Jack Balkin.
The Five Worst Supreme Court Decisions of the Past Fifty Years
David Savage of the L.A. Times asked me to list the worst Supreme Court decisions of the past fifty years—dating back to 1958. It’s hard to say what makes a decision bad. It could be an incorrect reading of precedent, a mangling of history, or a failure to exercise judgment and understand the long-term consequences of a decision. In any case, here is a list of five decisions that I think, for various reasons, are the worst of the past half-century, and why I think they were bad.