ABSTRACT
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a revealing comment recently at the University of Virginia law school. She said she would still like to see the Equal Rights Amendment in the Constitution as "a symbol" for her granddaughter, but it doesn't really matter because "there is no practical difference between what has evolved and the ERA." The word "steamrolled" echoes Justice Antonin Scalia's complaint that the court is "using the Constitution as a bulldozer of social engineering." More broadly, the modern self-aggrandizing judiciary is the product of many trends—the rise of cynical, postmodern philosophies in the law schools; disgust with an increasingly venal and deadlocked political system; and the endless fallout from Brown v. Board of Education. The new report by the libertarian Institute for Justice concludes that Clinton nominees Ruth Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer are not flamethrowing activists—they were more restrained and less likely to strike down federal and state laws than their Republican colleagues on the court.
