Roberts’s decision in Shelby County surprised few legal observers. As a judge, he has frequently ruled that state measures addressing racism are worse than racism. This is a deeply held philosophical perspective, one he has advanced since he was a young attorney in the Reagan Justice Department. In that role, he argued against adding a “disparate impact” provision to the Voting Rights Act. He was unsuccessful, but the provision would have barred voting restrictions that have discriminatory effects, whether intended or not. Such a standard, Roberts argued, would “provide a basis for the most intrusive interference imaginable.” The intrusive interference he feared was not with the ability of Americans to cast a ballot, but with the ability of states to prevent Americans from casting ballots.
That southern states employed facially race-neutral methods to disenfranchise their Black populations for the express purpose of evading the Constitution didn’t matter to Roberts then, and it doesn’t matter to him now. From the perspective of the Court’s conservative wing, the avalanche of voting restrictions Republicans have adopted since Shelby County are no crisis; the real concern is the incivility of liberals pointing out when these restrictions are discriminatory.
Under the logic of Roberts Court jurisprudence, not only would most Jim Crow voting restrictions pass constitutional muster, but even Vardaman’s boasting would be meaningless. As Roberts wrote in his opinion upholding the Trump administration’s travel ban targeting Muslim countries, Trump’s explicit declarations of discriminatory intent did not matter, because the lawyers who wrote the order didn’t mention religion. “The text says nothing about religion,” Roberts insisted, echoing McKenna’s assertion that the voting restrictions in Mississippi’s constitution were not “limited by their language or effects to one race. (Source)
And he's the "reasonable" conservative on the Supreme Court.
I object to Serwer's describing of Robert's views as philosophical; they are ideological. Philosophical means that you are willing to examine your own presuppositions; ideological means that you are captured by them.
Being 'an ideologue does not mean that you are evil or insincere; it just means that you are more often than not naively captured by a worldview or interpretive frame that just happens to support existing power arrangements. There are plenty of people, especially kings, who sincerely believed in the divine right of kings. There are many people, especially men with an identity stake in patriarchy, who sincerely believe in a fundamentalistic interpretation of the bible. There are plenty of people, especially members of the Federalist Society, who sincerely believe in original intent and strict textual interpretation of the constitution.
These are people who, no matter how cleverly they bend reality to fit into their interpretive frame, are incapable of dealing sanely and maturely with complexity. Ideologues are fearful people. And there is no "reasoning" with them so long as those underlying fears require that their ideology give their lives meaning and purpose.
At the end of the day, this these forms of ideological thinking are naive, reductive nonsense, and no intellectually honest person can take them seriously.
Pack the court. It's the only way to vitiate the influence of these Federalist Society ideologues.
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