Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Creature Walks Among Us

2002; Penn State University Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/gso.2002.0030

1538-9731

Frederick P. Lewis,

Judicial and Constitutional Studies

In recent decades, the scholarly reaction to the Supreme Court's activism of the 1960s and early 1970s has been almost exclusively normative. The preponderant effort has been to show that the activism was wrong—that the Court abused its power by using it to excess. Most of the criticism can be fairly seen as a conservative ideological reaction to the liberal values that animated that activism. It coincided with significant changes in American politics: the decay of the political coalition that provided a climate of support for the broad thrust (if not all the details) of what is usually thought of as "Warren Court" activism, and the gradual coming to power of a new conservative coalition.