Dahlia Lithwick is dismayed. Writing in Slate and Newsweek she laments that the Supreme Court is “completely misunderstood by the American public.” A majority of Americans approve of the Court’s performance in recent polls, she reports, and half of Americans think the Court is neither too liberal nor too conservative. So clearly the public does not understand the Court.
If the public were only more aware of what the Court was really up to — dismantling “the Warren revolution with a tablespoon instead of a wrecking ball” — their opinion would shift. Indeed, if only the public could recognize the “heart of darkness that lurks inside the Roberts Court” Discussing the Court’s most recent term, she writes:
On balance, the term continued a clear trend in which big business always prevails, environmentalists are always buried, female and elderly workers go unprotected, death-row inmates get the needle, and criminal defendants are shown the door. So how to explain these new poll numbers showing that 49 percent of Republicans believe the Roberts Court is too liberal and 59 percent of Democrats believe the court is “about right”?
Perhaps the real problem is that the public has a better understanding of the Roberts Court than Lithwick is willing to acknowledge. For starters, the pattern of Court’s rulings bears little resemblance to the caricature quoted above. Is this a Court in which “big business always prevails” and “environmentalists are always buried”? Not really. In environmental cases, for instance, business wins about half of the cases. As I suggested in this paper, the trend is realy more “pro-government” than “pro-business” or “anti-environment.” Indeed, it’s hard to take seriously Lithwick’s claim when the Roberts Court is responsible for decisions like Massachusetts v. EPA. And what about big business? The record here is quite similar — as this study shows, the Court is more likely to side with the federal government than the business community. And, again, Lithwick seems to conveniently ignore the existence of important cases that challenge her thesis, such as three big preemption cases business lost this past term, including Wyeth v. Levine.
Okay, but is this a court in which “death-row inmates get the needle, and criminal defendants are shown the door.” Kennedy v. Louisiana anyone? (That’s where the Court held unconstitutional the death penalty for child rape.) Prosecutors would hardly characterize the Roberts Court’s Confrontation Clause jurisprudence as anti-defendant, last term’s Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts in particular. And what about workers? Even Erwin Chemerinsky acknowledges the Roberts Court’s record has been mixed here as well.
So perhaps the public likes the Roberts Court because, well, they actually like the Roberts Court. That is, they like a Court that issues narrow rulings, avoids sweeping world-changing decisions, and generally lists to the Right (but see Massachusetts, Kennedy, Boumediene). In the grand scheme of things, it’s hard to argue the Roberts Court, thus far, is any more conservative than the early Rehnquist Court.
So perhaps the public likes a “conservative minimalist” court. Or, perhaps, the public actually accepts Lithwick’s caricature — after all, it’s a charge we hear quite often — and would like a Court even more conservative than the one we have. I find that possibility at least as likely as Lithwick’s analysis.
One thing Lithwick definitely gets correct is that this term could be quite revealing. As I noted in this column, the Court will have ample opportunity to make broad sweeping rulings. Faced with important cases on the First Amendment, Commerce Clause, standing and separation of powers, the Court could show itself to be far more “conservative” (or perhaps more “liberal”) than it has revealed itself to be thus far. We’ll have to see. In the meantime, if we’re going to lament public opinion about the Court, we should first make sure we’re accurately representing the Court’s jurisprudence.
Dave says:
Penetrating criticism. A fitting response to an example of gibberish that masquerades as analysis.
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September 28, 2009, 5:36 amAllan Walstad says:
Couldn’t they afford a wrecking ball?
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September 28, 2009, 11:35 amM. Gross says:
Slate’s legal coverage is painful at best, and Lithwick is frequently the reason.
Just about every one of her columns is teeth-gnashing at the court.
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September 28, 2009, 11:37 amHouston Lawyer says:
Given how little the Court has changed over the last decade, I don’t see how anyone could express outrage at the current state of affairs.
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September 28, 2009, 11:38 amBorris says:
And here I thought she’d be for the “wrecking ball”
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September 28, 2009, 11:40 amFederal Dog says:
“heart of darkness that lurks inside the Roberts Court”
The horror. The horror.
