Politics and the Supreme Court

New York Times
Editorial
February 4, 2012

The Supreme Court underscored its power to shape American life when it took major cases about the health care reform law, Arizona’s anti-immigrant law and the Voting Rights Act in an election year. But this is not simply a case of the court thrusting itself into politics.

The way these cases developed and made their way to the highest court also illustrates the reverse — how politics shape the court. Each case grows out of a struggle between left and right where politics have pushed the law: between a quest for universal coverage and the defense of big health care providers; between an emphasis on openness and hostility toward immigrants; and between a promise of access to the voting booth made nearly 50 years ago and the unyielding opposition to keeping that promise.

Each party has its program and works to turn it into law. The great example of political change through legal change was the long, methodical effort to whittle away at segregation from within the legal mainstream that culminated in the court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The conservatives’ legal-political strategy draws from Brown, but it is also vastly different in nature and design.

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