The ‘Dirty Dozen’ – with two totally unexpected omissions

Over the time I have read them – and it is my belief that even vehemently anti-Catholic people should read the “BACVR” Right simply to understand and know them – I have become aware that American conservatives have come to believe that “activist” judges in the Supreme Court have used their power to expand government beyond what the American Constitution intended.

Powerful feelings about the sinfulness of artificial birth control and homosexuality (regarding which there does not exist a single landmark Court case pre-Obama) tends to make 1973’s Roe v. Wade and 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey regarded by “casual” conservatives as the worst court cases, and those two are certainly the most discussed in “politically incorrect” books on the Supreme Court. The view of these court cases – even with judges like Antonin Scalia – is not based upon Catholic moral viewpoints forbidding abortion, but on the belief that the issue belongs exclusively to the states. In fact, the Supreme Court has never so far as I know been petitioned by the Catholic (or other traditional churches) to rule laws permitting abortion illegal, although such a paper could certainly exist inside sealed Court archives.

Robert A. Levy’s and William Mellor’s ‘Dirty Dozen’ cases comprise instead (in chronological order):

• Home Building and Loan Association v. Blaisdell (1934)
• Helvering v. Davis (1937)
• United States v. Carolene Products (1938)
• United States v. Miller (1939)
• Wickard v. Filburn (1942)
• Korematsu v. United States (1944)
• Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York (1978)
• Bennis v. Michigan (1996)
• Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)
• McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003)
• Kelo v. City of New London (2005)
• District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)

What this list seems to confirm is that the “Millennial” generation, like the early “Interbellum” generation, is one that places great emphasis upon economic security at all costs, and that this tendency extends much further up the social ladder than just the working class.

Before the 1930s, the US – like Australia – had a distinctly religious and conservative proletariat of Irish Catholics forced out by the potato famine, but in that decade support for socialism (the dominant ideology of all working classes in Latin America and Eurasia) grew substantially as I note here, probably as a result of improvements to farming technology reducing the number of farmers in the Enriched World in favour of the more efficient Tropical and Unenriched lands. There is a possible element of “critical mass” in these legislations from both the 1930s and the 1990s/2000s (a residue from working classes radicalised by musicians like AC/DC, Metallica, Pantera and N.W.A. and perhaps the “New Atheism”).