Torah reading: Deuteronomy 16:18 to 21:10
Haftarah: Isaiah 51:12 to 52:12
Today in America 100 years of social progress is under assault. Much of the charge is being led by ideological zealots in black robes. Long overruled court decisions may soon be resurrected; long discredited doctrines are being openly extolled. Right wing "jurists" are looking with favor on bringing back long discredited U.S. Supreme Court decisions such as United States v. E.C. Knight Co. (1895), which held that the federal government had no power to regulate manufacturing, and that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution limited regulation to goods actually within the "stream of commerce;"Lochner v. New York (1905), holding that the 14th Amendment provision stating that states may not deprive people of property without due process of law prohibited states from legislating the maximum number of hours per day workers could work - this law violated the employer's freedom of contract; Adkins v. D.C. Children's Hospital (1923), voiding similar federal legislation based on the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, and Morehead v. New York (1936) striking down New York's minimum wage law for women and minors, again on 14th Amendment grounds. This judicial philosophy, enshrining laissez faire and the enrichment of the already rich into the United States Constitution, was repudiated in SCOTUS decisions such as West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937), reversing Morehead and upholding a similar minimum wage law in Washington state, United States v. Carolene Products Co. (1938) upholding a federal law prohibiting dairies from adulterating milk with oil or fat, with its famous footnote 4 in which the SCOTUS majority announced that henceforth they would pay more attention to the rights of individuals rather than any imaginative right of business to be free of regulation, and Wickard v. Filburn (1942), holding that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution allowed Congress to regulate businesses who did not ship products out of state - as their activities had an indirect effect on interstate commerce. A whole body of law developed since 1937 may now be displaced by ideological zealots whose ideology has determined the result before they even hear the case.