Posted by
DD on Monday, July 09, 2007 1:40:15 AM
In response to the Supreme Court's ruling on School Districts using race to select students, Senator Feinstein put out a press release. In it she says:
"'As Justice Breyer noted today, the Robert’s decision 'undermines Brown [v. Board of Education]’s promise of integrated primary and secondary education.' Sadly, this is just one more example of a Court that is willing to overturn precedent in order to change the law."
When Democrats like a Supreme Court decision, they praise the "solid reasoning" and "progressive worldview" it embodies. When Democrats disagree with a decision but can't articulate a convincing argument for why you should too, they fall back on precedent. Democrats don't have a principled loyalty to precedent, it's more of a love-hate relationship that changes from decision to decision. When changing Supreme Court precedent is in their interest (e.g. Roe), they are all for it and stare decisis is an afterthought, if that. But when changing precedent means that children won't have to be bussed past the two schools nearest their home so that there can be one more white kid at a school forty minutes away, Democrats are suddenly ardent supporters of precedent.
In Senator Feinstein's second sentence quoted above, she doesn't challenge the substance of the decision with a well reasoned critique, but instead decries the Court's willingness to "overturn precedent in order to change the law." In the previous sentence she quotes Justice Breyer in arguing that the recent decision undermines the Brown v. Board of Education precedent. Ironically, the Brown decision itself was a precedent-shattering decision, ending decades of legal segregation. Sometimes the best decisions consider precedent and then ultimately decide that it is either untenable, or as in this case, unconstitutional. Thank God the Brown court was willing to overturn precedent in order to change the law.