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September 28, 2009, 11:42 amHadur says:
I find that public coverage of the court is rarely accurate. The press reports on the court as if the court were making political decisions; saying “yes” to capital punishment and abortion, “no” to affirmative action, etc. The media rarely if ever explains that what is actually happening is the development of doctrine and application of doctrine to given situations.
I think that if the public understood the doctrinal nature of cases, they would be even more likely to like the court, as the Roberts Court does not make that many great doctrinal leaps.
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September 28, 2009, 11:44 amtvk says:
I don’t think you are being completely fair to Lithwick. First, she is making in somewhat stronger terms the argument that Ilya makes all the time on this blog: the public is politically ignorant about the issues. It is incredibly difficult to square your view here–the public loves the Roberts Court because of its style–with Ilya’s frequent view that the public are morons.
Second, you and Lithwick have completely different meanings when you use the words “the Roberts Court.” You mean the Roberts Court’s decisions to date. Lithwick means the Roberts Courts inclinations, and thus its decisions tomorrow. The Voting Rights Act case is a good example. The decision itself reflects your point that the Roberts Court moves slowly. But if you look under the hood–into the “heart of darkness”–it is intellectually dishonest to say that the VRA is not dead as a dodo the next time a more appropriate case comes up.
Has the Court ruled in a more conservative way than the early Rehnquist Court? Not really. In its heart of hearts, are the justices (i.e. Justice Kennedy) more conservative than the justices of the Rhenquist court. Of course it is.
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September 28, 2009, 11:51 amAllan says:
Perhaps when Lithwick says that the court is for big business, she is thinking of Ledbetter and Iqbal.
Can you name a Supreme Court case where the court has held for an individual plaintiff (or defendant) and against a corporation?
I would agree that the court is pro-government (like Kelo), but there are opinions that are pro-individual (like Heller).
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September 28, 2009, 11:55 amHans Bader says:
American law has moved in a more liberal direction over the last 20 years, steadily restricting use of the death penalty and criminal sentencing, and expanding lawsuits against businesses, thanks largely to the Supreme Court.
But to the left-leaning journalists who write about the Supreme Court, none of this has ever happened, and the Supreme Court, which is responsible for many of these liberal changes, remains a conservative boogeyman.
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, America’s most famous Supreme Court reporter, writes that in the Supreme Court, “big business always prevails, environmentalists are always buried, female and elderly workers go unprotected, death row inmates get the needle, and criminal defendants are shown the door.”
This is breathtakingly inconsistent with reality. Over the last dozen years, the death penalty has been dramatically cut back in cases like Roper v. Simmons (2005), as the Supreme Court has invalidated the death penalty when imposed on the “retarded” (even the mildly retarded) or juveniles (even 16 to 18 year-olds), or when imposed by judges rather than juries (as state laws long provided).
The Supreme Court overturned thousands of sentences given to criminal defendants in cases like U.S. v. Booker (2005), based not on their guilt or innocence, but on the fact that judges, rather than juries, had made findings related to those sentences (the so-called Booker/Apprendi line of cases). The supposedly “right-wing” justices Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas joined in these decisions.
Environmentalists won many cases, including perhaps the most economically-significant decision ever — Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) — which potentially opened the door to EPA regulation of virtually every human activity, on the grounds that virtually all activity (from industrial production to farming to cars) emits carbon dioxide and thus allegedly causes global warming. That decision also created a special rule of standing to allow state attorneys general to bring lawsuits that would otherwise be thrown out as meritless for lack of standing.
The Supreme Court recently allowed businesses to be sued even for products the FDA deems to be safe and effective, in Wyeth v. Levine (2009).
The Supreme Court progressively expanded businesses’ liability for discrimination against female and elderly workers. It continuously expanded the definition of sexual harassment, overturning earlier limits on vicarious liability (in Faragher v. Boca Raton (1998)), allowing institutions to be sued based on the acts of non-employees (in Davis v. Monroe County (1999)), and rejecting longstanding lower-court limits on lawsuits where there is no economic or psychological harm (in Harris v. Forklift Systems (1993)). It also allowed businesses to be sued for discrimination against elderly workers even absent any showing of discriminatory intent or differential treatment (in Smith v. Jackson (2005)). All of these decisions reversed lower court rulings in favor of businesses.
