It took the shock of the Great Depression to make people change their opinions.
We are back in a pattern of declining opportunity and rising inequality. Even a really good job market can't seem to boost wages. Immigration is easy to demonize even in a world characterized by a global economy.
Originalism has been used to sidetrack policies that could address these issues. Something similar happened during early efforts to address the Great Depression. We are living in dangerous times.
26
I would like one senator on the Judiciary Committee to ask Judge Kavanaugh--who claims that the judicial branch should not be politicized--whether he believes that Republican senators' refusal to consider President Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland was ethical, or even constitutional.
165
What has this to do with the system that Brooks is highlighting?
@Chris , let me help you out with a well written article about it. It answers your question although you probably won't understand it.
https://abovethelaw.com/2016/02/democrat-hypocrisy-on-supreme-court-appo...
Conservative views are held by a minority of the population yet dominate our politics and soon the Supreme Court. It is a profound wake up call to the majority of Americans who do not see themselves reflected in their leaders.
25
50% of those who voted are right, and generally hard right, in thrall to authority, nationalism, cash, race, and religion. America is a center-right country, emphasis on the Right. it gives a fig leaf to LGBT, blacks, etc with a snarl. It demonizes immigrants. Imprisons endless citizens. The list is endless. We are Putin, just wearing the sheen of wafer-thin democracy.
"It’s a lesson for everybody. If you emphasize professional excellence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s mainstream institutions, if you build a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, you can transform the landscape of your field."
But first you must subvert the constitution by stonewalling the previous administration's rightful choice for a supreme court justice.
122
This is very scholarly. And disappointing.
I wanted to know about Judge Kavanaugh's bio and how he was raised by his family and its values; where he went to grade and high school; his teams, sports, hobbies and interests. I wanted to know if his neighborhood was mostly white and middle class or mixed, and if he had done any volunteer work with the poor or those different from his family; where he went to church. I wanted to know if he studied abroad and had any real understanding of life outside the U.S. I wanted to know if he has experienced adversity or illness, and how he handled it. I wanted to know where his daughters go to school now and whether they are in private tennis and riding clubs, or doing volunteer work.
I want to know not only his intellectual roots but who this man actually is.
Related, I think I "know" James Comey because I understand his background and get the good guy who made those really bad moves prior to the last election. I get him.
Now help me to get Kavanaugh. The intellectual history only says so much about this man's character and judgement, and how it will all Americans and future Americans.
12
Knowing "who this man actually is" would certainly be nice (if at all possible), but this is not the point of the article. Brooks is highlighting a system that, in great measure, is responsible for producing him. And it is a one based in great measure on excellence and community--concepts that are nearly extinct in liberal discourse.
4
And always enlightening to know the people in this "community" who fund these excellent scholars.
re PAYTON
the system you and Brooks idealize is unfortunately based more on money. and power than alluded to in the article,
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-secrets-of-leonard-leo-the-man-behind-....
The Federalist Society is a very mixed blessing for conservatives, I think In political terms it is an extraordinary success. But with a few exceptions--Scalia and Posner are the most obvious--it has not produced really original minds, or captured the imagination of most young lawyers. In the long run, I wonder if it will lead to period of genuine conservative dominance, or something more like the 1920s and 1930s Supreme Court--what some wag referred to as the last great minds of the eighteenth century
10
Mr. Brooks history lesson omits the seminal document that launched his so-called "conservative community": Lewis Powell's 1971 memorandum to the US Chamber of Commerce. In this memorandum Mr. Powell lays out a blueprint for businessmen to push back against "...the Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic." A group Mr. Powell saw as "...extremists of the left" who were "...far more numerous, better financed, and increasingly are more welcomed and encouraged by other elements of society, than ever before in our history." The memorandum can be read on-line. I recommend it to those who believe the "conservative community" is driven by philosophy.
9
Thank you, Mr. G. I will look that up. My biggest complaint about contemporary judicial conservatism is that - since "originalism" hasn't actually held sway since Justice Marshall of the early nineteenth century - the current "originalist" argument is political bias in black robes - like any other among flesh and blood members of the judiciary. To suggest that "originalism" is some sort of "cleansing" of jurisprudence is pure poppycock. It is as motivated by ideological activism as any other judicial/philosophical movement - as the piece by Justice Powell no doubt reflects. Looking forward to it - thanks!
Thank you, Mr President, for this brilliant pick! All Americans and freedom itself will benefit from your inspired choice. Judge Kavanaugh is a brilliant jurist with an impeccable background and record! We The People look forward to a swift and bipartisan confirmation
10
We the minorities look forward to the next stage of Jim Crow for our shaky civil rights. Always done with a mock serious tone, a wink and a nod to Jesus, and the boot heel of the state on our throats. Do me a personal favor - put: "No Fags Served" signs in your store windows so I can find the colored water fountain.
Please, donnie did not pick this man. He never heard of him until the Federalist Society placed the name in front of him saying" and he thinks you should have Napoleonic powers". 'Nuff said.
As they say, correlation isn't always causation. Although it is interesting to look at the state of workers, the middle class, the environment, nation-building wars, and judicial dismantling of the ACA since the conservatives became ascendant.
It just all seems like a cover to value money over all else.
31
The Federalist Society, the wealthy donors and the conservative movement are taking their victory lap following their flag bearer, Donald Trump. Some think it a spectacular procession. The rest of us, not so much,
20
I lean left, but admire and appreciate that there are high-caliber intellectuals at work, formulating ideas and working the levers. To me, that is a critical aspect of a functioning democracy.
Too often we get to peek at the sausage being made and, indeed, it's not a pretty sight. But rational thought and argument is a beautiful thing. Right now, it appears, the right is better at it than the left.... Rarely would the right fawn over their equivalents of buffoons like Bernie, or a light weight like Jill.
Can/will the Dems learn? We shall see. And a lot is riding on it.
11
The right also gave up the birther nonsense, but the Democrats are still bitterly clinging to the disproven collusion hysteria
Really? The Right would 'rarely fawn over their equivalents of buffoons like Bernie...' - have you forgotten who the Right installed as President? And how they continue to fawn over him?
“Rational thought” has much less to do with events than the control of the GOP Congress by a few monied lunatics who have devised a ubiquitous highly successful brainwashing machine dominating TV, radio, print, and evangelical pulpits.
1
There are great monetary rewards to be gained by the already-wealthy, and great power to be gained by themselves and their cohort, by financing and pushing "conservative" (who conserve nothing but political power and oligharcic wealth) lawyers into the judicial system. Let's not elevate their motivations to some vague love of "jurisprudence" and intellectual excellence. Take away the money and power dangled in front of the entry-level frat boys they recruit and none of the vaunted judge-machine would exist.
The enterprise works so well because the graduates of the Federalist Society always pay it back, exponentially.
15
Now this is what objective, informative and enlightening commentary is all about. Thank you, Mr. Brooks, for an interesting and non-partisan contribution to the often harsh political discourse.
18
It will be interesting to see where the "conservative" legal establishment comes down on the matter of the rule of law.
7
It is not that deep. Does anyone think that had Hillary Clinton won and the Democrats controlled the Senate that there would not have been a number of well qualified progressive jurists to place on the lower courts and on the Supreme Court?
No, we are where we are because Mitch McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat and the federal judiciary. Russia interfered in our elections to help elect a person so unthinkable as president that far too many people thought it was safe to stay home or to vote for people who could not win.
Now we have a minority Electoral College Russian aided president who is under investigation for possible conspiracy with the Russians and possible obstruction of justice making lifetime appointments to the Court.
157
No. We are where we are because Hillary Clinton was not just unpopular but detested by a large swath of people who would have voted for any other Democrat over Trump and the rock star RBG didn't retire at a respectable age of 80 in 2013 when Obama would have had the opportunity to replace her with a younger justice. (Kennedy was wiser.) McConnell didn't steal anything. Gorsuch simply replaced Scalia who died unexpectedly. Blame the selfish old leaders of the Democratic Party at the time: Clinton, Pelosi, Schumer and throw in self-adoring Ginsberg. And Oh! add the smug and complacent liberal establishment that had more important things to do than vote in 2016.
