The circus is back in town

Fifty years ago there was a fragile consensus, even in our great law schools, about how justices were to go about doing their jobs. 

That consensus was formed by admiration for Felix Frankfurter, the occasionally mercurial, but stunningly brilliant, appointee of Franklin Roosevelt. 

Frankfurter, contrary to the later pattern of justices appointed by Republican presidents, moved to the right on the court, becoming more conservative with age. By the end of his career, in a series of thoughtful opinions, he had explained that the task of a justice was not to formulate new constitutional law according to his personal preferences, but, rather to exercise restraint and wisdom in preserving the original constitutional scheme of separation of powers and preeminence of state and local governments.