The Supreme Court: Fact-free Justice
Schlesinger, Steven R. & Wilson, Bradford
turers regularly set him off, not because he wasn't wild about capi- talism (his father, after all, had done a sporadically thriving busi- ness as a furrier), but because he just couldn't abide...
...It is fair to say that the Supreme Court often has its mind made up "regular" and is not aboutto be dissuaded by facts or evidence...
...New York: Doubleday, 1947...
...He discovered his classic subject in Earl Long, the crazy-like-a-fox exhibitionist who had clowned his way to power in Louisiana after the demise of his slightly more sedate brother, the Kingfish...
...Mencken, even if the younger journalist's angle was skewed slightly leftward...
...The instructor, who -~ would array himself against the class in bear-pit style, ended up losing many of the disputes...
...Garden City: Doubleday, 1952...
...In such cases, as it became clear that the students had the teacher on the run, he would say, "Don't confuse me with all these facts, 'cause I got my mind made up regular...
...E] A LIEBLING BIBLIOGRAPHY Back Where I Came From...
...In Reynolds v. Sims (1964) the Court took it upon itself to remedy the disregard shown by the Alabama legislature (and 14 others) for the provisions of its state constitution requiring periodic legislative reapportionment...
...With this standard as its guide, the Reynolds majority scoured the constitutional terrain for such qualifying considerations as would justify significant deviation from the equal population standard...
...Liebling wrote in a personal style that for all its special markings avoided self-indulgence and self-advertisement...
...The Justices frequently fashion the facts to fit the desired outcome, and they fashion the desired outcome to fit their private notions of appropriate public policy, which serve as a substitute for the mandates (or at least the spirit) of the Constitution...
...The Honest Rainmaker: The Life and Times of Colonel John R. Stingo...
...It was this approach to politics, with its stress on the , burlesque and the grotesque, that made Liebling share the perspective of H.L...
...As Justice Frankfurter had painstakingly shown two years earlier in Baker v. Cart: However desirable and however desired by some among the great political thinkers and framers of our government, [equal population districting] has never been generally practiced today or in the past...
...Someone once told the story of a high school history teacher who liked to hold discussions and arguments in class on various topics...
...The Court dictated that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires both houses of a state legislaturemany state legislaturemto be apportioned on a "one man, one vote" basis, meaning that state legislators must represent equal numbers of people...
...The so-called federal analogy is inapposite, says the Chief Justice, because, whereas "[p]olitical subdivisions of States...
...The Most ofA.J...
...Without being a prig about it he was a stickler for standards...
...Steven R. Scblesinger & Bradford Wilson The Supreme Court: Fact-free Justice The high court'sprocedural dilemma resolved...
...One has only to consider a few of the Court's most significant decisions to see how little difference the facts can make...
...And although he gained a firm purchase on an extraordinary range of subjects from boxing to gastronomy, he left the posture of omniscience to others...
...The book that emerged from Liebling's reportage, The Earl of Louisiana, can be read as much as an account of pathological populism as a character study of a ludicrous and pathetic demagogue...
...Yet Chief Justice Warren argues that, due to the compromises made at the Constitutional Convention, the system of representation required of the national government by the Constitution has absolutely no relevance to the state reapportionment discussion...
...turers regularly set him off, not because he wasn't wild about capitalism (his father, after all, had done a sporadically thriving business as a furrier), but because he just couldn't abide smugness and pomposity...
...at the heart of our constitutional system remains the concept of The American Spectator May 1979...
...Whenever Liebling chose to write about politics, he paid more attention to the jostling of personalities than to ideologies...
...Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972...
...In writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice Warren repeatedly Steven R. Scblesinger is assistant professor and Bradford Wilson is a doctoral candidate in the department of politics at the Catholic University of America...
...How to do it is your own business...
...asserted the basic premise that "the fundamental principle of representative government in this country is one of equal representation for equal numbers of people...
...The way to write," he once said, "is well...
...New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962...
...Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970...
...It was not the English system, it was not the colonial system, it was not the system chosen for the national government by.the Constitution, it was not the system exclusively or even predominantly practiced by the states at the time of adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, it is not predominantly practiced by the states today...
...The problem with Warren's opinion lies not with the inferences he draws from his basic premise, but rather with the premise itself...
...Liebling was moved to inquire into Long's "affairs when in the midst of a reelection campaign the governor was trussed up and spirited off to a Texas hospital at the behest of his wife and nephew...
...Charged as his pieces so often were with romping irony, he never pretended to be wholly objective...
...It should surprise no one that they failed to discover any...
...He was indeed a rare amalgam of reporter and stylist, bent on getting the facts right and the phrases exact...
...Between Meals...
...They chased one another on and off the stage like characters in a Shakespearean battle scene, full of alarums and sorties...
...New York: Sheridan House, 1938...
...Liebling...
...never were and never have been considered as sovereign entities...
...No friend Of republican institutions would wish to see "the fundamental principle of representative government" vitiated by substantial exceptions to that principle...
...The Wayward Pressman...
...The Earl of Louisiana...
...New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961...
...New York: Simon & Schuster, 1963...
...Then, with a wave of its newly constructed rule, the Court declared the legislatures of all 15 states under review to be unconstitutionally apportioned...
...Liebling was on hand for Long's return to the fray: "It is difficult to report a speech by Uncle Earl chronologically, listing the thoughts in order of appearance...
Vol. 12 • May 1979 • No. 5