1
We can only hope that Kavanaugh, as he
did during the Bill Clinton presidency, retains the idea that a president can be impeached for lying. Fingers crossed also, that as during the Nixon presidency, the Justices of SCOTUS nominated by the President, will be Americans, not 'political appointees'.
My father, who sat on the Appellate Division, Second Department, of the NY Supreme Court, & a former politician himself, always said this:
"When you step into the voting booth, you are a Democrat or Republican. When you sit on the bench, you are an American & your decisions are for America" -Leon D. Lazer
How do you really feel?
Brooks identifies sharp institutional organizing steps to maintain a coherent force. This has lead to jaw-dropping successes for conservative jurists. His use of the word community, while within the bounds of common parlance, actually is simply a reflection of membership in an organization, club, affinity group or institution. Community, as a worthy analytic concept, is not about being organized or institutionalized. It is about being an equal human being in the presence of other equally significant human beings. In that basic form of community, we must face, and make space for our moral differences, if we are to thrive as a nation. That is neither a conservative nor libertarian proposition. It is neither a liberal or progressive proposition. It is simply making space for people to live their lives, with minimal interference and fair access to resources. Community is indeed the way forward, but Brooks references and thinking on the matter are muddled, and as a result, unhelpful.
12
David Brooks rhapsodizes about the "community" and the "village" that raised Brett Kavanaugh, and even calls the conservative legal movement "cohesive band of brothers and sisters." A more accurate statement would be that a movement of rightwing ideologues armed with enormous sums of money raised Brett Kavanaugh. The Federalist Society has an avowed political agenda, and has made it painfully apparent that the judicial branch of our government is every bit as politicized as the other two branches. In Justice Gorsuch and, it seems likely, Justice Kavanaugh, we are seeing judges who have been steeped in the Federalist Society's conservative ideology since they were in law school ascending to the U.S. Supreme Court. Brooks can call it a "community," but I call it a wrecking crew.
68
All true and well said, but look at what it has resulted in, in the end.
A Donald Trump leaning Supreme Court that will surely bring down further disasters upon all of our heads.
Or putting it another way:
One must be exceedingly careful in what one wishes for, because sometimes you get it.
14
PS:The current foothold was only possible by
Mitch McConnell blocking Garland, the last Democratic president's Supreme Court nominee from even having a hearing, a rule made up by McConnell and Republicans.
51
Equally important, McConnell then got rid of the 60 vote threshold to approve Supreme Court justices that had been in place for years.
With the 60 vote requirement, Gorsuch would not have passed. Same now for Kavanaugh.
Sen McConnell was enforcing the Biden Rule
Thanks Mr. Brooks for this admission: that Trump has "given the conservative legal establishment more power than ever before, which is why there are so few never-Trumpers in legal circles." Translation: conservative (faux) lawyers will co-venture Trump's trashing of the Constitution so long as he shares the spoils. Any means to an end. In a judge, a Supreme Court justice no less, can there be any worse quality?
47
Setting aside the ethical issues therein and who it is that these people really serve, can you imagine the Democrats undertaking this kind of generational project at this point, for any purpose? Conservatives have been playing the long game as long as their movement has existed, while for the past several decades Democrats have... done what, exactly?
Take abortion, the issue at hand: after successfully fighting for legalized abortion in the early 70s, what brilliant strategy have Democrats undertaken in the interim? They’ve watched Republicans dismantle the right piece by piece for decades, each time calmly smug that the Supremes would save them, all the while doing little to make the case anew to a generation that never knew a world without legal abortion. How’s that strategy looking now, Dems?
21
It is the money in politics. The Democrats left the working people a long time ago. We are suffering from Citizens United.
An excellent description of how the minority will rule.
34
True enough. The Democratic presidential candidate received 3 million more votes than the Republican and lost. Democratic Senators represent 40 million more citizens than their Republican counterparts and are in the minority. Democratic House candidates received a million more votes than their Republican opponents but due to gerrymandering they are in the minority.
One does have to wonder how long minority rule will remain sustainable in America.
84
You seem confused. Here's a definition of our system as to how it works versus the system that you are referencing as a basis of your argument:
Republic. That form of government in which the powers of sovereignty are vested in the people and are exercised by the people, either directly, or through representatives chosen by the people, to whome those powers are specially delegated. [NOTE: The word "people" may be either plural or singular. In a republic the group only has advisory powers; the sovereign individual is free to reject the majority group-think. USA/exception: if 100% of a jury convicts, then the individual loses sovereignty and is subject to group-think as in a democracy.]
Democracy. That form of government in which the sovereign power resides in and is exercised by the whole body of free citizens directly or indirectly through a system of representation, as distinguished from a monarchy, aristocracy, or oligarchy. [NOTE: In a pure democracy, 51% beats 49%. In other words, the minority has no rights. The minority only has those privileges granted by the dictatorship of the majority.]
Totally agree. At some point the majority will finally say enough is enough. This country is boiling, and at some point it is going to boil over.
Mr. Brooks, you're correct in recognizing the relentless organization of the conservative movement, but it was basically copying the way the progressive movement had organized to protect labor rights, voting rights, civil rights, etc. Organizations like the Institute for Justice were essentially counterpoints to the almighty ACLU. So it's not that conservatives figured out some deep secret of politics; they co-opted a progressive strategy and implemented it relentlessly while progressives congratulated themselves on having "won" the culture war and then sank into a decades-long complacency. Trump's election has shaken progressives from their slumber but now they're not facing a weak, unfocused opponent. Instead, they're up against a machine determined to entrench its gains. American culture is much more progressive than Republicans realize and Republicans are much fiercer than progressives understood. It's anyone's guess at this point where this conflict ends.
50
Excellent article. It succinctly describes how to start, grow, and maintain a country club.
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To the accurate history offered by David Brooks in explaining how Republican conservatives captured the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court must be added an event which occurred 9 years after the founding of the Federalist Society.
In 1991 the nation was treated to a spectacle involving a law professor, Anita Hill, a nominee with little judicial experience, Clarence Thomas, and an accommodating Senator Joe Biden.
Biden always imagined himself to be much smarter than he was, and he cut short the confirmation hearing, cancelling witnesses who would have corroborated Anita Hill’s accusations against Thomas.
The cynical result was to have a man with radical right views, who does not believe in legal precedent, confirmed to fill what was known as the Thurgood Marshall seat.
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"This movement was funded by groups like the John M. Olin Foundation"
"a professional network, identifying conservative law students who could be promoted"
They did not demand immediate payment for their money. But they did have a clear agenda those benefiting from the money knew and paid obeisance.
Brooks presents this as a positive lesson. I see instead a potential point of attack.
I see corruption, the core corruption of quid pro quo. These people got to where they are with the specific help given in return for specific things. Anybody who would not serve, would not get the money, the promotions, the opportunities in their gift.
At what point is career advancement corruption? When it comes in return for future known actions in the ultimate position to which they aim.
Does anyone imagine those who promoted this nominee do not know him? That they do not know his positions on key issues? That those were not decisive?
Those things are corruption. They are the antithesis of promoting honest and open minded people of quality.
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If the conservatives on the Court were conservative, we'd be in a far better situation.
22
The conservative community cheats and lies.
The conservative community says they are for precedent, and then they rule 5-4 that there is an individual right to bear arms in Heller. This overturns decades of precedent.
The conservative court rules 5-4 that a recount has to stop, and then says that this ruling can never be used again.
The conservative court rules 5-4 that money equals speech, not precedent.
The conservative court overturns decades of law regarding unions (precedent) and rules that the 1st amendment is at stake to destroy unions.
The conservative court refused to correct blatant gerrymandering this past term.
In 2016, Trump lost the national popular vote by 2.1%, but Republicans won the median House seat by 3.4 points, the median Senate seat by 3.6 points — the widest Senate gap in at least a century and tied with 2012 for the widest House disparity in the last half-century.
The Republicans, when approached by the intelligence service and told that the Russians were hacking our 2016 election and Republicans and Democrats should issue a joint statement, the Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, refused.
