Because.

Nathan Newman wonders why liberals are stepping up to defend the courts, pointing to some unpleasant realities...

But the largest crime of our courts historically was their reactionary defense of slavery before the Civil War, as embodied in Dred Scott, then their destruction of Reconstruction in the 1870s. We fought a bloody war to end slavery and oppression, yet the courts stole that victory with a series of decisions that struck down civil rights laws and destroyed the right to vote for blacks in the south. With raw antidemocratic arrogance, the Supreme Court in the 1870s licensed mass murder and lynchings of black people as a tool to end Reconstruction.

Almost all liberals are willfully blind on this bloody responsibility of the courts for sanctioning racial violence and inequality. The progressivism of the Warren Court was a complete aberration in our history, yet liberals defend courts as if most courts haven't been the worst bastions of racism and privilege throughout our history.

I'm not 'almost all liberals,' but my defense of an independent judiciary doesn't depend on willfull blindness to the historical record - or the current reality, for that matter. There is, I admit, a healthy dose of idealism involved, though.

While every particular court has and will issued decisions which merit condemnation and applause, the principle of constitutional government depends on an independent, co-equal judiciary to survive, and I'm a proponent of the principle of constitutional government. It really comes down to that, doesn't it?

The liberal defense of the courts, then - or, at least, this liberal's defense of the courts - is independent of my agreement with any particular decision or endorsement of an admittedly mixed history. The radical destructionists would have you believe that the function of the courts is simply to endorse and enforce any legislative action, establishing, in effect, a legislative tyranny. The courts, however, are not obligated to bend to the will of the legislative branch, or, for that matter, the will of the people. The courts have only one ultimate obligation - to measure the actions of our government against the charter our government.

They do so imperfectly, of course, as any institution composed of human beings and subject to human judgement will. They are, however, the ultimate check which provides balance in our system of goverment of laws, rather than of men.

The destructionists hate the Constitution. They despise the liberties it preserves, and chafe under the responsibilities it commands. They would happily destroy those liberties and responsibilities through legislative action while they are in the ascendency, and it might prove impossible to correct the most egregious of their actions when their power inevitably recedes. In the current setting, the courts are our only line of defense, and they are under attack.

Just as it's a liberal obligation to recognize the errors of the courts and struggle for correction of those errors, it's a liberal obligation to defend the courts against the destructionist assault.

This liberal's obligation, anyway.