The title of this post, minus the question mark, is the headline of this column by Ruth Marcus in the WaPo. She predicts, "The court that convenes on the first Monday in October is apt to be more
conservative than the one we have now." She finds that prospect "unsettling." I disagree on both counts, of course. I would be delighted if that happened, but I consider it unlikely.
In the NYT Saturday, Linda Greenhouse had this opinion piece, appropriately designated as such. Her thesis is that Justice Stevens "learned on the job." She cites his participation in the 1976 Gregg cases as showing a "conservative bent," ignoring the fact that he provided the fifth vote that struck down the mandatory laws enacted in North Carolina, Louisiana, and, by implication, by Congress, California, New York, and several other states. This is followed by the "learning," in her view, that leads to Stevens' opinion in Baze v. Rees.
Greenhouse's designation of Stevens' 1976 opinions as having a "conservative bent" demonstrates once again the problem of perspective. Persons who are waaay off to one side themselves cannot correctly see where the middle is, and they don't know a middle-of-the-roader when they see one. To one who is 2 sigma to the left of the median, the median looks conservative, and a moderate conservative (i.e., 1 sigma right of the median) looks "extreme right."
Of course, the paragraph above assumes a simple, one-dimensional left-right model of political viewpoint, and the world is more complicated than that. The model is useful to illustrate the point, but we should always be aware of its limitations.
In the NYT Saturday, Linda Greenhouse had this opinion piece, appropriately designated as such. Her thesis is that Justice Stevens "learned on the job." She cites his participation in the 1976 Gregg cases as showing a "conservative bent," ignoring the fact that he provided the fifth vote that struck down the mandatory laws enacted in North Carolina, Louisiana, and, by implication, by Congress, California, New York, and several other states. This is followed by the "learning," in her view, that leads to Stevens' opinion in Baze v. Rees.
Greenhouse's designation of Stevens' 1976 opinions as having a "conservative bent" demonstrates once again the problem of perspective. Persons who are waaay off to one side themselves cannot correctly see where the middle is, and they don't know a middle-of-the-roader when they see one. To one who is 2 sigma to the left of the median, the median looks conservative, and a moderate conservative (i.e., 1 sigma right of the median) looks "extreme right."
Of course, the paragraph above assumes a simple, one-dimensional left-right model of political viewpoint, and the world is more complicated than that. The model is useful to illustrate the point, but we should always be aware of its limitations.
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