And, of course, Mitch McConnell blocked Garland, the last Democratic president's Supreme Court nominee from even having a hearing, a rule made up by McConnell and Republicans.
Shameful, vile behavior, Mr. Brooks.
How you can stand by while this party destroys our norms and our institutions and rapes and pillages our village is beyond me.
533
Thank you! A sitting President who likely has broken numerous laws and consorted with criminals and Russians to gain office shouldn't be allowed to recommend a Supreme Court justice.
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Brooks and the Republicans will learn that it is one thing to seize power to try to control how people live their lives. It is a far different thing to force them to actually behave as you want.
If there is one thing the American people will not stand for it is the abridgment of their freedoms. You can change the laws and stack the courts, but in the end the people will determine the culture.
Occupiers become very unpopular in this country as Sarah Sanders, Mitch McConnell, Stephen Miller and others have learned. And Kavanaugh will have to live in this country as well. The more he tries to ram his right wing ideology down the throats of Americans the stronger the Resistance will grow. It's a universal law of the universe that trumps judicial decisions.
8
The story of the rise of the conservative judicial establishment is not "a lesson for everybody" unless everyone needs to learn how a minority consisting of the most powerful and well-off planned and took private control of a country that was built around the rights of man and majority rule.
Mr. Brooks doesn't mention the victims, those whose lives have been and will be shattered as a result of disproportionate power coming into the hands of conservatives. The racial minorities, the women, the immigrants, the poor, the disenfranchised, and just regular folks– these are the people whose story Mr. Brooks leaves out of his "lesson". Not coincidentally, these regular folks comprised the legal establishment that arose from the new deal.
Mr. Brooks can't see the forest for the trees. How can a conspiracy to create a conservative legal establishment at the cost of politicizing the judiciary, and ultimately even justice itself, be laudable? These people may have emphasized "professional excellence" but only after they administered political tests at every level. They are not to emulated. Theirs is a cautionary tale of how a republic can be taken over.
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The judiciary has been politicized, to varying degrees, since FDR's notorious manipulation of the Court to get his overreaching New Deal programs in place. Conservatives have been trying for decades to bring SCOTUS back to its original constitutional role, and not to serve as a means to effect laws and policies that liberals are unable to pass through the legitimate legislative process. That's how majority rule should work.
You nailed it.
The conservative legal movement was self-consciously created to take over the legal system and impose a minority’s view of the constitution on an unsuspecting majority. On the other hand, the liberal drift of the legal profession referred to in the article grew organically and generally spread individually based on the influence of reason and appeal of universal values of human rights reflected in the rulings of judges of that time. And those “leftist” rulings generally represented the values of most of the populace and reflected the moral aspirations of the country. They were fully consistent with the long arc of America’s history of extending the franchise, expanding rights and shifting power from the powerful to the powerless. To suggest that the two phenomena (the conservative movement’s rise to power and the leftward drift of the legal profession prior to the 1980s) are comparable or that one is a legitimate response to the other is not correct.
We have today a situation where one party, the Republicans, commands a minority of votes, yet controls all branches of government due to the electoral college at the presidential level, extreme gerrymandering of House districts at the congressional level and, now, the fully realized power of the conservative legal movement at the judicial level. Smells more like a quiet coup (albeit a legal one), rather than the wholesome civics lesson Mr. Brooks suggests it is.
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You might exclude "gerrymandering" as example for it is practiced by both parties!
Lying is practiced by both parties. But guess which one does it WAY more? Same with gerrymandering.
I have to disagree about the moral purity of the leftist drift of the legal profession. Trial lawyers are one of the Democratic Party's larger contributors, and what they were getting for their money was carte blanche to file a seemingly endless series of abusive, corrupt, forum-shopped class action lawsuits where the lawyers would get millions and the aggravated class members would get pennies. The class actions were often intended to be extortionate, in that companies would settle instead of going to the expense of fighting in court. In several cases, things got so corrupt that lawyers were censured, disbarred or even jailed (see Stanley Chesley, Bill Lerach, Richard F. "Dickie" Scruggs, Steven Donziger et al.)
One of the most important political trends in the last 10 years or so have been class action lawsuit reform, which finally applied the brakes to this gravy train and at least slowed it down.
I scanned a good number of the comments here, cynically certain that David would attract the usual opprobrium from the left that STILL can’t accept that they’re so solidly immured in the political wilderness, and how LITTLE their invective matters these days.
I remembered as I read those comments how I congratulated Barack Obama in this forum on his win in 2008 and on the occasion of his inaugural on 20 Jan., 2009. I didn’t expect a lot of light during Obama’s time, but instead a lot of heat (and BOY was I right about that). But I was inspired as were millions of other Americans by the fact that within my lifetime I had seen BOTH Jim Crow at first-hand AND the election of our first black American as president. To read these comments today is sad.
David set out to make understandable to many a context for Kavanaugh’s nomination: a legitimate context that also serves as implicit counsel to Democrats about how to strategically influence the jurisprudence of our federal courts (David’s messages are never NOT nuanced). Yet what I read in general response is poor-loser frustration that the winners refuse to genuflect before the losers’ own ideological burning bush.
David did a solid job of explaining the context, I thank him for it, and I agree with the importance he gives to the Federalist Society and other conservative organizations in this strategic initiative. I didn’t need the other comments to know that the weight of this commentariat …
15
… despises the Federalist Society.
Too bad that he might be writing largely to a liberal chorus that doesn’t care for or appreciate an understanding of legitimate context, and even is deaf to his implicit counsel to Democrats to be more strategic themselves; but merely wants revenge.
11
Richard generally seeks to turn liberal prinicpled positions (and arguments) into a story of "despising" and "invective" and "liberal chorus" (only a selection from his current posts). That, readers, is where the true invective is. It's politely worded but it's dismissive and insulting instead of rationally argumentative.
6
How nice that you congratulated Barack Obama on his 2008 victory and 2009 inauguration. No doubt he appreciated the gesture and treasures the memory. It’s too bad that your immense generosity of spirit didn’t extend to his re-election in 2012, when his nearly 5-million vote victory and electoral-college shellacking of Romney was described continually by you as “razor thin”—an obvious effort to delegitimize Obama’s win as a tiny liberal whitecap in a shifting conservative tide. Talk about “poor-loser frustration.”
The point is, both kinds of ideological tides come in, and they go out again. When those tides come from the right, they usually leave immense damage behind.
15
"If you emphasize professional excellence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s mainstream institutions, if you build a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, you can transform the landscape of your field."
ACLU does the same but you don't see the lawyer associated with them nominated to the Supreme Court!
19
RR: Not enough spare millions of $$ available to the ACLU and other organizations defending the majority.
18
As US universities in general tend to skew highly liberal in terms of the political outlook of professors, it’s interesting that the legal field has been able to nurture conservatives. At the present time a conservative leaning student or prof at most US colleges would feel rather alone. I wonder why the legal field has had so much success nurturing conservatives yet universities have seemingly abandoned any who evidence conservative thought.
14
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
"If you emphasize professional excellence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s mainstream institutions, if you build a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, you can transform the landscape of your field."
This is a tautology: "if you gain a foothold in society's mainstream you can transform the landscape." But what is transforming the landscape if not gaining that foothold? To the extent it is more than that, it means populating the ranks of the legal profession with like-minded thinkers with settled views, despite their protests to the contrary ("It would be irresponsible to prejudge this or that..." when in fact that is what they have done and will do).
"Not legislating from the bench" is the "clear skies" of the judiciary. To me, the talk of "not legislating from the bench" is a cynical enterprise, meant to justify a pre-determined reactionary platform. The political ends are already decided, the only question is what legal contortions they can summon to justify them. It is a fraud that dogmatically adheres to ends before means. Look no further than talk of "originalism" and "textualism," which are not entirely compatible, but are made to be as the need arises. (We are all originalists when it suits us.)
To Brooks' point... The difficult thing is transforming how people think and persuading them with argument. I do not think what has happened, a wave of conservative group think, is something to be proud of or to emulate.
