Writing for #CreditSlips, the #FinanceLaw scholar #AdamLevitin admits to feeling a bit of schadenfreude in that moment. The "blue collar" law scholars in "grubby" banking and money fields have always treated the conlaw set as "slightly clueless toffs":

https://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2023/03/the-death-of-dodd-frank-banking-laws-dobbs-moment.html

As a field, conlaw fiercely resists the idea that their field is "largely a battle of normative opinions, without any quasi-objective touchstone or clearly right or wrong answers."

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Finance law, by contrast, firmly roots its understanding of outcomes in expediency and politics as much as the text of the law.

And of course, every conlaw scholar must know that - at certain points - the Supremes' most consequential decisions were political, overturning jurisprudence based on shifting cultural attitudes.

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Think of #AbrahamLincoln, whose anti-#slavery laws were repeatedly struck down by the #SCOTUS of the day. Lincoln's predecessors had filled the court with pro-slavery southerners who remained on the bench long after their home states had seceded from the Union:

https://theconversation.com/packing-the-court-amid-national-crises-lincoln-and-his-republicans-remade-the-supreme-court-to-fit-their-agenda-147139

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That court ruled in #DredScott that Black people were "so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit":

https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/dred-scott-v-sandford/

Small wonder that the Supreme Court was considered "the last stronghold of Southern power." The court consistently ruled against Lincoln and Lincoln simply ignored their rulings:

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/lincoln-and-taneys-great-writ-showdown

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Eventually, Lincoln hit on a very honorable solution to an illegitimate court that frustrated the political will of democratically accountable lawmakers: #PackTheCourt. He reorganized the Federal Circuits to purge federal judges who supported the Confederacy.

He also filled SCOTUS vacancies with loyalists. Even so, that didn't get him a majority - but he didn't need a majority - the political support and momentum of the anti-slavery movement flipped those recalcitrant judges.

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The law didn't change, but once those judges saw that they were standing athwart a vast social upheaval, those judges' formerly iron certainties about the law crumbled.

That wasn't the only time the Supremes discovered heretofore unsuspected flexibilities in their granite certainty about the Constitution. Under #FDR, a pro-oligarch Supreme Court consistently struck down the wildly popular #NewDeal policies that won him a landslide electoral victory.

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These decisions were widely denounced by legal scholars - and the public. As the court annihilated worker protections and programs to rebuilt the shattered economy, #FDR used the bully pulping to call the court a "no-man's-land where no Government— State or Federal—can function":

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-franklin-roosevelt-clashed-with-the-supreme-court-and-lost-78497994/

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