Justice Right Face!

In the final stretch of a momentous term, a conservative majority solidifies its hold on the Supreme Court and prepares an assault on the Warren legacy

The former Supreme Court Justice William Brennan used to tell his clerks, "Five votes can do anything around here." That was in the days when Brennan regularly stitched together a narrow liberal majority on a high bench that was delicately balanced between left and right. Those days are over. Five votes can still do anything. But now it's the court's increasingly assertive right wing that usually has them -- and sometimes more.

As the court heads toward the conclusion of its latest term, it has finally completed its decades-long transformation from the liberal bastion of former Chief Justice Earl Warren into...

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