23
Money -- from those who stood to gain economically by shifting the judiciary sharply to the right -- was an overwhelming factor in the Federalist Society's rise. To a
Could a "left"alternative attract the kind of financial backing necessary to succeed as a strong counterweight to the Federalist Society? The challenge is that genuinely left jurisprudence would go against the super rich donor class' direct economic interests.
Funding sources must be diversified, or else a "left" udiciary alternative to the Federalist Society may grow to eschew limits on corporate power and support decisions like Citizens Inited, while remaining liberal on non-economkc social issues and individual rights. Meanwhile, unchecked corporate power is driving a new guilded age of extreme wealth stratification exceeding that of the worst Latin American dictatorships.
28
David Brooks often speaks in Brookese about "community,'" "depth,"roots," etc. Here's a translation, some very, very rich people have so much money that they could spend it on on their hobbies without "worry about 'metrics' or 'measurable outcomes.'" In addition to yachts, cars, women, and wine, a really fun hobby was "Let's Roll Back the New Deal!"
That hobby really took off when the Frat Boys discovered that their fun could be subsidized, and continued for decades. There's such a great match between Frat Boyism and Conservatism, especially the kind that pretends to be for liberty, but, somehow, has not problem taking it from women.
ion their hobby (rolling back the New Deal)
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With tax laws and tax evasion ensuring that 10 percent of the rich own 90 percent of the wealth/gains--and the latest Trump tax (posing as tariffs)--it's going to take a seismic upraising for regular folk to gain power and a say in their government.
17
Great points, but the most interesting part of this column by far is that David speaks so admiringly of this institution which has slowly, methodically, successfully corrupted our government. It is indeed a lesson in how to transform government - just in the wrong direction, away from true democracy, away from true representation of the PEOPLE, and toward special interests ruling society. It is a successful movement backwards.
In this column, as in all of his columns, David starts with a fundamentally sound, slightly offbeat, interesting idea, but by the end, he reveals the - I'm sorry to say this - biased presuppositions underlying his thought processes. Take any topic - baseball, fashion, cool and woke, elite Italian delicatessens, supreme court justices - and David will speak of it in a way that sounds at first interesting and impartial, but in truth always comes to the exact same conclusions - not because of the truth he has discovered in the topic itself, but because of his underlying biases.
97
Brooks is an opinion writer. What is your point?
All the fawning over the Federalist Society misses an obvious point. Sure, they’ve created a rock-solid list of right-wing judges, but a great deal of their current “success” must be attributed to the electoral college and the removal of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees.
38
It is great that conservatives have slowly organized and now have come to a crowning achievement. I am a Democrat and liberal. Brooks can crow about the community that engendered Kavanaugh. We do not have the votes. He will probably in the court soon. Where did we go wrong? I am frustrated and angry.
The protections for women and minorities, Health care, gerrymandering, impeachment, immigration rights. I hope that Democrats will learn how to run, learn how to win, learn how to communicate the things that are important, and move forward with our agenda.
21
The problem with our conservatives is that they are practicing the judicial activism they claim to despise. Rather than retaining what makes America great or, at the very least a worthwhile place to live, they are destroying it. In the process they are forgetting that many of them, if they were to truly adhere to the attitudes and views of the mid to late 18th century, would be unable to vote, unable to own land, not allowed into the elite universities they attended in the 20th century. Some of them would be considered 3/5 of a person even if they could pass as white.
The conservatives can delude themselves about their ideological purity, their strict originalist philosophy but they can't hide the fact that they are afraid of change. Why else would they want to regress to the "good ol' days" that never were?
65
I disagree with the noble thread going through this, but it does point out that the Republicans did put in what it took to build a pretty comprehensive political infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the left was counting on the supreme court.
16
True. This article helps in understanding how the conservative legal movement and infrastructure came about, but there is nothing noble about it. It is not a "cohesive band of brothers and sisters" but rather, a bunch of scheming retrograde cronies.
1
The money that funded what Brooks describes came from men and women who not by accident stood to benefit financially from changes in laws and their interpretation. All you need do is consider cui bono by anti-union laws done in the name of freedom of choice, by striking down of limits on financial contributions to campaigns or destroying environmental regulations that checked polluters. Are we about to return to the days of the so-called "Lochner Era" when corporate interests were served by the Supreme Court at the expense of everyone else? Winter is coming and it isn't that we weren't warned.
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The "conservative" movement seems characterized by those people who benefit funding, not just changes in laws and their interpretations, but an array of interlocking ideas that justify a society and governance that harms so many. The bigger picture is an international cabal of the very wealthy and big businesses who want to establish barriers (one might call them walls) to prevent effective laws and regulations.
Are they conspirators? Probably not, but conspiracy is not needed if you invest a lot of money in promoting your individual interests.
Perhaps Trump will stimulate a reaction to this plutocracy. Perhaps people will recognize that they have been manipulated and their prejudices and fears have been exploited. Perhaps they will see that the emphasis on nationalism is just a tool that promotes unrest and instability. I fear it's more likely that we will experience another world war with disaster at the end.
I have lots of respect for Coase (lived to 100, gotta respect that--and BTW his theorem isn't so friendly to the political right as they often think) and Posner. And credit where due for the long-term thinking of the "conservative" legal movement. They have solidified the legal basis of our new Gilded Age. Can only hope that Democrats make their best arguments at Senate hearings and on the campaign trail, and prevail in the November elections to put the "check" of accountability and oversight back into our dangerously un-checked political world. The fight over Kavanaugh better not be the "fight of our lives," but the election this fall very probably is just that.
20
Didn’t Posner resign under a cloud of suspicion?
Interesting, an accurate assessment of a successful long term plan that has been well executed. I was a first year student at Yale law school in 1982 and my impression of the Federalist Society was of a group of very ambitious and opportunistic people currying favor with the then-new Reagan administration. This Society and the people behind the Olin Foundation were quite creative -- they picked an important but under appreciated and not overtly politicized branch of government and played "the long game". Which they won. But don't doubt there is an obscure tech billionaire planning the same strategy now -- from the left. He or she will engage in the sincerest form of flattery and imitate the conservative long game. Liberals all over the country are highly engaged and activated. They have broken out of their complacency. Judicial originalism is not some preordained eternal truth. The pendulum will swing. And ironically it will be this Supreme Court and its unfettered right ward tilt that will set the pendulum in motion.
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And perhaps your (and my) grandchildren will be alive to see this change happen.
Sincerely hope you are right!
Why yes, it's exactly as Grover Norquist explained in 2012:
"All we have to do is replace Obama. ... We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. ... We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate.
The requirement for president?
Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States."
https://www.thedailybeast.com/norquist-romney-will-do-as-tolddavid-frum
In service of this goal, GOP'er leaders in 2016 pimped out the high office of POTUS, and their Donald John Trump has in turn pimped out the office to enrich his empire, which is perfectly fine with said GOP'ers, since they refuse to exercise their oversight duties - and they'd rather quit their offices than ever face voters again to defend what they've done/not done.
Why, observing GOP'ers on their July 4th Kremlin Treason Trip, one might conclude Russia is blackmailing the entire GOP with info from when they were hacked in the 2016 campaign:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-cyber-rnc-idUSKBN14U2DD
Wonder what GOP'ers are afraid Putin/WikiLeaks will divulge ?
51
Dear Amie,
It was a long day leading to night fall, and the night has fallen. At your recommendation, was planning to watch 'Endeavour' and was side-tracked by an exchange with an acquaintance with a love for America. His knowledge of our history is far broader than the average and he is an admirer of the writings of Gore Vidal. "Burr" has now been placed on his list and in return, Bannon's book is coming this way.
Brooks has addressed Trump's choice of Brett Kavanaugh, as nominee to The Supreme Court where the headline reads 'It Took a Village to Raise' him. Whether he is going to merit the praise of our Nation is expected to hold our attention for a few hours, before the next chaotic news development, keeping us diverted and more divided than ever.
November is not so far away, and there is a curious sense of apprehension to be found in our country these days; a feeling that our country is being taken away from us. It is being given back to the Robber Barons. Perhaps we could use some Robin Hoods in our neck-of-the-woods to redress our spirits. Adieu.
