The Court vs. Voters

By E. J. Dionne

WASHINGTON -- If the long conservative era that began with Ronald Reagan's election is over, will the judges appointed during the right's ascendancy be able to block, frustrate and undermine the efforts of a new progressive majority?

Consider this analysis from two influential journalists describing Supreme Court justices as "the last hope of the conservative interests in the United States."

Imagine, they write, that a new liberal approach to the country's problems "had been overwhelmingly approved both in Congress and at the polling booths," so "conservative interests resorted to the courts, starting literally thousands of actions to stay the government's hand." Of the ensuing fight, they say: "The liberal justices themselves called their conservative colleagues arbitrary and madly unwise. But while the liberals warned, the conservatives laughed ... ."

Yes, we may go back to the future. Those words are from a still-compelling 1938 book called "The 168 Days" by legendary Washington journalists Joseph Alsop and Turner Catledge. They were writing about the conservative Supreme Court that struck down so much of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program and the effort by FDR to be given the power to name additional liberal justices to break the court's conservative majority.

Roosevelt's reach for expanded executive authority was unwise because he made it easy for his opponents to compare him to Hitler and Stalin. FDR lost the court-packing fight, but eventually got to name justices in the normal way, and conservative judicial dominance ebbed....................