Court of opinion, or court of law?

Re “A case for bold dissent,” Opinion, July 9

Disappointed that the U.S. Supreme Court does not sufficiently “reflect the true range of lay and scholarly thought” on several important legal issues, UCLA law Professor Michaels asks for louder voices of dissent among the liberal justices.

A more aggressive dissent, he asserts, “can expose and undo the court’s ideological pathologies.”

Apparently, only views opposed to his own can be ideologically pathological. He believes that the court’s “blind eye to the realities of structural poverty, racism, sexism and homophobia” can be rejected by a more assertive progressive court. With only a passing mention of Congress, he wants the court to make laws that reflect his opinion of the “legal, political, and demographic changes wrought by modernity.”

To the professor, only a select group of judges can plot the proper path for America. Michaels makes it clear that he prefers a court of opinion rather than a court of law. Scott Perley

Irvine