Mark Tushnet, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School, a former president of the Association of American Law Schools, and the author of many of the books that America’s law students use while in college, has joined forces with a political-science professor from San Francisco State University to write an open letter to President Biden urging him to begin openly ignoring the Supreme Court:
We urge President Biden to restrain MAGA justices immediately by announcing that if and when they issue rulings that are based on gravely mistaken interpretations of the Constitution that undermine our most fundamental commitments, the Administration will be guided by its own constitutional interpretations.
I contended recently that the Left has no comprehensible judicial philosophy. This is a good example of that problem. There is no principle on display here, and there is no use pretending otherwise. By “mistaken interpretations,” Tushnet means decisions that he personally dislikes. By “fundamental commitment,” he means political outcomes that he personally desires. By “MAGA justices,” he means members of the Supreme Court whom he personally wishes had not been nominated and confirmed. He provides no rubrics, frameworks, standards, canons, doctrines, or objective arguments of any sort in the course of his proposition. Why not? Because he doesn’t have any.
As Tushnet goes on to confirm: