A More Modest Ohio Supreme Court
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 By David Owsiany
The Federalist Society just published a new white paper, A More Modest Court: The Ohio Supreme Court’s Newfound Judicial Restraint, written by Case Western Reserve law professor Jonathan Adler and his wife Christina. This excellent paper documents what we’ve argued for some time that changes to court personnel due to retirements and recent elections have created a court that is much less activist than in the past. A decade ago, the court would go out of its way to overturn laws (school funding, tort reform, workers’ compensation reform, etc.) passed by the General Assembly and signed by the governor, based largely on the personal policy preferences of the justices. As the Adlers write:
The court was once known for its willingness to recraft statutes, expand liability, and broaden constitutional provisions. Over the past several years this has begun to change, however. In a broad number of cases, covering a wide range of areas, the court has announced its intention to provide greater deference to legislative enactments and resist creating new causes of action or expanding existing bases for tort liability. The result is a more modest state supreme court.”
October 1st, 2008 at 6:05 am
An important and gracious work. And a nod to the court. Few things are more important than a court that understands its job is plenty important, and plenty difficult, when it limits itself to enforcing laws, rather than doing good.
BTW, Cupp played an important role in the DeRolph litigation, too. In his role in the senate, he called for the use of district data in evaluating how schools were performing, in what is currently available at the Ohio Department of Education site under this description: “Finance and Other Data (formerly the Cupp Report)”, http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEPrimary.aspx?page=2&TopicRelationID=401