36
If the Congressional Republicans who decided not to run again in 2018 really want to change the direction in which Trump has taken this country, they would renounce their party affiliation and become independents. That would eliminate the Republican majority in Congress, deny the now assured of another ultra conservative Justice, and perhaps create a Supreme Court that isn’t politically molded to follow the hard right Republican dogma.
9
Also principled Republicans in the Senate who understand Trump is compromised an in a position to do great harm to this country--should step away. When treasonous acts are exposed as well as the laundry list of broken laws, it will be too late and Republicans who didn't distance themselves will be permanently tainted.
3
An incredibly important word is missing from this analysis: MONEY. Colossal amounts of it, provided as an investment that has paid off massively in lower taxes and less regulation for the self-interested people who provided it.
I'm not saying these people aren't smart. But it's a whole lot easier to build such intellectual infrastructures and communities when dozens of selfish billionaires are eager to pay for it.
308
You mean, "If you get the financial backing of oligarchs and create a network of secretive pressure groups, then anyone can create a cohesive band of brothers and sisters to force an ideological takeover of the country's justice system."
346
absolutely
here is an important link to that very history that Brooks leaves out:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-secrets-of-leonard-leo-the-man-behind-...
Brooks correctly describes the well-oiled machine of the Rightwingers that successfully cranks out lawyers/judges who adhere to Conservative dogma and placate the salivating Conservative dogs.
But what he avoids examining is whether these lawyers/judges subscribe to a coherent legal philosophy, or if they merely brandish the mishmash of conflicting and contradictory positions of Conservative's political "philosophy."
To wit:
- Justice Sotomayor elucidated the contradictions and flaws of the Conservative's ruling on Trump's muslim ban, and how it blatantly contradicted the rationale given a week earlier in the gay wedding cake ruling.
- Conservatives complain about "activist judges" who ignore precedent; but now they can't wait for a Justice to overturn Roe?
- They cry "foul" if Democrats ask nominees to comment on their legal views about specific cases; but they deemed Merrick Garland unsuitable without even giving him a hearing?
Etc., etc., ad nauseum.
Who cares that "you can transform the landscape of your field," if that transformation makes your field irrationally challenged and ethically compromised.
210
'Who cares that "you can transform the landscape of your field," if that transformation makes your field irrationally challenged and ethically compromised'?
Obviously oligarchic/Calvinist/libertarian/conservatives don't.
They may disagree from time to time on the details, but what they do agree on is power. It's all about getting it and keeping it, so they can continue stacking the deck in their favor. Who cares about winning debates when you can win the government? Intellectual triumph is for the effete, anyway.
1
"- Conservatives complain about "activist judges" who ignore precedent; but now they can't wait for a Justice to overturn Roe?"
You are so correct, but ideologues never see it this way. They only see the confirmation of their bias.
Present this notion to them and they just remain silent.
One could argue with equal clarity that the bootleggers and gangsters of the 1920s "transformed the landscape of [their] field". That's not necessarily a good thing. When the end goal is pernicious or destructive, a transformed landscape can resemble nothing more than the rubble of a bombed-out city.
Elsewhere today is a column chronicling the degeneration of the Supreme Court into a blatantly partisan political body, instead of the neutral arbiter envisioned in the concept of an independent judiciary. We don't elect federal judges, and it's nearly impossible to remove them. When the court becomes a predictable extension of party politics, the whole design of responsive government is at risk.
Brooks writes admiringly of the ingenuity and persistence, the regimented discipline, of the right-wing legal cult that now has a deep bench of reactionary clones at its disposal. He's oblivious to the danger here, because his worldview is winning.
If the left were to build up a similar opposing movement, the best we could hope for is some kind of equilibrium and balance in the luck of the retirement/replacement draw, but the idea of an independent judicial branch would nevertheless be irretrievably lost.
No surprise that such detailed coverage is available within minutes of President Trump's announcement of his Supreme Court nominee. All the media have had these stories and editorials ready to go for days. There were 4 "top picks", and plenty of time to prepare detailed pieces on 4 people. It's like having canned obituaries for celebrities; the boiler-plate text and images are already done, all that is needed is a bit of updating before the final product is ready to print, post or broadcast.
Here's my own prediction, written (I swear) hours before the President's announcement: The choice doesn't matter.
Whoever Trump picked, the mainstream media would launch a salvo of articles and opinion (scare) pieces explaining why the pick is terrible for women, LGBTQs, migrants, poor people, abortion supporters, in fact pretty much everyone else except the notorious 1% and big business. The media would also say the Supreme Court will now be biased or even irrelevant. The purposes of the barrage, of course, are to draw all but negative attention away from the nominee and to agitate the Democrat-liberal-socialist-radical base.
In fact, there is little the roused rabble can do about this; Trump pretty much has the votes to confirm. However, stay tuned for the mass breast-beating, hand-wringing, wailing, virtue-signaling, "spontaneous" protests, and accosting Republicans in restaurants.
What should Democrats do? Get out the vote in November!
15
Kavanaugh seemed to stress in his acceptance speech that he was very pro women: his family, his employees. Will this extend to a belief in a woman’s right to choose?
11
No
1
Mr. Brooks your recounting of history only goes so far back. You seem to forget the dominance of conservative justices from the middle of the 1800’s until Roosevelt’s famous battle which resulted in the famous “switch in time saved nine” with the Supreme Court. The “liberal” bent is only a blip in the long history of the court. And now we’re facing decades of conservative jursiprudence to come. The only reason conservative justices are gaining ground now is purely political, not intellectual, let’s be clear.
39
"If you emphasize professional excellence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s mainstream institutions, if you build a cohesive band of brothers and sisters, you can transform the landscape of your field." As some posts to this column already show, liberal cowboy types will never be able to grasp the meaning and value of this statement.
7
Again with the "liberals are incapable of grasping" smear. Which is it? We are the educated elite or too dumb to grasp pretty plain-spoken concepts? Professional excellence and playing the long game are concepts beyond the grasp of our little brains?
Rest assured, we read this column and comprehended all too well. We were fools to think SCOTUS was impervious to the level of partisanship we so rued in Congress. We were fools to think the party of Lincoln, of character as a dealbreaker in politicians, of time-honored faith-based moral standards would never install a presidential candidate so profane and corrupt and that a society of excellent professionals would have no problem with that. We were fools to think a Senate Majority leader would honor the voice of the people who soundly elected Obama twice by granting a hearing to his Scalia SCOTUS replacement selection. We were fools to think basic healthcare for all citizens would be a nonpartisan issue. We were fools to think the rule of law would be sacred to Republicans, and that they would honor the unanimous findings of our entire intelligence sector.
We did not put together a forty year plan to seize the supposedly impartial and independent judiciary branch of government. Hats off to you guys. We were caught taking freedom for granted. Rest assured- you have awakened us big time. Stand by.
3
Puhlease. If you chase the almighty dollar and curry the favor and do the bidding of rapacious billionaires, you transform the landscape. I wish that this moment was about excellence and cohesion. The Federalists may have started out as conservative idealists, but this whole game has moved far from that now. It's all about the corrupting power of gaining and maintaining the Benjamins. David, you are religious, only heaven can help us out of this cruel morass that has engulfed all levels of our government.
2
Neither will conservative cowboy types.
2
Considering Mr. Brooks thesis, "conservative" is a misnomer for this breed of justice. Wouldn't these judges be correctly considered the aristocracy's justices? Or the oligarchs' justices?
34
Thanks for the book report, David. "Professional excellence" isn't "first" or "second" or on the list at all for the products of this factory. They require orthodoxy, sophistry, and lying about their intentions during Congressional hearings.
19
...Or conservatives could ask themselves why, with both the House and Senate, they’re not better at passing bills. A year and a half in to holding the reins in D.C., Republicans have passed one tax bill and had a series of spectacular failures. They want reactionary Supreme Court Justices to pick up their slack. That hardly sounds like a sophisticated system of conservative hold over our laws, so much as it reeks of cynical politics.
26
''...is the product of a conservative legal infrastructure ...'' - which means that judges, thinking and ideas come from outside of the actual justice system, but through groups that wish to promote the privilege of rich, old white guys.
