This reader can only marvel at the Chief Justice John Roberts daring to present himself as the ‘voice of reason’ in contradistinction to Trump’s Know-Nothingism. That the leader of the Neo-Confederate/Originalist coterie, that now dominates the Supreme Court, and the author of the opinion of that Court, in the matter of Shelby County v. Holder. With the aid of Judicial Troglodyte Antonin Scalia’s ‘red head’ , a dull-witted pseudo- argument, that passed for an adequate reply to Justice Ginsberg’s eviscerating dissent, demonstrates the desperation of the whole of America’s political class.

That both Scalia and Roberts were/are the front men for a Federalist Society’s blatant racism under the rubric, self-apologetic of ‘Originalism’. That Brown v. Board I and II, presented as ‘Sociology’ rather than ‘Law’ is about the recrudescence of the Dixiecrats in the garb of bourgeouise political respectability: The Federalist Society!

Such is the desperation, indeed the political malevolence of these civic actors, that they look to Learned Hand’s ‘evolution’ of the question of Brown I and II :

That practice exemplified the pursuit of justice within the bounds of the law. Hand was a lot more comfortable working within that firm constraint than in dealing with the very broad terms of the Constitution. He was intrepid about deciding what was properly before his court and scrupulous about refusing to make decisions about matters that were not—a version of judicial restraint far more realistic and less severe than what he vainly preached about restraint in applying the Constitution. It was this pragmatic, disciplined, and fair-minded approach and Hand’s trenchant, dignified, and urbane application of it that made him so admired by lawyers across the legal spectrum.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/12/05/judge-who-shaped-our-law/

‘Judicial restraint’ is another name for rationalization of injustice, because state legislatures were never going to recognize, that the lives and the psychic and psychological health and well being of black children was a moral and civic imperative! Warren and eight other Justices made that commitment to those children, and the fate of the Nation ‘conceived in Liberty’ for some and not for others!

Publius