on Capitol Hill to announce the May issuernof Chronicles, which—as readers willrnremember—focused on foreign lobbying.rnThe principal essayists for the issuernwere all present to offer brief remarks tornkey members of Congress and the media.rnChilton Williamson, Jr., senior editorrnfor books at Chronicles, participated in arnLiberty Fund conference entitled “Libertyrnand Individualism in Western Literature”rnfrom April 15-18 in Jackson,rnWyoming. And Harold O.J. Brown, directorrnof The Rockford Institute Centerrnon Religion and Society and editor ofrn• the Religion and Society Report, is helpingrnto organize the Fifteenth Annual InternationalrnSeminar on Theology andrnHuman Rights, with special emphasisrnon the right to life, to be held in conjunctionrnwith the International Instituternof Human Rights in Strasbourg, France,rnfrom July 1-31.rnLast, just out from the University ofrnSouth Carolina Press is That’s What IrnLike (About the South), And Other NewrnSouthern Stories for the Nineties, editedrnby Ceorge P. Garrett (a contributing editorrnof Chronicles and recipient of thern1989 Ingersoll T.S. Eliot Award for CreativernWriting) and Paul Ruffin (professorrnof English at Sam Houston State Universityrnand founding editor of the TexasrnReview). Featuring such authors as FredrnChappell and Madison Smartt Bell, thisrngathering of 31 stories grew out of arnTexas Review competition to find andrnpublish outstanding new Southern fiction.rnIt is, as David R. Slavitt writes, “furtherrnevidence of the continuing vitality,rnand centrality, of regional culture inrnAmerica.”rnPrincipalities & Powersrnby Samuel FrancisrnA Perpetual CensorrnWhen Supreme Court Justice ByronrnWhite announced his retirement fromrnpublic life in March of this year, a shudderrnrippled down the spines of Washingtonrnconservatives. Previously, whenrnone or another of the Court’s NamelessrnNine had declared his intention to quitrnthe pleasures of wrecking the laws andrncustoms of local communities he hadrnnever heard of and spend his remainingrnyears improving his golf game, the BeltwayrnRight had rubbed its hands in glee.rnEvery new vacancy on the Court meantrnan opportunity to plug one of its ownrneruditi into the empty socket of Americanrnjurisprudence, and even if the SenaternJudiciary Committee thwarted itsrnplans and succeeded in ruining eachrnconservative nominee’s reputation by exposingrnhim as a rake, a reactionary, or arnscholar who had had too many ideas,rnthere still remained a bottomless pit ofrnmoney to be raised and volumes of articlesrnto be scribbled on the subject of thernunfairness and hypocrisy of it all.rnYet, with the exception of RobertrnBork, all of the Republican nominees tornthe Court in the 1980’s were confirmed,rnand by the end of the decade one wouldrnhave expected a genuine legal counterrevolutionrnto have been triumphant orrnwell under way. The last major decisionrnof the Court in the Reagan-Bush era,rnhowever, was a signal failure to overturnrnthe 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling by which arnright to abortion had suddenly been discoveredrnglimmering in the shadowy bottomsrnof the constitutional text, and sincernno small part of the conservative reactionrnagainst “judicial activism” was generatedrnby outrage over the Roe decision, therninability of conservative legal hounds tornbring it to bay must be chalked up as onernmore blind alley down which the ReaganrnRevolution blundered. Indeed, the reasonrnconservative spines should tinglernwhen incumbent justices contemplaternretirement nowadays is that the Republicanrnascendancy of the 1980’s did virtuallyrnnothing to diminish the swollenrnpower that the Court has grabbed for itselfrnthroughout this century. Hence,rnwhen King Bill and his consort replacernretiring Justices with the obscurities, misfits,rnand malcontents whom we must expectrnthem to choose, the new Solomonsrnwill receive intact almost all of the powerrnthat their predecessors accumulatedrnand that the Republicans and their appointeesrndid nothing to dismantle. Ofrncourse, the Court did sway a bit to thernright under the influence of the Republicanrnappointments, but at no time didrnthe Reagan-Bush justices seriously seekrnto reverse and reduce the grandiose pretensionsrnof the Court’s power or undornthe damage inflicted on the Republicrnby Earl Warren and his colleagues.rnThe premise of the Warren revolutionrnand the ruin it made of the Republicrnwas the dogma handed down fromrnthe 1920’s through the 1940’s known asrnthe “Incorporation Doctrine,” accordingrnto which the Bill of Rights is “incorporated”rnwithin the meaning of the I4thrnAmendment. Originally intended as arnseries of limitations on the federalrngovernment, the Bill of Rights, as illuminatedrnby the Incorporation Doctrine,rnhas evolved into a constraint on staternand local powers and an anvil on whichrnlegal and judicial elites can sledgehammerrnlocal and state laws and proceduresrnthat stand in the way of their politicalrnpreferences. Legal scholar Paul Murphy,rna champion of Warren and his works,rnactually acknowledges the transparentlyrnpolitical baggage that the former ChiefrnJustice successfully snuck under the constitutionalrntent. Warren, writes Murphy,rn”utilized the judiciary as a constructivernpolicymaking instrument in a wide rangernof areas. Intent more upon social endsrnthan upon legal subtleties and refinements,rnand candidly prepared to say so,rnhe had pushed the nation, through hisrnCourt’s legal rulings, to take public actionsrnthat Congress was unprepared tornrecommend and the executive was incapable,rnunilaterally, of effectively securing.”rnIn other words, since voters and theirrnelected representatives persisted in thernnasty habit of repulsing the legalistic hurricanesrnthat continuously erupt fromrnthe nervous systems of the ACLU, thernNAACP, labor unions, and communistrnfront groups, it was left up to the valorrnand ingenuity of such decrepit apostlesrnof progress as Warren himself, HarryrnBlackmun, the late Thurgood Marshall,rnWilliam O. Douglas, and William Brennanrnto fob off on states and cities thern”true meaning” of the Constitution asrndiscerned by these sages, and the IncorporationrnDoctrine was the principal toolrnby which they did so. As conservative le-rn10/CHRONICLESrnrnrn