In short, Dahlia Lithwick’s perception of the Supreme Court bears no relation to reality. But it is shared by most of the nation’s leading court reporters, at publications like the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times, who promote a similar caricature of the Supreme Court.
As a result of such reporters ceaselessly peddling this perspective to their readers, it is also the perception of much of the newspaper-reading public, especially in the so-called Blue States, many of whom view the Supreme Court as “too conservative.”
For example, factually inaccurate and dishonest reporting on recent Supreme Court decisions also contributed to recent election results.
A classic example is the Supreme Court’s recent Ledbetter decision, which many reporters wrongly claimed required discrimination plaintiffs to sue within a rigid 180-day deadline — when in fact, most pay discrimination cases could legally be brought for at least 3 years after the discrimination allegedly occurred, under laws unaffected by the Supreme Court’s decision (like the Equal Pay Act), and the 180-day deadline, even when applicable, had lots of common-sense exceptions to keep employers from escaping justice (such as tolling to protect hoodwinked employees).
Obama repeatedly made false claims about the Ledbetter decision in order to use it as a campaign issue, and the press not only let him get away with it, but sometimes made false claims of its own about the case.
In other news, Obama recently slapped an unconstitutional gag order on a critic of his health-care plan.
Obama’s health care plan has drawn criticism for raising taxes, breaking campaign promises, increasing the deficit, and ending many health-care plans and .
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September 28, 2009, 12:14 pmAssistant Village Idiot says:
Hadur makes a spot-on comment about the inability of some folks to conceive of SCOTUS news in anything other than a politicised framework, and tvk immediately provides a stunning example of it. Better-worded than a journalist, but the same idea nonetheless. Check the ISP’s to see if Hadur took on a sock-puppet to illustrate his point. If not, then tvk, you have illustrated Hadur’s point despite yourself.
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September 28, 2009, 12:15 pmNaG says:
tvk: How can you credibly argue that a court is “more conservative” than another court without actual opinions to back that hypothesis up?
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September 28, 2009, 12:15 pmenjointhis says:
To the contrary, I find it difficult to take seriously a journalist who can write phrases like “environmentalists are always buried” in light of Mass. v. EPA. To me, the Slate article reads like the worst of Drudge-style tabloid journalism.
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September 28, 2009, 12:20 pmHans Bader says:
American law has moved in a more liberal direction over the last 20 years, steadily restricting use of the death penalty and criminal sentencing, and expanding lawsuits against businesses, thanks largely to the Supreme Court.
But to the left-leaning journalists who write about the Supreme Court, none of this has ever happened, and the Supreme Court, which is responsible for many of these liberal changes, remains a conservative boogeyman.
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, America’s most famous Supreme Court reporter, falsely claims today that in the Supreme Court, “big business always prevails, environmentalists are always buried, female and elderly workers go unprotected, death row inmates get the needle, and criminal defendants are shown the door.”
This is breathtakingly inconsistent with reality. Over the last dozen years, the death penalty has been dramatically cut back in cases like Roper v. Simmons (2005), as the Supreme Court has invalidated the death penalty when imposed on the “retarded” (even the mildly retarded) or juveniles (even 16 to 18 year-olds), or when imposed by judges rather than juries (as state laws long provided).
The Supreme Court overturned thousands of sentences given to criminal defendants in cases like U.S. v. Booker (2005), regardless of defendants’ guilt, based merely on the fact that judges, rather than juries, had made findings related to those sentences. The supposedly “right-wing” justices Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas joined in these decisions.
Environmentalists won many cases, including one of the most economically-significant decisions ever — Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) — which potentially opened the door to EPA regulation of virtually every human activity, on the grounds that virtually all activity (from industrial production to farming to cars) emits carbon dioxide. That decision also created a special rule of standing to allow state attorneys general to bring lawsuits that would otherwise be thrown out as meritless for lack of standing.
The Supreme Court recently allowed businesses to be sued even for products the FDA deems to be safe and effective, in Wyeth v. Levine (2009).
