Answer: It’s ambiguous. Sometimes the Supreme Court goes one way, sometimes the other way. Its justices often “comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted,” writes Ian Millhiser, a think-tank scholar. Which isn’t surprising, considering that until recently all of the Court’s justices were white males, mostly drawn from the upper class, which tends to be strongly conservative and oriented toward preserving the status quo and inequality.
Yet, the Supreme Court has overruled its own decisions many times, notably on racial issues, and has allowed itself to be dragged into modernity by public opinion and social movements. It didn’t strike down the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, the civil rights laws, or a host of other progressive enactments.
A general take on the Supreme Court’s approach seems to be that it eventually gets on board with social changes but does so slowly; so the real question is, how slow is too slow for society to accept or tolerate? (There seems to be little danger of the inherently conservative Supreme Court embracing change too quickly for public taste, or getting too far ahead of social movements.)
Read the CNN story here, which provides references to several scholarly books for further reading.
Photo: Is the citadel of judicial power a staunch defender of wealthy privilege, and too damned slow to change with society?