Adam Carrington on the Supreme Court's Embrace of Self-Government
The Radio Free Hillsdale Hour
Hillsdale College
4.8 • 650 Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2023
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Guests: Adam Carrington, Mark Hemingway, James Brandon, and Anna Bassols '24
Host Scot Bertram talks with Adam Carrington, Associate Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College, about his recent essay on the Supreme Court's recent embrace of self-government. Mark Hemingway, senior writer at RealClearInvestigations, joins the show to discuss his piece on the rising number of federal bureaucrats now granted the authority to carry guns and make arrests. James Brandon, Chairman and Professor of Theatre at Hillsdale, returns to tell us about American theatre in the age of film. And Anna Bassols '24 recounts what it was like to uncover Charger artifacts from more than 100 years of Hillsdale athletic history.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country. |
| 0:25.4 | The Dobbs opinion in some ways is one of the greatest transfers of power away from a branch, maybe since the Congress gave away a lot of its power over the welfare system in the 90s. |
| 0:37.3 | This is your host Scott Bertram, and that's Dr. Adam Carrington, |
| 0:41.6 | Associate Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College. |
| 0:44.9 | Find them on Twitter at Carrington AM. |
| 0:47.6 | We talk in depth with Dr. Carrington today about an essay he recently wrote, |
| 0:51.8 | Defending the Supreme Court from attacks coming from the left. |
| 0:55.0 | Dr. Carrington, thanks for joining us. |
| 0:56.9 | Thanks for having me again. |
| 0:58.2 | Talking about a piece you wrote a little bit back for The Spectator, which is at |
| 1:02.3 | The Spectator.com, headlined, no, the Supreme Court isn't democratic. |
| 1:08.4 | And there's really two claims that you respond to in the piece. One is |
| 1:12.1 | the undemocratic and the second is this claim of judicial activism of the current court. Let's |
| 1:17.6 | ask about that one first. What do critics mean when they accuse this court of judicial activism? |
| 1:24.9 | Well, fundamentally, judicial activism is first and foremost legislating while being |
| 1:32.0 | part of the non-legislative branch, the judicial branch. And the question therefore being |
| 1:37.6 | did in the particular action they took, did they make law? And but here, so here the argument is either that they're making law |
| 1:47.2 | in the actions that they've been taking, and they're particularly thinking of the new court with |
| 1:51.8 | the six Republican appointed nominees once Justice Barrett was added. The other is the claim |
| 1:58.2 | that being activists is not merely legislating when you shouldn't be as a judge, but undoing precedent, precedent being the previous decisions and especially longstanding opinions of the court. |
| 2:10.4 | So especially the overturning of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. |
| 2:15.0 | And so those are the basis of those two actions, either that they're |
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