The Supreme Court has steadily broadened businesses’ liability for discrimination against female and elderly workers. It continuously expanded the definition of sexual harassment, overturning earlier limits on vicarious liability (in Faragher v. Boca Raton (1998)), allowing institutions to be sued based on the acts of non-employees (in Davis v. Monroe County (1999)), and rejecting longstanding lower-court limits on lawsuits where there is no economic or psychological harm (in Harris v. Forklift Systems (1993)). It also allowed businesses to be sued for discrimination against elderly workers even absent any showing of discriminatory intent or differential treatment (in Smith v. Jackson (2005)). All of these decisions reversed lower court rulings in favor of businesses. The Supreme Court often rules against business in discrimination cases.
In short, Dahlia Lithwick’s perception of the Supreme Court bears no relation to reality. But it is shared by most of the nation’s leading court reporters, at publications like the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times, who promote a similar caricature of the Supreme Court.
As a result of such reporters ceaselessly peddling this perspective to their readers, it is also the perception of much of the newspaper-reading public, especially in the so-called Blue States, many of whom view the Supreme Court as “too conservative.”
For example, factually inaccurate and dishonest reporting on recent Supreme Court decisions contributed to recent election results.
A classic example is the Supreme Court’s recent Ledbetter decision, which many reporters wrongly claimed required discrimination plaintiffs to sue within a rigid 180-day deadline — when in fact, most pay discrimination cases could legally be brought for at least 3 years after discrimination allegedly occurs, under laws unaffected by the Supreme Court’s decision (like the Equal Pay Act), and the 180-day deadline, even when applicable, had lots of common-sense exceptions to keep employers from escaping justice (such as equitable tolling to protect hoodwinked employees).
(I have written about this at length at the Examiner and Openmarket.org)
Obama repeatedly made false claims about the Ledbetter decision in order to use it as a campaign issue, and the press not only let him get away with it, but sometimes made false claims of its own about the case.
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September 28, 2009, 12:20 pmJonathan H. Adler says:
Allan –
Here are three from OT 2007 in which the Court ruled in favor of employees and against corporations:
CBOCS West Inc. v. Humphries, 128 S. Ct. 1951 (2008); Gomez-Perez v. Potter,
128 S. Ct. 1931 (2008); Meacham v. Knolls Atomic Power Lab., 128 S. Ct. 2395 (2008).
tvk —
My problem with Lithwick’s article is not that she believes the public is ignorant, but that she a) mischaracterizes the Court, and b) suggests the public would feel differently if they only new what the Court were up to. On the latter point, the available polling data suggests that, on most big issues, the Court is at the middle (or slightly to the Left) of public opinion. So, even if the public were less ignorant, there’s little reason to believe they’d share Lithwick’s concern.
As for the Rehnquist court comparison, the actual rulings of the Roberts Court are no more conservative than the early Rehnquist Court. That is, on big issues, the Court’s holdings are equivalent to (and on some issues clearly to the Left of) the Rehnquist Court’s holdings. And as for the justices themselves, it’s not clear they are more conservative than those of the early Rehnquist Court, for many of the justices have “evolved” and became more liberal over time. This was clearly the case with Justice O’Connor, but it has happened some with Justices Stevens and Kennedy as well (and, to a lesser extent, Justice Souter).
JHA
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September 28, 2009, 12:22 pmtvk says:
I conceive the court largely in a politicized framework because they deserve it. If politics is the best explanation for how the court is likely to rule–rather than precedent, doctrine, or anything else–then that is how you should view the court. Maybe you are arguing that they don’t rule in a politicized way. I just don’t think that is true.
As for how you measure the inclinations of the justices other than by their written opinions, just asking that question is naive beyond belief. Does anyone really think that the majority believed a word of their opinion in Bush v. Gore? There are a lot of cues regarding what the Justices really think, and very little of it is revealed in written judicial opinions.
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September 28, 2009, 12:23 pmFederal Dog says:
“and criminal defendants are shown the door.”
What about, e.g., the Court’s recent opinions in Gant and Melendez-Diaz?
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September 28, 2009, 12:30 pmtvk says:
Jonathan,
I don’t think we have much disagreement except in semantics. Lithwick’s description is inaccurate. You say “mischaracterize,” I say “hyperbole.” I think we view the statement through the prism of whether we sympathize with the underlying sentiment. I agree with you that the court is pretty much where the public is on most issues; and to the left on some (e.g. death penalty for child rape).
