A couple days ago I found myself in a brief online (social media) argument with a Court-reformer member of the legal academy insisting that, contrary to my claims, it’s totally false that there are no reformers in the academy. Of course I never said there were no reformers in the academy. What I said, what I think is undeniable, is that the legal academy as a group or a community, and especially its most powerful voices, have been deep in the SCOTUS-reverencing camp. And for more clarity here we’re talking really about the liberal+mainstream academic legal community. It goes without saying that this applies, on a contingent basis certainly, to the conservative legal movement which not only participates in the corruption of the Roberts Court but is in effect its deep root structure, from which the Roberts Court is simply the degenerate, swaggering oak dominating the canopy and blocking out the sun which civic democracy needs to flourish.
