Judicial politics scholars have long been engaged in what at times is a poor conversation about whether and how law matters in SCOTUS. On Monday the Court gave us a ruling that was ripe with political saliency and content that can easily be seen with sharp attitudes. And yet, they were unanimous not in an act of doctrinal revelation, like in Marbury v. Madison or Brown v. Board of Education, but rather in deference to what the cold naked dictates of statutory or positive law required.
This unanimous case strikes me as an interesting vehicle for showing how law matters in judicial politics. The only reason why the case is unanimous is the stark legal loophole that stares in the faces of judges who have the very power to define the law’s meaning. And all of them end up bowing to the clear strictures rather than engaging in policy opportunism. There is, or course, other system-wide critiques one can make about the egregious nature of the drug war, but in smaller terms of Democrat v. Republican judges claiming to read law in good faith, one cannot deny that the clear strictures of the sort found in Terry seem to substantially affect judicial behavior. The justices are not ruled by political attitudes in this case or even their sense of what justice entails. They rather have those very impulses governed, ruled, subservient and obedient to the cold naked dictates of positive law.
Anyway, I PDF’d these stories, because it strikes me as potentially interesting fodder in a judicial politics class.
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