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Our Less Than Supreme, Supreme Court [1]

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Date: 2024-05-22  

America could break. We are quite fragile now. Any of 3 events could be the last nail in our coffin. First, The SC could rule for Trump immunity or at least enough immunity to protect him from his current set of court cases. Second, Trump could win back the presidency and quash those federal cases from proceeding against him (which would ultimately end up at the SC). Third, the SC could continue ruling against the majority of Americans in a number of high profile cases on its current docket or future dockets.

Note that in all 3 events our system of laws and accountability ultimately fail at the highest level of judicial prudence in our country.. At our base we are a country of laws and accountability that govern our actions in the public and private realms of our lives. Our respect for law and order is so great that most of us never get arrested or charged with anything major or even minor less an occasional speeding ticket (or two….). Our respect for the law is really a large part of the fabric that holds our country together.

Partisan control over the federal court system (less the SC) started in 2013 when Dem Senator Harry Reid changed the senate filibuster rules to not apply to Federal Judgeships below the SC level. It became a simple majority vote (vice the previous 60 vote threshold) to stop a filibuster of a federal judicial nominee. This was done to overcome the many Republican filibusters of Obama federal judge nominations and became the first volley in openly partisan control of federal judges. The 60 vote threshold stopped either party from confirming an extremely partisan judge. It meant that 60% of the senate had to agree on a nomination. And since either party rarely holds a 60 seat majority, the more extreme nominees could rarely get confirmed. A simple majority vote opened the doors for more extreme candidates to get confirmed.

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell added the next attack by doing the same for SC nominees in 2017. Nominees could now pass on a simple majority vote. And Senator McConnell then used his majority to block an Obama SC nominee from progressing to a vote for nine months, saying it was too close to a presidential election to consider a SC nominee. Which allowed him to confirm a Trump nominee instead when Trump beat Obama in the that election. McConnell also confirmed an additional SC justice just a few weeks prior to the end of Trump’s term as president. Hypocritical? Republicans did not care as those two moves gave them a heavy conservative majority for at least a decade to come. Partisan control was now a fact of life for the judgement of our laws and accountability to those laws. And the existence of moderate SC justices began to disappear. Imagine the conservative SC providing Trump with immunity. Saying that a president is above the law regarding criminal actions is a breech of our collective beliefs that all in this country are beholding to the law of the land. Our founders created this country to escape the rule of a King. The SC would have just reinstated the very existence of a King by providing Trump relief from his charged criminal activities simply because he was president.

Trump winning back the presidency and quashing the cases against him will also end up at the SC. A very conservative SC that could back his actions. And again prove that America has indeed returned to the rule of a King vice any sort of representative government.

Finally imagine our SC abolishes the right to birth control (using a centuries old law as the reason for its ruling). And further restricts the rights of LBGTQ among us. Clamps down on travel for abortions by denying travel from a state that doesn’t allow it to a state that does. Suppose the SC mandates that Christian priests teach and counsel at public schools. There are any number of actions this SC can make that are a slap to majority opinion in this country.

Once we no longer respect the SC, and we barely do now, there really is no enforcement process that the SC can take. States could simply ignore rulings they disagree with leaving us with a hodgepodge of laws for and against a wealth of important things that change simply by crossing a state border. Abortion, gun control. LBGTQ rights, Religion in Government, and a whole host of cultural and moral differences among us become state fodder for the governing body of the each state. Chaos.

Any of these three events are more likely now than at any other point of our past. And I believe any of the three events are the herald announcing the end of the US as we have known it. Minority rule via the SC is never going to work. Our politicians need to pull this back before they lose control of the whole experiment our democracy has been participating in for hundreds of years.

What can we do? Federal judge confirmations (including SC) need to return to the 60 vote filibuster threshold. Congress needs to enact laws defining SC justice personal actions that call into question their impartiality and when those justices must recuse themselves from a case. Congress needs to pass a law putting term limits on SC justices. Lastly the SC needs to be expanded to a balanced number of conservative and liberal justices in order to stop the minority rule of the current court that was created via political sleight of hand and packed with extreme justices. Demand this from your senators every day (whether republican or democrat) until they are enacted. Make this a current Nov election issue. Yell it from every rooftop. Rap it while tap dancing down the street. Make it happen!

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