It’s easy to forget that there’s a time, a little over a decade ago, when the Supreme Court Justices were considered above reproach. It was the last vestige of trusted governance in the country. It was considered the one arena untouched by political trends and activism, where citizens could face off against corruption and expect true justice. Decisions were made based not in the shifting winds of the day, but in consideration of the next century or the nations needs.
We have lost something greater than just a political alignment. We have lost trust in the entire State.
Ahem, Bush v Gore… bit longer than a decade. They’re certainly more shameless now that they have a larger margin, but republican justices have been pushing an agenda for awhile.
At the time, it wasn’t this widely regarded as a power grab by conservative politicians in the Supreme Court. Not saying it wasn’t, but it was not seen as such. It was nowhere near as brazen as what we’re seeing today. Confidence was still quite high at the time or at least it returned quickly.
A bad decision like Bush v Gore or Citizens United was seen as an anomoly. While there were people who saw these as the political flexing they were, the general sentiment of the public was, “well, it must have been a difficult and complex decision. I’m sure they understand the legal impact and made the best decision that they could for the future of the country.”
LOL no. Those decisions were utter bullshit.
Of course they were, in retrospect. But at the time, they were considered flukes.
No they weren’t… They were derided as conservative power grabs then as now. Even then they talked about Roberts as an activist conservative, as the “decider” vote in a 5v4 court, who played politics to maintain the appearance of neutrality on unimportant, to them, decisions so they could strike when it mattered.
Hell, even then mass media referred to “conservative” and “liberal” justices, which clearly shows judges were not neutral.
There’s no karma to be had here, this is the end game. The Republicans have been working to dismantle the government for decades. Every piece that can be sold off to private enterprise will, regulation will be gutted, and consequences be damned.
The fall of the US is now inevitable. There is no future for anyone here that isn’t already rich. Leave if you can.
The author came to the wrong conclusion. Yes the Supreme Court making themselves the authority on all federal policy will increase their case load. No, it does not mean they will actually need to do any more work. Cases will be backlogged for as long as they want.
Businesses can now dump toxic waste onto public lands knowing that they are safe from judgement for decades.
As expected, the purpose of state is to facilitate relatively safe theft from classes not in control of it, and blocking justice is the primary method.
You get the state you vote for, including the people in unelected positions which are chosen by elected officials.
It also means that lower courts in practically any state can issue injunctions on federal policy as well, which is going to open the floodgates for crazy. They’ve pretty much just begged everyone to vote Democrat, and get the seating of SC Justices rewritten. That, or pack the court.
The court was already packed with activist judges appointed under suspicious or hypocritical circumstances who then lied to Congress during their confirmations about their deference to precedent on a host of issues only to the engage in a massive power grab from Congress. Subsequent action to rebalance the court is not court packing.
The term “court packing” has a very specific meaning. It refers to adding seats to the supreme court to shift the balance.
Court packing is the solution. It’s been suggested that the number of justices be increased to something like 20-30 (similar to the next lowest court is right now) and then judges be rotated out to other federal positions every few years (effectively a term limit in the SC itself).
This achieves two things 1) It allows for each administration to make appointments to the court as a routine matter, making it difficult to capture the court for generations at a time 2) the amount of judges waters down the influence of the extremist dipshits. We know this works because, as we saw in the past, even lunatics like Alito were kept in check when the court was not majority far-right.
