The End of Public-Employee Unions?

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/the-end-of-public-employee-unions/385690/

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Constitutional scholars sometimes like to commend courts for what they call “the passive virtues”—a reluctance to become involved in constitutional dispute, a reticence to announce new rules, a preference for standing by earlier decisions (“stare decisis”).

Judges, too, like to cite what they call “the canon of constitutional avoidance,” a set of rules designed to avoid unnecessary constitutional decisions. In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton promised that the new union’s courts would have “have neither force nor will, but merely judgment.”

The truth is that since at least Marbury v. Madison, Courts and Justices have hinted, signaled, begged, and reached out to litigants to bring them issues where one or more justice thinks the law needs to change.On the current Court, few of the Justices have signaled quite as vigorously as Justice Samuel Alito. Alito, a man of firm likes and dislikes, has twice questioned the constitutionality of public-employee contracts. Neither case, however, presented the chance to invalidate them.

Now his moment may have come. In response to Alito’s hints, the issue has landed squarely in the Court’s inbox in the form of a petition for review in a suit against the California Teachers Association. If Alito gets his desired result, it will deal a long-lasting blow to union power—and, perhaps by coincidence, the Democratic Party.