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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Five Worst Supreme Court Justices In American History, Ranked
5) Justice Clarence Thomas
Justice Clarence Thomas is the only current member of the Supreme Court who has explicitly embraced the reasoning of Lochner Era decisions striking down nationwide child labor laws and making similar attacks on federal power. Indeed, under the logic Thomas first laid out in a concurring opinion in United States v. Lopez, the federal minimum wage, overtime rules, anti-discrimination protections for workers, and even the national ban on whites-only lunch counters are all unconstitutional.
Though Thomass views are rare today, they have, sadly, not been the least bit uncommon during the Supreme Courts history. He makes this list because, frankly, he should know better than his predecessors. As I explain in Injustices, many of the justices who resisted progressive legislation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were, like Field, motivated by ideology. Many others, however, were motivated by fear of the rapid changes state and federal lawmakers implemented in the wake of the even more rapid changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. It was possible to believe, in a world where factories, railroads, and the laws required to regulate factories and railroads were all very new things, that these laws would, as Herbert Hoover once said about the New Deal, destroy the very foundations of our American system by extending government into our economic and social life.
But Thomas has the benefit of eighty years of American history that Hoover had not witnessed when he warned of an overreaching government. In that time, the Supreme Court largely abandoned the values embraced by Justice Field, and the United States became the mightiest nation in the history of politics and the wealthiest nation in the history of money.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/03/24/3636905/five-worst-supreme-court-justices-american-history-ranked/
NoJusticeNoPeace
(5,018 posts)dont care about having weekends off or a safe workplace or a decent wage or work comp coverage and many other things
like clean air and water
VOTE REPUBLICAN
because it is their agenda to DESTROY all that
okaawhatever
(9,462 posts)BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)"But some poor or black person may get some kind of assistance so I'm going to go shoot myself in the face."
Gothmog
(145,563 posts)Thomas belongs on this list
byronius
(7,401 posts)Perhaps through legal lenses, these five are the worst. But Scalia is arguably more responsible than any other justice for actual mass death of humans and many other species.
Antonin Scalia is openly, proudly, criminal. I think he tops the list by far.
Interesting article for sure.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)if a law is constitutional or not (which rightly belongs to the people and NOT over privileged judges), they have acted like little spoiled kings. And as kings of America, they give their favors to the rich and powerful.
They crush the people whenever they get a chance and they delight in their meanness.