It's been a very long time--more or less since 1938--since political liberals/progressives have had this much reason to fear activist courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, or to rethink their commitment to venerating the special legitimacy of judicial action (or the fund of moral capital once possessed by the Court). For me, the critical moment was 2000's Bush v. Gore decision; for many others, perhaps even more reluctant than I to face the turn of an era, the term just past did the trick.

There can be little doubt that the formalisms of the Court's conservative majority are empty of principle; they mostly provide cover for what is, indeed, a broad ideological agenda to remake our law (or, if you prefer, to return to the pre-New Deal dispensation, or that of a century ago). Despite the rhetoric of minimalism favored by Justices Roberts and Alito (eviscerating precedents without explicitly overruling them), there is no "judicial modesty" in this gang of four (mostly now five); they are out to wipe away the legacy of evolutionary progressive change that has characterized the past three generations of American life, since the Great Depression.

Much legal commentary is cloaked in elaborate institutional deference to the Court. I believe that deference is unwarranted, and increasingly counterproductive.

When the Court acts in ways that are nakedly political, the legal academy and other serious commentators should not pretend the imperial judiciary is attired in splendid finery. We (I am a law prof at a pretty well-regarded law school) should call it as we see it, in all its naked ugliness, and without the pretense that "law", as currently practiced by the majority of this Court, is beyond politics.

There may be some room to debate the past (although persuaded by the realist critique, I was not a member of Critical Legal Studies, and was long reluctant to give up on law as a potential force for good, rather than primarily an instrument of oppression). But the present is blindingly clear to those who can read. It is past time to let the public in on the secret; this Court has hijacked the law as we have known it, and it is our obligation to say so.

--The Wise Bard (http://TheWiseBard.blogspot.c­om)