Daily Howler - June 7, 2005

FOOLS FOR NON-SCANDAL (PART 1)! Are New York City's kids on the march? A skeptical scribe got it right!

TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 2005

HOW THE EDITORIALS SAVED CIVILIZATION: The lead editorial in this morning’s Post argues against the confirmation of Janice Rogers Brown. Early on, the editors discuss Brown’s views on something called “the Lochner era:”

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL (6/7/05): Justice Brown, in speeches, has openly embraced the "Lochner" era of Supreme Court jurisprudence. During this period a century ago, the court struck down worker protection laws that, the justices held, violated a right to free contract they found in the Constitution's due process protections. There exist few areas of greater agreement in the study of constitutional law than the disrepute of the "Lochner" era, whose very name—taken from the 1905 case of Lochner v. New York—has become a code word for judicial overreaching. Justice Brown, however, has dismissed the famed dissent in Lochner by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, saying it "annoyed her" and was "simply wrong”...

According to the editorial, Brown “has not just given provocative speeches; ‘Lochnerism-lite’ is a fairly good shorthand for her work on the bench, where she has sought to use the takings doctrine aggressively.” The editorial goes on to discuss a particular ruling by Brown.