Get Oliphant his snuff box and the handkerchief he keeps in his sleeve. Here is his snooty self on Roberts:

I have no doubt that his encyclopedic knowledge of constitutional history includes a detailed understanding of Plessy v. Ferguson, the landmark abomination that enshrined segregation in 1896 for another 58 years under the delusional mantra of ”separate but equal.” It wouldn’t surprise me if Judge Roberts could quote sentences from Justice Henry Brown’s majority opinion on behalf of eight brethren and even from John Harlan’s passionate dissent.

But I doubt very much that Roberts knows beans about Homer Plessy, and I can imagine him being tripped up even if asked Plessy’s first name. It is that human face of justice, or injustice, that concerns me, and, from the available record anyway, has never interested Roberts.

What interests us is Oliphant’s assumption that Roberts would be more familiar with the majority opinion in Plessy than in John Marshall Harlan’s famous dissent, from which this:

[I]n view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is colorblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.

In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved. It is therefore to be regretted that this high tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a state to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race.

In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott Case.

Harlan’s lone and amazingly prescient dissent is what is memorable about Plessy today, not the majority opinion. Harlan, who was a former slave owner, is credited with coining the phrase: our constitution is colorblind. He served as an inspiration for generations to follow. This from an article by Charles Thompson, available at the University of Louisville, where his papers reside):

Even a full century after its delivery in 1896, Harlan’s eloquent defense of civil rights for black Americans retains its power. Indeed, it was a fount of inspiration for one of the great lawyers of the century, the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. At a 1993 ceremony in memory of Marshall, a colleague, Constance Baker Motley, recalled that when Marshall was the lead attorney in the NAACP’s fight to end segregation, he picked himself up in low moments by reading aloud from Harlan’s dissent. And he cited it in Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 case that finally overturned Plessy v. Ferguson. As quoted in Judicial Enigma, a new biography of Harlan, Judge Motley said: “Marshall admired the courage of Harlan more than any justice who has ever sat on the Supreme Court. Even Chief Justice Earl Warren’s forthright and moving decision for the court in Brown did not affect Marshall in the same way. Earl Warren was writing for a unanimous Supreme Court. Harlan was a solitary and lonely figure writing for posterity.”

Oliphant’s is the very worst kind of liberal condescension. It appears to us that, because Roberts is a conservative — and Republican, as was Justice Harlan — he is characterized by Oliphant as somehow implicitly racist. Roberts, summa at Harvard College and subsequently editor of the Law Review, is not credited with the level of knowledge that can be found among average, well-educated Americans in the matter of Plessy v. Ferguson. Frankly we thought that even someone like Oliphant would grant Roberts better.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 13th, 2005 at 7:24 am and is filed under Democrats, General, MSM, art, culture, radical chic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.