Whatever Constitutional Amendments that can be bent, broken or used to promote the above, is taught from the ground up, and when the stars align ( an opening during a republican President and majority in the Senate), then they strike and put in their man. (rarely a woman)
This is where we are, where corporations are now people, money is now speech and religious beliefs ''trump'' all else. This new pick will push even more to the extreme all of the above and possibly (probably) will be a critical vote when it comes to making the President not answer for any transgressions.
Truth and the law have a Liberal bias, and we all need to get back to that as soon as possible.
17
Irish, that's nonsense. Corporations are people. They have religion, morality (if not ethics), and millions of vote$. "Get over it" (a popular right-wing debate-killer).
1
"thinking and ideas come from outside of the actual justice system"
just as legislation is delivered ready-made courtesy of ALEC.
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David, your article has been trumped by that of Lee Epstein and Eric Posner. The recent appointments of conservatives Neil Gorsuck and Brett Kavanaugh and the Congress's refusal to hold a hearing on centrist Merrick Garland, has clearly shown that the Supreme Court has become a political court and that all of itsl decisions have become predictable.
It is blow to democracy when the judiciary looses its independence and become a tool of the political branches.
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We don't have a democracy, we have a plutocracy.
How exactly does the FS and HF feel about Kavanaugh? I've heard he was added to the Trump list just last year. Since Trump may very well have picked Kavanaugh because of his anti-indictment of a sitting President views, the question of Kavanaugh's conservative pedigree has not been answered in this article.
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As Brooks' narrative illustrates that entire group of "thinkers" had to be raised to oppose the enlightened liberal cultural mainstream philosophy, the accepted educated and informed moral compass, and the reality of the cascading effects of modernity. To argue what was factual or "intended" by the founders over two hundred years ago required a major indoctrination in alternative thinking. In one respect, we, as a country, were fortunate to have the luxury of affluence, so that a group of (mostly) young men could become the "community" of conservative alternative " other thinkers" who would support the rights of the fetus when the global explosion of overpopulation and global climate change are threatening our very existence. Perhaps, the new conservative court can work some kind of magic and take the human race back to the 1700's-- then they and their cohorts may again be relevant .
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Actually, David, it takes a bunch of radical right-wing Republicans to rig elections and stack the courts with 'conservatives' to reject the will of the people and replace it with the Robber Barons' will, and that's precisely what the Republican Party and the Federalist Society have done.
The Republican Party rigged elections in 2000 and 2016 and the Federalist Society took care of rigging the courts to ensure that modern justice never sees the light of day.
Leonard Leo of the right-wing Federalist Society and the Judicial Crisis Network is an orthodox, fundamentalist Catholic who has played a papal role in selecting federal Republican judges to stack the courts, including the appointments of Alito, Roberts, the illegitimate Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
The Judicial Crisis Network led the illegal opposition to Judge Merrick Garland.
“Leonard Leo was a visionary,” said Tom Carter. “He figured out twenty years ago that conservatives had lost the culture war. Abortion, gay rights, contraception—conservatives didn’t have a chance if public opinion prevailed. So they needed to stack the courts.”
The Federalist Society is a right-wing network that grooms conservative law school students, links them together, mentors them, finds them jobs, and places them in courts and in government to support Robber Barons, church law and Dark Age public policy.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-secrets-of-leonard-leo-the-man-behind-...
This is a national hijacking.
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I still don't understand why 99% of the Republican voters vote for a party that has policies that do not help them at all. Kevin Phillip's southern strategy sure did work back in the 70s. Maybe the dems need their own strategy. First they need to get a back bone.
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Leonard Leo is one of the brightest minds in the legal field. He does not need to refer to himself as Socrates and use a Buddha avatar to attempt to establish credibility. Just saying.
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#Socrates
Your analysis is spot on in identifying the "non-voter factors" behind the right-wing's success in capturing the Supreme Court; however, it overlooks the complicity played by the voters who, out of ignorance or apathy, chose to "participate by not participating" in the voting booth. Never forget the insidious role played by none other than Rupert Murdoch whose FOX news propaganda machine has warped the minds of so many low-information citizens.
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Yes, with the power of the Oligarchy behind them, the Federalist Society has created a production line of obedient judicial clones who can be interchangeably "plugged in" wherever they're needed to serve the Oligarchy.
And having watched this deep-pocketed oligarchic judicial production line churning out and installing their clones throughout the federal judiciary for the last generation or more, we now clearly see what they stand for, to wit:
Money = Free Speech.
Corporations are People.
Organized Labor = a threat to the Oligarchy.
Authority (especially the police) is to be obeyed without question.
Justice is reserved for those who can afford the best lawyers.
Corporate rights always supersede individual rights. (People serve corporations - not the other way around).
Women have no intrinsic right to control their reproductive capacity.
The Golden Rule: "He who has the Gold, makes the Rules."
Yes, the Federalist Society (and their like-minded conservative think tanks) are marvels of regimentation and control. No doubt they'll ensure that the trains run on time.
So much for "The Land of the Free..."
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The only point I would alter is on reproductive rights of women. They really don't care about abortion, they care only that it is a useful tool to divide the electorate and control the vote of the religious right. That's why they will not overturn Roe / Wade. It is too valuable to them at election time. They have conned the religious right since Reagan with their fal;se claim of morality.
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Actually, the notion that corporations are people (the term of art is "artificial person") is a very old idea. It goes back at least to Roman law.
Thank you, Dave, for laying out the basic planks of the oligarchic project so clearly. Ideology and legal fictions are spawned and thrive in this so-called rigorous training ground described by David Brooks. My previous post, which took issue with one of the oligarchy’s strong supporters and a regular Times apologist, was censored out, leaving me to wonder whether this is the New York Times or the sometimes. My subscription supports the work of David and many others.
Canadian writer, philosopher, historian and champion of press freedom John Ralston Saul talks of the institutional priesthood and how they control orthodoxy and maintain control of their institutions. I am Canadian and we are a very different ethics and values and each day sees us drift further apart from America and both our liberals and conservative continue the drift.
Nothing is more demonstrative of the drift than our Supreme Court where nobody interests themselves in social or political philosophy and the Supreme Court is charged not to interpret law but to determine justice.
I have watched your courts pervert justice to accommodate law both by liberals and conservatives and seen the thumbs of those with power and influence place their thumbs on the scale of justice. I have watch the Canadian Supreme Court in action as their deliberations take place.
I watched our Supreme Court deliberate in the case of Carter vs the Attorney General of Canada where the law was established but the Supreme Court decided it was the law that was unjust and struck it down.
While your lawyers use all their sophistry to determine law, maybe it is time to consider justice which has suffered time and time again at the hands of those that write the laws in consideration of only their own advancement. Those that know history and your constitution understand the Federalist Society is about a lot of things but justice is not on their agenda.
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Bravo and one thousand times yes. You elucidated far better than I could what was on my own mind—that these "conservative" jurists would use law to pervert justice. I am despondent.
It is important to remember that the Federalist Society was formed in opposition to the overreach of the federal government FDR through Nixon, and of the overreach of the Warren Court. It did not arise out of a vacuum, but in protest to a generation of shifting constitutional limits. It is to be hoped that a similar movement will form opposed to the excesses to which the first amendment has been interpreted with respect to campaign finance and the ability to use wealth to buy influence over society, and in opposition to the excesses of "due process" which have made so much of this country ungovernable by either party, protecting through inaction those with power and wealth.
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"Overreach" = enforcing Constitutional rights of citizens. Very clear.
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So what we have here are a few points we should be able (all of us) to agree on.
1) Lawyers have become an out-of-control group who have excelled at creating the world's most litigious society to the detriment of businesses and consumers. Those lawyers who don't practice in that segment of law might then find themselves involved in Constitutional law, at which point the political bias, right or left, of each of these individuals will inevitably drive their interpretation of the law.
2) If Republicans hold the Executive Branch, court nominees will most likely be conservative. If Democrats hold the same, the nominees will most likely be liberal. This is how it is, get over it.
