U.S. Supreme Court
Aug. 17, 2022
Consequences matter
The lesson from all of this is that all of the justices, whether they openly admit it or not, are making value choices as to what consequences matter. Judicial opinions would be far better if both sides recognized this and did not pretend that the decisions are the result of a neutral methodology.
Erwin Chemerinsky
Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law
UC Berkeley School of Law
Erwin's most recent book is "Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism." He is also the author of "Closing the Courthouse," (Yale University Press 2017).
For all that has been written about the Supreme Court term that ended on June 30, there has been little attention to a stunning pattern. The liberal dissenting justices consistently emphasized the real-world consequences of the rulings, while the conservative majority never acknowledged them.
For example, in New York Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Court struck down a century-old New York law that required a person to sh...
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