Civil Rights Reverses

Randall L. Kennedy takes the Supreme Court to task over its recent decision in Patterson vs. McLean Credit Union, a workplace anti-discrimination case based on the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (Opinion, June 25). Incensed over his perception that the decision, while holding that the act prohibits an employer from refusing to hire someone on the basis of race, does not prohibit that employer from later subjecting the employee to discriminatory conditions, Kennedy suggests that the court is “still a white man’s forum.”

Obviously Prof. Kennedy is of the school that holds fast to the theory, largely championed by Justice William Brennan, that the court has a duty to act as a charterless super-legislature and indulge in far-ranging social engineering. For about 30 years now, the court has indulged in this lawmaking process, making aberrational constitutional interpretations which have not only served to legitimize the establishment of social programs, but have encouraged special interest groups to seek societal redress through the courts rather than through the electoral process.

In the Patterson decision the court has, I think, reassumed its traditional interpretive role, expecting, perhaps, that the people will push for legislation shoring up the Civil Rights Act of 1866--a course of action the Framers provided for in Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution.

FREDERICK WOODSON

Woodland Hills