The Author Of Your Constitutional Law Textbook Thinks Supreme Court Justices Are 'Partisan Hacks'

This law school dean knows what he's talking about.

(Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

If Supreme Court justices don’t want to be seen as “partisan hacks,” they should not act like them. …

[Justice Amy Coney] Barrett’s protest against the justices being seen as “partisan hacks” rings hollow when that is what they have become. And it is risible to say that “judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties.” I would challenge her to give a single instance where the conservative justices on the court took positions that were at odds with the views of the Republican Party. …

Supreme Court decisions always have been and always will be a product of the ideology of the justices. No one — least of all a Supreme Court justice — should pretend otherwise.

— Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of the UC Berkeley School of Law, a constitutional law scholar, offering his thoughts in a Los Angeles Times op-ed on Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s claim that the Supreme Court isn’t full of “a bunch of partisan hacks.”


Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.