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Any post that ends with "Get over it." or "Period." is signalling a failure of thinking. This is a good example, as its "points" are (1) false and (2) inadequate to describe the asymmetry of Republican extremism vs. Democratic moderation
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Not bad, Brooks. It's always worth pointing out that the imagined liberal conspiracy to subvert the Constitution doesn't exist--any more than the job of cat herder exists--but that the right-wing conspiracy has been operating for decades, and has shown impressive results. Decent people won't be able to fight back unless they get as strident and uncompromising as the right is.
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I would like to know, among other things, who is in the Federalist Society, how often they mingle, who and how many of the members have become judges and with the help of which Senators. The last time the name of the society was in the public sphere, they tried to portray themselves as bipartisan— which, rather than verbal assurances, would be more easily demonstrated by the presence of true bipartisanship
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And we will get right on listing the leftists who have taken over the law.schools and the bar.
Activism which we are forced to subsidize with bar dues, shamefully.
Just Google them and try to read their journal. It's pure rightwing propaganda, kinda like Fox News. That's all you need to know.
Are they any relation to Skull and Bones?
Thanks.
A story well told.
The key fracture will be reigning in the so-called president and Mueller represents the man with a hammer. Law or Trump's law.
"We'll see."
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I take it “reigning in” was a misprint for “raining in” and “the man with a hammer” Thor, god of thunder and lightning.
Actually "reigning-in" was a play on the more correct words "reining in", since the kingly manner of the so-called president came to mind.
Sounds like a judicial form of social engineering. Community is such a nice word though, isn't it? Yes, like-minded intelligent professionals organizing and banding together and working towards a common goal can achieve much. And Brooks is correct to hold this up as a model for others to study and possibly emulate. I just wonder if it isn't all going to be forever tainted by its support of the most profane, despicable man ever to hold the office of president.
Brooks mentions there are very few never-Trumpers in this band of brothers and sisters. Of course not. He is their judicial puppet. The man whose sexual promiscuity is legendary, whose corruption has always been breathtaking, whose racism and misogyny cause despair and agony, who puts kids in cages, whose ignorance is breathtaking, who brutally mocks the disabled, gold star families, a former POW and his opponents, who calls the press "the enemy of the American people" and who lies and lies and lies and lies until one wonders if he was some genetic mutation in the part of the brain responsible for discerning truth has honorary membership in this lofty band of thinkers, planners and conservator advocates. And boy are they using him to achieve their goals.
The question is: are these people simply taking advantage of this fluke of a president and accepting his usefulness in stacking the judiciary, or were they part and parcel of the very swirl of events that brought such an awful person into office?
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This is depressing David. What can we liberals do? I feel democracy is being challenged. Greed seems to be the over whelming motivation of large American corporations, never mind the fact 3rd world babies have a much better chance of good health with free mother's breast milk. It is the corporations who make formula and fight to win! Never mind babies are being ripped from their mother's arms, put in cages and taken thousands of miles away. Some may never reunite with their parents. Only half of the under 5 age children cannot be connected to their parents today, the day by law deigned they should be reunited with their parents. Are they lost in the system? It is common knowledge a child under 5 can have psychological effects from trauma that will stay with them the rest of their lives. As these babies grow into adults, the fact they may not be able to fully function as members of society is a very grave possibility. I have an MA in Clinical Psych. I know that of which I speak. How much longer must we not only endure Trump, but his egregious cronies of whom you speak? When will reason and democracy come back to these United States?
A less fawning version of Brooks' story can be found in the detailed, thoroughly researched history of the rise of the right by Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains ( https://billmoyers.com/story/book-democracy-in-chains-far-right/ ). Yes, this faction's roots are in racism, sparked by the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, and stoked for decades by strategic investments from Olin, Scaife,and Koch families among others. The fact that MacLean's book has piqued rabid responses from conservative commentators, heavy on the ad hominem attacks, suggests that she poked a vulnerable nerve. Read it and weep. Then follow up with Jane Mayer's Dark Money, and her subsequent reporting in the New Yorker to learn how we got to this absurd, dangerous present. Brooks is right, there is a lesson for everybody here, if we take care to learn it.
Brilliantly said, Joanna.
Lovely rags-to-riches story, David. Here are some parts you left a little murky:
--Smear the Democratic president by implying his wife was a murderer (Foster suicide investigation);
--smear him again with an absurd impeachment charge (Starr investigation);
--steal the 2000 presidential election by blocking a recount (Gore v Bush);
--steal a Supreme Court seat by subverting Constitutional procedure and failing to honor the presidential power to appoint (Obama/McConnell/Garland).
That's the route your high-minded Federalist Society jurists took to power, and Kavanaugh was right there every step of the way. But you're right. Better to downplay all that. Makes a better story.
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There's nothing in Brook's article that implies that he considers the Federalist Society "high minded.
Brooks is describing dynamics of social identity, which in a subtle way replaces other more rigorous strands of legal analysis. An example is this from the L.A. Times:
----
Kavanaugh appears to support broader gun rights under the 2nd Amendment. In 2011, he filed a 52-page dissent when the appeals court, by a 2-1 vote, upheld a District of Columbia ordinance that prohibited semiautomatic rifles and magazines holding more than 10 rounds. The judges in the majority, both Republican appointees, noted that several large states, including California and New York, enforced similar laws.
But Kavanaugh said the ban on semiautomatic rifles was unconstitutional because the weapons are in common use in this country. “As one who was born here, grew up in this community in the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and has lived and worked in this area almost all of his life, I am acutely aware of the gun, drug and gang violence that has plagued all of us…. But our task is to apply the Constitution and the precedents of the Supreme Court, regardless of whether the result is one we agree with as a matter of first principles or policy,” he wrote.
---
Kavanaugh went beyond Scalia's Keller decision to have an absurd standard that current usage trumps existing constitutional law.
It's his community, the Federalist and Heritage societies that condones this, and will such future excesses.
you are expecting too much of Brooke he is a poor soul wandering the intellectual shoals of what was once the Republican party
As an enduring NYT reader I was shocked to see David Brooks' column, "How to Raise A Conservative Justice," in this morning's National Edition. The title almost wafted Brooks' long sigh of relief. It was not surprising as it reflected the real David Brooks, not his efforts to separate himself from Trump while remaining deeply Republican.
By changing the title it helped to humanize DB a bit. Nevertheless, "professional excellence" is meaningless without honesty.
"professional excellence" is meaningless without honesty.
The Federalist Society exists to promote the business and corporate interests. I use "originalists" ideology to do so by denying that business and corporate interests are not always the best for majority of US citizen. Depending who the presidents the Federalist judges either like to expand the presidential powers or shrink them just examine their ruling during Obama administration and current one. If Federalist judges where in control of Supreme Court many decades ago we would have voting right, Brown, abortion rights and gay rights among many other decisions. Federalist judges would like USA to go back to 18th Century why white people particularly male white people were in charge of every thing. It is sad day in USA but I blame the liberal and progressive who sat on their hand and did go out to vote in November 2016.
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The liberals and Democrats also sat on their hands in the 2014 mid-terms, which led to Republican takeover of Senate, allowing McConnell to steal the Merrick Garland seat and now 2018.
Brooks hints at it but doesn't quite say it: In law as in physics, for every action there is a reaction. I am old enough to remember how liberal judges openly asserted that they would remake the world in their ideological image. They yielded to the temptation to govern and to reform society which is not their job. They thus disregarded the truism that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
And so, in California where I live, highly regarded liberal supreme court justice Mathew O. Tobriner wrote an article in the State Bar Journal in the 1970s calling for a "social revolution" no less, to be worked by the courts at the behest of "young lawyers" who at the time were more into the sexual revolution.
I recall how back in the 1960s a friend used to admonish his liberal colleagues that if they continued on that path they would bring us the antithesis of what they said they wanted, just like the French revolution started under the banner of liberty, equality and fraternity, but actually brought the reign of terror and Emperor Napoleon.
So a word of advice to the hysterical liberals out there: Be careful what you wish for because you may get it. And that, folks, is how we got Donald Trump in the White House -- the liberal democrats got carried away and handed him the presidency on a silver platter. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that he is appointing judges just as he promised. That's how the democracy cookie crumbles.
