Conservative Court?

[RJLipkin at aol.com]

Much of this response is  tendentious and idiosyncratic at least from my 
perspective. Let me make some  brief points: (1) Wittgenstein would never 
characterize "liberal" and  "conservative" as having simply one ordinary meaning and 
one technical  meaning. (2) Empirical investigation of political philosophical 
terms either has  content tied to ordinary language or it does not. I don't 
recognize the meanings  of the terms "conservative" or "liberal" in Sean's post. 
Were we to engage in  Wittgensteinian analysis, it would generate, I'm sure, 
several interesting  senses of both terms or ways to use them. So when 
empirical  research assesses judges in these terms, which sense is being 
investigated?  (3) Ignoring concepts with political philosophical content and restricting  
them instead to some narrow empirical construct distorts ordinary language as 
 well as places an enormous obstacle in the hopeful enterprise of revising  
ordinary language. (4) Comparing justices, regarding their conservatism or  
liberalism, is woefully incomplete, in my view, without appealing to political  
philosophical concepts and arguments. (5) To say "So the point is this: you 
seem  to want to know to what extent ABSTRACT IDEAS  (libertarianism, 
egalitarianism) affect judicial choice. The variable  coding in the supreme court data 
base really isn't concerned with  that." simply begs the question of the use of 
abstract content in empirical  inquiry or ignores other possible perspectives 
on the relationship between  abstract conceptual content and empirical 
inquiry. And, if that's so, from  my perspective, so much the worse for the supreme 
court data base.
 
        I suspect we're talking  past each other. Our purposes are probably 
radically different. In that regard  it might have been more helpful had you 
simply answered my questions  succinctly and directly. But I suspect the breach 
might be too broad between  us.
 
Bobby 
 
Robert Justin  Lipkin
Professor of Law
Widener University School of  Law
Delaware
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