Editorial rights purchased from iStock. Photo by dkfielding.
It started last September when Amy Coney Barrett spoke before a largely Republican audience at the McConnell Center (yes, named after The Grim Reaper, Mitch McConnell) bemoaning the possibility that the current Supreme Court might be seen as a bunch of partisan hacks. She seemed genuinely concerned.
“My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” Barrett said, without a hint of irony.
Then SCOTUS did something so blatantly political their legacy was sealed as not only partisan but as unqualified, disingenuous, and dangerous. They failed to block the Texas abortion law.
This law, allowing private citizens to sue abortion providers (and anyone caught assisting them or assisting the women seeking abortions after a fetal heartbeat is heard) is unconstitutional on its face — a finding pretty much every legal scholar will openly admit.
Not only does it sanction vigilante justice — it rewards it by offering $10,000 to anyone who can win a court case proving an abortion was either committed or attempted under these prohibited circumstances.
It was an end-run around both the Constitution and democracy itself, given that 80% of the American public believe women have the right to an abortion under some circumstances and 59% believe there should be no limitations against abortions whatsoever.
Let’s also not forget that each of the justices that voted to allow the Texas law to stand had vowed to honor precedent during their confirmation hearings.
Roe v. Wade has been precedent for over 50 years.
Yet SCOTUS in its partisan soul felt it was appropriate to let the Texas law stand, knowing it would prevent every woman (or child — since there is no exception in this ridiculous law for rape or incest) from seeking an abortion for fear of legal consequences.
In short, they gutted Roe v. Wade without batting an eye — and in total disregard of both precedent and the will of the American people.
It isn’t the whole of SCOTUS that’s a problem — before Trump appointed the last three judges: Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, the candidates were highly qualified (with the notable exception of the token Black Republican, Clarence Thomas) but the Trump appointees were all train wrecks in one way or another.
We knew it before any of them were confirmed. Gorsuch believes a truck and a contract mean more than human life. He can’t get his mind around the concept that judgment might be used to allow for exceptions to save a life, in extreme and unforeseeable circumstances.
His excuse, if one can be made, is that nothing in the trucker’s written contract allowed him to abandon his truck. Therefore, Gorsuch concludes, the trucker should be punished for leaving the truck to avoid freezing to death. Apparently, his “judgment” is that no circumstance can be considered unless it’s specifically outlined on paper.
Since no one had the foresight to address the situation this trucker found himself in, this Supreme Court nominee felt he couldn’t either — giving a whole new level of meaning to the term “failure of imagination.”
This confuses me. Isn’t it the role of the Supreme Court to take cases that are not clear-cut and obvious? Are they not meant to be the precedent setters?
Gorsuch is on the bench for life now. Unless we put term limits on SCOTUS — which, based on Gorsuch alone, there is good reason to do. But then we also have Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh — a man whose privileged life as a high school student included drinking himself into oblivion on several occasions, but who can clearly state (again, no irony here) that he never, ever, could have assaulted Christine Blasey Ford — despite her sober and crystal clear recollection of both that event and the years of psychological trauma she suffered as a result of it.
The last addition to the partisan hack-ridden Supreme Court is Amy Coney Barrett herself. Cult member and antifeminist, Barrett is worried about the appearance of SCOTUS as a bunch of partisan hacks but is unwilling to refuse the role of hack in order to avoid the label.
In the end, all three of Trump’s appointees succumbed to the urge to reinterpret settled law, in contradiction to both precedent and the known will of the American people.
They did what Donald Trump appointed them to do: they hacked democracy.
Enter Clarence Thomas — or should I say Ginni Thomas?
Ms. Thomas, though not a member of the Supreme Court, is married to Justice Clarence Thomas. She was also a signatory on a letter penned last December, in which the Jan 6 Committee was criticized for being an “overtly partisan political persecution.”
Ms. Thomas has been publicly supportive of the insurrectionists. She claims to have tweeted her support before the violence began but though aware of those violent actions now, she thinks we should do nothing about it. Or does she not know that two Republicans are on the committee, making it bipartisan by definition?
Either way, she appears to have undue influence over her husband, who was the lone dissenter in the recent 8–1 vote allowing the National Archives to release the Trump documents to the Jan. 6 Committee.
But that’s not all.
“During her husband’s time on the Supreme Court, she has run organizations designed to activate right-wing networks, worked for Republicans in Congress, harshly criticized Democrats who she said were trying to make the country ‘ungovernable,’ and handed out awards to those who agree with her agenda. Ginni Thomas also worked closely with the Trump administration and met with the president, and has come under fire over messages praising Jan. 6 crowds before the attack on the Capitol. In a number of instances, her activism has overlapped with cases that have been decided by Clarence Thomas.”
While Federal judges have ethics oversight, SCOTUS does not. Georgetown University law professor Caroline Fredrickson says there is no precedent for a justice of the Supreme Court to “rule on issues closely linked to his wife’s activism.”
“In every case that has come up, he has shown no interest in recusal and has in fact seemingly been defiant,” Fredrickson said. “To be a Supreme Court justice and to be married to a firebrand activist who’s trying to blow things up” is unique. “It’s so out of bounds that if it weren’t so frightening, it would be comical.”
You might expect there to be some binding ethical requirements for recusal in such circumstances, and for all but SCOTUS judges, there are. According to uscourts.gov:
“Every judge is required to develop a list of personal and financial interests that would require recusal, which courts use with automated conflict-checking software to identify court cases in which a judge may have a disqualifying conflict of interest under 28 U.S.C. § 455 or the Code of Conduct for United States Judges.”
But SCOTUS is different. They are privileged in a way that prevents them from the same scrutiny.
“It’s sort of the honor system, it depends on their own evaluation. … It’s kind of crazy. They’re supposed to be responsible for keeping us all on the right side of the law. And in fact, they don’t have any responsibilities themselves.” — Caroline Fredrickson
With the exception of Judge Thomas and the three Trump appointees, SCOTUS has largely upheld the ethical responsibilities expected of them.
Unfortunately, the current Supreme Court consists of four partisan hacks of the worst kind. They don’t just pretend to have a higher morality — they use the power of the judicial system to force their personal morality on the rest of us.
As a result, they are not only ruling in ways the American public disagrees with — they are ruling in ways that threaten democracy itself.