Is the Roberts Court more conservative in its heart of hearts than the early Rehnquist court? You mention that several justices drifted; but the only comparison that really matters is O’Connor circa 1990 versus Kennedy today. I am inclined to think that O’Connor was more liberal in 1990 than Kennedy is today; but I can be persuaded otherwise.
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September 28, 2009, 12:37 pmWidmerpool says:
People seem to be criticizing Ms. Lithwick for her overheated rhetoric. Perhaps she should have written something more stylish:
Chief Justice Robert’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.
Oh, I’m sure Ted Kennedy wouldn’t mind the artistic license. Just ask him. I think he’s spending all of eternity in a car submerged at the bottom of a lake in eight feet of water. Just kidding! He’s beaming down from heaven and toasting Ms. Lithwick with a cup of good cheer. Cue the harps.
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September 28, 2009, 12:55 pmveteran says:
I saw this article today pretty curious as I’ve watched the law evolve over the past few decades and things are “decidedly” different than when I was younger.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20190867/The-Collaspe-of-the-Rule-of-LawA-Prelude-to-Disaster-92009
The Collapse of the Rule of Law–A Prelude to Disaster!
by some fellow name of Martin Armstrong
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September 28, 2009, 1:03 pmCato The Elder says:
The automatic indentation of the first line of every paragraph is strangely bothersome to me. Hugely bothersome are that terrible “share” button and the empty picture boxes without a login-in account.
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September 28, 2009, 1:04 pmDaniel Artz says:
The real question here is why on earth anyone would take Dahlia Lithwick seriously on anything. I mean really — I have never read a single piece she’s written that gave me reason to believe that she had any credibility, especially on legal matters. Now I will agree with her point that a majority of the American Public does not really understand what goes on at the Court (a majority which most certainly includes Ms. Lithwick, as well as at least half of every other “Supreme Court Correspondent” whose work I’ve ever read). But anyone who jumps to conclusions about the direction of the Court by just counting wins and losses of “big business”, “government”, “employees”, “minorities”, Criminal Defendants, or the like, without examining the precise issues before the Court, how the Court applied statutory material, precedent, etc., and how expansive or limited the Court’s holding was, is doing little better than guessing. In Dahlia Lithwick’s case, however, I’m more likely to trust the wild-ass guesses of those comitted to an asylum than what passes for her analysis.
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September 28, 2009, 1:08 pmDangerMouse says:
This quote demonstrates how libs like Lithwick care nothing about what the law says, and are only in favor of outcome-based judging. To them, it doesn’t matter if big business has the law on its side, they should lose no matter what. It doesn’t matter if female and elderly workers don’t have a case, they should win anyway. Etc.
Apparently, Lithwick doesn’t care what who has the better argument and what the law says, but only cares if the right person wins. If a politically favored group loses a court case, then that case is wrong. If a politically favored group wins a court case, then that case is correct. Ultimately, this leads to a system where libs in the Senate vote to confirm judges (like Sotomayer) who openly express biases towards one side: minorities over whites, women over men, criminals over cops, etc. Instead of trying to impartially rule, maybe for the police in one case, maybe for a criminal in another, it seems that Lithwick and others only care about making sure that their favored group wins.
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September 28, 2009, 1:24 pmEinhverfr says:
Somehow I don’t think Ms Lithwick read Kennedy v. Louisiana very closely.
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September 28, 2009, 1:48 pmpjohnson says:
I think, with no evidence either way — except that it would explain her comments — that Lithwick believes the “Roberts Court” consists of Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito and sometimes Kennedy. The others are not really part of the “Roberts Court,” but make up the Resistance.
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September 28, 2009, 2:03 pmKent Scheidegger says:
Federal Dog, Mr. Gant was indeed shown the door. The jailhouse door marked “Exit.”
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September 28, 2009, 2:07 pmsureyoubet says:
“Criminal defendants are shown the door”
If she thinks the Court has a dark heart on this, what must she think of the American people? It’s not as though the Court is imposing longer sentences than called for by legislation, or convicting acquitted defendants.
