About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

49 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 339 (1992)
Contempt of Court: The Most Important Contemporary Challenge to Judging

handle is hein.journals/waslee49 and id is 351 raw text is: CONTEMPT OF COURT: THE MOST IMPORTANT CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGE TO JUDGING S FoRD LEVINSON* Both Chief Justice Rehnquist's and Judge Wilkinson's speeches, deliv- ered as part of a program on contemporary challenges to judging, are fascinating. Given the ceremonial occasion, the dedication of a new wing of the Washington and Lee Law School library housing the papers of Justice Lewis Powell, one might well have expected traditional encomia to the law and reiteration of conventional pieties about the strict separation between law and politics. Instead the audience was privileged to hear candid talk about the fragmentation-indeed, in Judge Wilkinson's word, the polari- zation-characteristic of the contemporary legal universe. A key aspect of this reality is an ever diminishing willingness to defer to judges as oracles of the law, in part because of the almost universal recognition that law and politics are indeed inextricably intertwined. Altogether typical of the contemporary mood is the remarkable state- ment by Yale Law School Dean Guido Calabresi, in a column explaining why he supported the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the United States Supreme Court. I despise the current Supreme Court, Calabresi wrote, and find its aggressive, willful, statist behavior disgusting. . . ., What is so startling about Dean Calabresi's comment is not its sentiments, which are widely shared at least within the legal academy, but his willingness to say so publicly. Lest one think that only the left'2 speaks harshly of a conservative Court, one should be aware that denizens of the so-called New Right, throughout the 1980s, attacked Justice Brennan, among other liberal jurists, in terms suggesting that he simply had no respect for constitutional values and willfully subordinated the Constitution to his own pernicious political agenda. Indeed, Justice Scalia, in some of his dissents, seems to think little better of some of his own current colleagues. Many factors, of course, explain these developments. Law is only one aspect of our more general cultural surround, and legal fragmentation amply * W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr., Regents Chair in Law, University of Texas Law School; Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School, 1991-92. This essay is based on some distinctly informal comments delivered as part of a panel on Contemporary Challenges to Judging that took place on April 4, 1992, as part of the symposium celebrating the opening of the Lewis Powell wing of the library of the Washington and Lee Law School. I am grateful to the editors and staff of the Washington and Lee Law Review for the hospitality extended me on that occasion. 1. Guido Calabresi, What Clarence Thomas Knows, N.Y. TnsS, July 28, 1991, § 4, at 15. 2. Though it is far more accurate to describe Calabresi as a centrist rather than a leftist, as evidenced by his support, however tepid, of the Thomas nomination. 3. See, e.g., his opinion in Planned Parenthood of S.E. Penn. v. Casey, 60 U.S.L.W. 4795, 4835 (U.S. June 29, 1992).

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most