President Bush recently nominated California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
One group that has been active in opposing this nomination is Community Rights Counsel, which "provides strategic assistance to state and local government attorneys in defending land use laws, environmental protections, public health measures, and other community protections. CRC has published a litigation handbook, which assists state and local attorneys defending against takings claims."
No small wonder they oppose Brown, who is one of the leading proponents of restoring property rights to significant status under the law, especially in "takings" cases, where governmental restrictions on property often amount to massive reduction in the value or utility of property without any compensation whatsoever. CRC, of course, thinks this just grand.
Janice Brown's decisions are not what folks who accuse her of Lochnerism point to. Rather there are a couple of speeches, one to the Federalist Society (PDF), in which she referred to Lochner.
Note that Brown does not call for a return to the Lochner Era (named after a 1900s decision that voided state wage & hour laws and generally held that the state's police power did not extend to regulating private transactions) -- she just says that the property and contract rights that Lochner held to be vital are now held to be trivial. She asserts that the gutting of the Lochner doctrine during the New Deal was no less extreme than Lochner. Brown feels that the individual rights of property and liberty are indeed non-trivial and need to be returned from the ashes where FDRs judges consigned them -- that if Lochner is one end of the pendulum, we're pretty much at the other end, and long past due for a correction. I happen to agree with this.
The attack on Brown is just Socialist overreaching by organizations that actually believe that property rights ought to be minimal, and that the "takings" clause of the 5th Amendment should be put in the same scrap heap they've put the 2nd, 9th and 10th Amendments.
Update: Here is a news story accurately reflecting the attitudes that have annoyed CRC, People for the American Way, NARAL, TalkLeft, and all the other usual suspects.
Update: Here is a set of links to Steven Wu's rather evenhanded SCOTUSblog posts on Justice Brown