There isn’t a successful politician in the country that is running on the idea of taking it easy on criminal defendants...yet it’s Roberts and his court that somehow have a dark heart?
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September 28, 2009, 2:41 pmbob lipton says:
How can the Court not be biased if it doesn’t invariably produce decisions that agree completely with Lithwick’s political agenda?
Bob
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September 28, 2009, 3:19 pmtheobromophile says:
Ms. Lithwick is falling victim to a common logical error: assuming that the 300 million people in America think the same way that the people around her think. It often surprises people who lean to the Left that the people who disagree with them are not a fringe minority.
Even on the death penalty, Barack Obama — hardly anyone’s centrist — criticised the Supreme Court’s Kennedy v. Louisiana decision. (This could have been in response to the anger in America over the decision, but that in no way negates the idea that the dissent is not part of some extremist minority group on that issue.)
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September 28, 2009, 4:01 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Theo,
For the record, Obama barely criticized Kennedy v. Louisiana. I remember the comparison of his reaction to the decision versus McCain’s. His reeked of a measured, feigned opposition, while McCain’s response was a rejection that was visceral.
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September 28, 2009, 4:33 pmRoscoe says:
Add Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Glenn, 128 S.Ct. 2343 (2008)to the list of recent plaintiff friendly decisions. And nobody reading the transcript of the hearing would think the Court was in big business’ pocket. At oral argument Met Life’s lawyer was beaten like a rented mule.
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September 28, 2009, 6:06 pmPatHMV says:
SuperSkeptic... in other words, Obama expressed formal opposition, but was lying when he did so, and all of his fellow-travellers are expected to understand that... just as everybody knows he’s lying when he says he believes marriage should be between one man and one woman.
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September 28, 2009, 8:11 pmBama 1L says:
Gomez-Perez does not belong here. The decision interpreted the Age Discrimination in Employment Act in a pro-employee manner, but there was no “corporate” defendant nor could any be affected by the decision because it specifically concerned the federal-sector provisions of ADEA.
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September 28, 2009, 9:08 pmSplunge says:
There are a lot of cues regarding what the Justices really think, and very little of it is revealed in written judicial opinions.
Ah! Yes indeed. Buried in certain writings of Nostradamus — who predicted all this, you know — and by recording yourself reading the Gospel of Luke and then playing it backwards at half-speed — yikes!
I’m always impressed when folks are willing to admit in public that they find relying on mere facts to be an absurdly unimaginative way to penetrate to what’s really going on. Since it’s only a few short steps from there to being in the locked ward with a Thorazine drip, that is.
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September 28, 2009, 10:27 pmdrunkdriver says:
Lithwick is the worst and most hackneyed Supreme Court commentator from any major media source– bar none. Her essays read like they were written by a mildly immature and intensely political college sophomore.
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September 29, 2009, 6:32 amRepublican says:
I’ve always found Lithwick to be rather pathetic. I never understood the love she received on the Conspiracy.
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September 29, 2009, 8:04 amPliny the elder says:
Has Lithwick ever actually practiced? (I know she clerked for an appellate judge)
I could not find any reported cases for her (which is not, of course, the only evidence of practice).
It seems to me that views so far from the facts would be difficult to maintain if one had spent any significant amount of time working as a lawyer.
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September 29, 2009, 9:24 amPatHMV says:
So I’m reading this at 11:24 am (Central) on Tuesday, and the last comment which appears has a date stamp of 6:06pm Monday, and I have no idea whether nobody’s commented since then, whether lots of comments have been made but are stuck in moderation (I know I made a comment yesterday which hasn’t shown up yet), or whether there’s just some weird buggy glitch that keeps the comments page from changing no matter how many times you hit “refresh.”
Really not liking this change so far. Seeing no benefits, and several negatives.
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September 29, 2009, 9:27 amE-litist says:
Based on the readership response in the form of a unanimously derisive disapproval of Lithwick’s “liberal” point of view, I don’t think I’m going to find much legitimate journalistic criticism on this website. I exclude the civil few who actually cite precedent in disagreement. Anywhere I see the term “libs” and the inevitable pejorative generalization, however, I know I’m dealing with an intelligent crowd.
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September 30, 2009, 2:24 pm