Read the following passage:
Orthodox legal historians have long characterized the early twentieth-century Supreme Court’s invalidation of labor regulations as a cynical exercise in laissez-faire protectionism, arguing that the justices deliberately shielded corporate interests under the guise of constitutional interpretation. Recently, revisionist scholars have forcefully challenged this view. They contend that the Court's decisions were driven not by class allegiance, but by a sincere, albeit rigid, commitment to "neutral principles" and freedom of contract—concepts they trace to a longstanding Jacksonian suspicion of special-interest legislation. While the revisionists are correct to discard the orthodox portrayal of the justices as ideological hired guns—a characterization unsupported by the justices' private correspondence—their corrective goes too far. By completely insulating the Court’s legal reasoning from its economic context, revisionists ignore how deeply the justices' purportedly abstract legal principles were intertwined with the macroeconomic orthodoxies of their elite milieu. The commitment to neutrality was not a conscious subterfuge, but it was nevertheless profoundly shaped by an unexamined assumption that an unregulated market represented the natural, neutral state of society.
Based on the passage, which one of the following statements represents a view held by the author, but NOT by the revisionist scholars?
- The justices' sincere jurisprudential commitments were fundamentally conditioned by the prevailing economic ideologies of their social class.Answer
- BThe justices invoked neutral principles primarily as a deliberate constitutional guise to shield corporate interests from government regulation.
- CThe justices' decisions were motivated entirely by a sincere dedication to Jacksonian principles regarding special-interest legislation rather than by economic class allegiance.
- DThe private correspondence of the justices reveals that they were consciously aware of how their elite milieu shaped their purportedly abstract legal reasoning.
- EThe justices' commitment to neutrality was ultimately a cynical smokescreen, though one rooted in macroeconomic orthodoxy rather than mere corporate favoritism.