To the Editor:
Re “The Most Conservative Court in Decades” (front page, July 25):
Describing the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.,
which has just completed its first five years, as “conservative” is to
accept the far right’s description of this court as a return to our
founding fathers’ original intent when creating our Constitution.
Was the original intent for the courts to tear down, brick by brick, the
wall of separation between church and state? Was the original intent to
have individuals, in elections, replaced by unions and corporations?
And was the original intent to have women who did not wish any more
children resort, once again, to back-alley abortions, with possible loss
of their lives? No!
This is not conservatism, a once-respected philosophy of our political
life. It is, quite simply, a reactionary philosophy that now dominates
the rightward march of the Republican Party, exemplified by the Tea
Party, to the same tune that the Roberts court is now marching to, with
results that do not bode well for our democracy.
Morris Roth
Fort Lee, N.J., July 25, 2010
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 