Why the Supreme Court is So Important

(and why this election is important)

“The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom,”

Supreme Injustice

J. H. Huebert

The U.S. Supreme Court has done a lot of damage to liberty, interpreting government powers broadly and many constitutionally protected rights narrowly.

Cato Institute senior fellow Robert A. Levy and Institute for Justice co-founder William Mellor have catalogued some of the Courtâ¿¿s worst offenses in their new book, â¿¿The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom.â¿¿

For the most part, the cases theyâ¿¿ve selected for derision are appropriate, and their discussions leave no doubts about their genuine concern for personal and economic liberty.

Which cases have they chosen? Hereâ¿¿s the list:

In each of these cases, liberty lost and the government won in some precedent-setting way. (Except, arguably, in the affirmative-action case, as Richard Epstein points out in his foreword.)

Full article:
http://libertyunbound.com/article.php?id=6

[i]One example is Wickard v. Fillburn (1942) which was to decide whether the Federal Government could claim the authority to prohibit a civilian from growing wheat on his own land in order to feed it to his own family. The court upheld that power.

Heller and Kelo were the ones that popped immediately to mind, good to see them both covered. Good find, steely, thanks for sharing. I feel smarter* for having read that.

*Author may not actually be any more intelligent. Your results may vary.

This is key. The court isn’t supposed to be a force for anything. It’s supposed to tell us what existing law means as written until or unless new law is enacted.