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simple history of the development of the court(s)
FIRST, Marbury v. Madison - Marshall says: this IS my job, Adams, get over it - establishing the principle of judicial review
SECOND thing to know: the US legal system in the nineteenth century (per Horwitz and Hurst mainly) is deeply affected by social, economic, and political transformations - leading to major changes in private law
THIRD: I would argue that public and constitutional law during this period is largely chilling - there are major cases obvi, but the big changes to legal formalism won& #39;t come about until the late nineteenth century
FOURTH: bam, reconstruction amendments, esp. good old #14 - deals a major blow to Progressives and social reformers, w/Lochner the court says "we& #39;re not gonna let legislatures do whatever they want" -substantive due process paired with narrow interpretation of congressional power
FIVE: Lochner = defense of conservative orthodoxy during a period of intense social and economic change in the US - these changes come to a head in the courts by the FDR era when the court finally boots pure formalism for a more realist approach to cases
SIX: Ollie Holmes helps bolster the legal realist movement, Lochner era basically ends with Parrish in 1937, the court becomes less dickish in certain cases, it& #39;s still bad, it& #39;s always been bad
SEVEN: Earl Warren, badass, man of our dreams - this court expanded civil rights, liberties and ultimately judicial power during this period
EIGHT: Burger - yup a real justice - basically continues the liberal-ish-ness of the warren court...but then BAM well known jackass Rehnquist takes control of the court in 1986 - and SCOTUS has basically been extra shitty since
NINE: this isn& #39;t about what happens after Rehnquist - just pointing out that other shit is happening in law too - and almost anything that happens to american social, economic, and political life from 1783-2020 has affected our legal system in some way - usually for the worse
TEN: substantive due process is bad, sucks to suck anthony kennedy
ELEVEN: didn& #39;t include this, but local courts are changing dramatically too, Chicago is a great example—until the early twentieth century most judges in Chitown were hacks, but then the municipal court=a flexible use of law, rejection of formalism, and an escape from common law
eleven ctd: this court in chicago meant that eventually law had an even deeper reach in people& #39;s lives
TWELVE: the biggest issue that legal historians and people today too deal with (imho) is how to explain what Kalman calls the "counter majoritarian difficulty" - why should nine unelected judges decide policy in a democratic-republic?
the answer? i don& #39;t know.
the answer? i don& #39;t know.
