New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie is an avid reader with a particular interest in American history.  In today’s column, he describes various books he has been reading lately.  Two of the books are relevant to the recent audacious decisions by the Supreme Court majority to radically redirect legal doctrine by using dubious jurisprudential methods.  He writes:

I read two books by Eric J. Segall, a professor of law at the Georgia State University College of Law. The first was “Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court Is Not a Court and Its Justices Are Not Judges.”  The second was “Originalism as Faith.”  These slim volumes pack a big punch.  In “Supreme Myths,” Segall makes a strong argument that the Supreme Court is and has always been a political body that adjudicates public policy, not a court in the traditional sense, bound by precedent and clear rules of interpretation.  And in “Originalism as Faith” he takes aim at the practice of “originalism,” a method for constitutional interpretation that claims to center the original public meaning of the Constitution.  His argument, in short, is that the doctrine is little more than a pretext for achieving conservative political outcomes.

From a very different political perspective, Harvard Law Professor Adrian Vermeule makes a similar argument in the Washington Post, trashing the majority’s unprincipled approach to the Court’s decision limiting executive agencies’ authority, in this case, the EPA:

The conservative legal movement distinguishes itself from other approaches by declaring itself united not around “results-oriented jurisprudence” but rather around a set of supposedly neutral methods for interpreting legal texts. Conservative jurisprudence — again, as advertised — has four pillars: originalism, textualism, traditionalism and judicial restraint.  Although different conservatives emphasize one or the other approach, all are staples of Federalist Society events and lauded in the opinions of conservative justices.  It is grimly hilarious, then, that the court’s opinion in West Virginia v. EPA follows none of these methods.

The same critique could apply to the Court’s other radical revanchist opinions, such as those abolishing the constitutional right to abortion and severely limiting governmental authority to reduce gun violence.

Mr. Bouie’s column also discusses books dealing with various other issues.

Take a look.