Suchergebnisse

On July 19, 1949, Frank Murphy, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States died in Detroit. The liberal press mourned the passing of a mighty warrior for civil liberty. Other journals observed the protocol of the occasion by politely deploring his death, the University of Michigan Law School prepared a memorial issue of the Michigan Law Review' in honor of its distinguished alumnus, a few encomiums appeared in the law journals, then silence set in. A silence which has been broken only by occasional slighting references to Murphy's talents, and by a word-of-mouth tradition in law school circles that the Justice was a legal illiterate, a New Deal political hack who approached the sacred arcana of the Law with a disrespect that verged on blasphemy, who looked upon hallowed juridical traditions as a drunk views a lamp post: as a means of support rather than a source of light.

Every society, sociological research suggests, has its set of myths which incorporate and symbolize its political, economic, and social aspirations. Thus, as medieval society had the Quest for the Holy Grail and the cult of numerology, we, in our enlightened epoch, have as significant manifestations of our collective hopes the dream of impartial decision-making and the cult of "behavioral science." While in my view these latter two are but different facets of the same fundamental drive, namely, the age-old effort to exorcise human variables from human action, our concern here is with the first of them, the pervasive tendency in the American political and constitutional tradition directed towards taking the politics out of politics, and substituting some set of Platonic guardians for fallible politicians.