A Court That Obeys the Law

The 1988-1989 term of the United States Supreme Court witnessed the most dramatic single-year change in constitutional and statutory interpretive principles since the birth of the Court two centuries ago.

The Court made the express language and purpose of the Constitution and laws once again the touchstone for adjudication. Over the previous four decades, the Court had increasingly employed the “spirit” of a statute, or ambiguous snippets of legislative history, or the Justices’ idiosyncratic notions of wise or compassionate public policy to inform the judicial task of interpretation. But in the term just ended, the Court jettisoned the longstanding practice of straining, contorting, or bending the Constitution or a law to favor claims advanced by racial groups that were believed helpless in legislative chambers or subject to substantial social hostility. The Court additionally clipped the practice of stretching laws designed to correct wrongdoing so as to ensure that an injured party could obtain money from the government.

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Bruce Fein

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The 1988-1989 term of the United States Supreme Court witnessed the most dramatic single-year change in constitutional and statutory interpretive principles since the birth of the Court two centuries ago.

The Court made the express language and purpose of the Constitution and laws once again the touchstone for adjudication. Over the previous four decades, the Court had increasingly employed the “spirit” of a statute, or ambiguous snippets of legislative history, or the Justices’ idiosyncratic notions of wise or compassionate public policy to inform the judicial task of interpretation. But in the term just ended, the Court jettisoned the longstanding practice of straining, contorting, or bending the Constitution or a law to favor claims advanced by racial groups that were believed helpless in legislative chambers or subject to substantial social hostility. The Court additionally clipped the practice of stretching laws designed to correct wrongdoing so as to ensure that an injured party could obtain money from the government.