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To be clear and accurate--there was no democracy involved in the election of Trump. He was selected by the electors, who voted contrary to the bulk of the electors of voters. He is the president of a minority of the nation; what is democratic about that?
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The electoral college system is how Americans organized their country so that democratically elected electors actually elect the president. There are other systems, but this one is ours, like it or not. But if you want an Athenian democracy, be careful what you wish for. Under it Ronald Reagan would have been a President for life. Would you like that better?
By the way, when I was in high school (1940s) the question of whether the electoral college should be abolished was the year's interscholastic debate topic.
Excellent comment.
"..It almost doesn’t even matter if Kavanaugh is confirmed or shot down; there are dozens more who can fill the vacancy, just as smart and just as conservative." - D.B.
Unless the Democrats win the Senate. Then it matters.
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First the Democrats need to convince people in the state they seek office from to chose them as their representatives. Something they have been struggling with of late.
If conservatives claim moral high ground, then how do they explain their silence about Trump ? He is unambiguously a morally bankrupt person.
While regrettable, it is understandable that they support his policies. But it is unforgivable to be mute in the face of his continual lies and abuses.
Part of the responsibility of leadership is to set a moral tone. In this case Trump and his conservative adherents fail miserably.
It is “nice” that they silently nurture great judges, but we need to save the presidency.
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Do judges care? They are just about the law.
Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me. That sums up derogatory thing the left says about Trump or the right says about Obama when he was in office. The name calling amounts to nothing. In the end Trump got 48% of the electoral vote and won the electoral college which I might add is a pretty effective system to distribute electoral influence to less populous states.
We need to save more than the presidency. We need to save our country. You are mistaken that the current administration has failed to set a moral tone - they have set one that is petty, vindictive, narcissistic, racist, and misogynistic. And, by doing so, they have dragged the dream of America through the sewer.
What do conservatives really want? To have women who have no choices beyond marriage and childbirth (abolish abortions)? To have elderly and disabled on the dole and getting any health care they need from the ER (make health care insurance too expensive or non existent for them)? To defund and wipe out Medicare and Medicaid, (again aimed at poverty level families, the elderly and disabled)? To chip away at Social Security which has been the only thing keeping some elderly and other needy folks with a minimal income? To increase the power and influence of Big Corporations and do away with any semblance of employee involvement in unions or other support groups? To delay any interference with investigations of the POTUS - even when there is clear evidence of criminal behavior or interference with the investigative jurisdiction of the Justice Dept? To take away power from The People of the US and give it to a group of Elites (so called) who will feather their own nests at the expense of everyone else?
Results of the conservative agenda are the following current crises ----- Detained children and families at the border be damned. They are Superfluous and not Needed. Minority recruits are being dropped from military service - Immigrants and refugees are not valued even though the majority of American citizens have an immigrant past. What conservatives seem to want is a elite class who enjoy the fruits of American white society. The rest can fend for themselves.
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That is exactly what they want.
Ok. it took a village to raise Brett Kavanaugh. So, among the Conservative critics and intellectual entrepreneurs, where did the idea of Democratic Presidents are not above the law and Republican Presidents are above law originate? We know he was on Special Prosecutor's Kenneth Starr's Whitewater Investigation - that found the Clinton's not guilty of any real estate improprieties- that after many extended months devolved into an investigation of a sex scandal involving the President. Now, Brett Kavanaugh recently advocated in writing that POTUS is too critical to the country to be investigated, questioned, subpoenaed, and indicted for a crime while in office. President Nixon resigned because he was about to be impeached for covering up the crimes of breaking and entering the Democratic Party's Office and bribing the jailed criminals who broke in. Today, 45 benefited from Russian hackers breaking into the Democratic Party's servers and distributing the stolen material through Wiki-Leaks. What is the difference? What does this Conservative village and Bret Kavanaugh think about law, crime, and POTUS? Can POTUS be automatically exonerated of issuing an Executive Order that is criminal by local, state, national, and international law; e.g. the kidnapping of children?
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The Constitution and the Constitution alone is the only means of dealing with a president who breaks the law or acts improperly. Hence, impeachment was the right course for Clinton. Moreover, since the Left is always talking about "ever-evolving" standards you should be glad if Kavanaugh has "evolved" on the issue. As a Conservative attorney, I do not want judges evolving on what the law means. If the law is to be changed that is the responsibility of the Legislature and the Executive, not the Judiciary.
Hopefully, the Left will now understand the dangers the Right has been warning against for decades. 5 unelected Justices should not determine whether a constitutional right exists or does not exist.
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Glad you brought up Nixon. He was going to be impeached for what was certainly crimes committed in office and backed up by the "tapes", so there was no doubt. What you accuse Trump of doing any "reasonable" prosecutor would not try him. No evidence. If you got it, bring it.
In answer to your question,"...where did the idea of Democratic Presidents are not above the law and Republican Presidents are above law originate?" I would suggest the genesis was with President Gerald Ford who (in)famously issued the pardon for Richard M. Nixon. To me, that set the precedent for a president, even if former, to be given a "get out of jail free" card. Trump merely wants to take it to the logical conclusion, being able to pardon himself whilst in office. If we allow THAT to stand, any pretense of "democracy" is totally lost.
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For ONCE, I agree with you, Brooks. But, I almost never do, and am shocked by this opinion, coming from you.
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I think the answer to your question is BOTH.
Brooks used a lot of words, but said nothing.
"If you emphasize professional excellence first..."
The Republicans certainly do value professional excellence. Donald Trump, for example. He is the epitome of Republican excellence.
I have absolute faith that Brett Kavanaugh will fully live up to Mr. Brooks' standard of excellence which is shared by all of his Republican "brothers & sisters".
We are doomed.
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Jane , I am in the Sierra foothills too and I love your comments!!
You forgot that font of wisdom, Clarence Thomas! OMG Mr. Brooks. Doomed for the short term only I hope!
Kavanaugh is qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice. As a liberal I would find it hard to vote against him based on his vita, conservative or not. People don't realize a legal career begins with preeminent law school grades. Take the life of the fair and just Sandra Day O'Connor.
Nonetheless, there are huge Swiss cheese holes in David Brooks' University of Chicago bias. That philosophy dovetails perfectly with the Federalists because both want a pre-industrial, colonial society run on business transactions that are frictionless, and with scant government regulation.
Big industry, science and engineering are powerful beyond the ken of common folk and hypothecists like Brooks. Industry produces costs, or externalities in the form of noxious pollutants, carbon, and heat.
Ronald Coase wrote about externalities. Coase described simple situations like a cattle despoiling a neighbor's crops. He nary mentioned cyanide from a mining operation reaching tens of thousands of people.
Tweedy academics never had a whiff of benzene. Brooks, intellects, and justices don't know science. John Roberts recently called legitimate statistical analysis, "gobbledygook."
Coase was given a Nobel Prize for spotting transactional costs in plain view on balance sheets. It's time to wake up to global climate change which is a function of industrial transactions.
Even Milton Friedman said, "Externalities are a problem." Alas, those externalities never reach a judge's chambers.
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Thank you for a very informative comment.
And women merely valued as their uteri.
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With brown skin and black hair.
Democrats (politicians and the base) are no match for "a conservative legal infrastructure that develops ideas, recruits talent, links rising stars, nurtures genius, molds and launches judicial nominees."
Say what you will about Republicans, they find ways to win because they are willing to play down and dirty.
Democrats, on the other hand, are suffering from either 'excusitis' and/or insanity (applying the same tactics over and over again and expecting a different outcome.)
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How, exactly, is developing ideas, recruiting talent, linking rising stars, nurturing genius, molding and launching judicial nominees playing 'down and dirty'?
Such practices constitute a thoughtful, sharp and honorable strategy, regardless of who does them. We need more of this in our broken, dumbed-down, ever-coarsening society, not less.
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I am curious what is "down and dirty" about developing ideas, recruiting talent, etc? As I read it, Liberals declared victory and stopped playing, but Conservatives never admitted defeat and kept going.
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Absurd impeachment charge?
Two words: Blue dress.
Try again.