The Law of Small Numbers: Gonzales V. Carhart, Parents Involved in Community Schools, and some Themes from the First Full Term of the Roberts Court
The Law of Small Numbers: Gonzales V. Carhart, Parents Involved in Community Schools, and some Themes from the First Full Term of the Roberts Court
Pamela S. Karlan, 86 N.C. L. Rev. 1369 (2008)
(An excerpt is below. To view the full text, please use Westlaw, Lexis, a law library or alternative source.)
This Article uses two of the blockbuster decisions of the 2006 Term, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 and Gonzales v. Carhart (Carhart II), as a lens for considering how the Roberts Court may deal with key questions of constitutional law. It begins by showing that the divisions among the Justices are not just doctrinal or methodological, but may reflect deep disagreements in their cultural worldviews. These disagreements, which have also appeared in some of the Court’s other opinions, may foreshadow a Court sharply divided across a wide range of issues. The Article then turns to how the Court’s decisions handle two central features of constitutional adjudication: the level of deference to be accorded to the political branches and the method of constitutional challenge. It suggests that the Roberts Court may be embarking upon an attempt to reintegrate desegregation and abortion rights jurisprudence into more general constitutional categories. Finally, this Article looks at how the Court’s opinions in Parents Involved and Carhart II stake their claim to legitimacy as the true heirs to central values derived from Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade.