Welcome to Iran. Iran has a Guardian Counsel of men in long robes. We have a Guardian Court of nine judges in black robes. Both decide who rules. The Guardian Counsel of Iran decides who is allowed to run. The Guardian Court decides which party wins by blessing the vote rigging that favors Republicans – by blessing gerrymandering after the Republicans rewrote voting districts to favor themselves; by blessing registration requirements that Republicans erected to block anyone likely to vote Democratic from getting or staying registered and from voting; and by removing the protections of the Voting Rights Act against discriminatory devices in the former Confederate states and wherever discrimination had been the rule.
The Guardian Court competes with Iran’s Guardian Counsel for political control by limiting what labor unions can spend[1] and by overruling limits on political spending by corporations.[2] It tilts the whole electoral environment toward the rich and powerful and against workers and consumers.
The U.S. Guardian Court is nearly as effective as the Iran Guardian Counsel, even without Russian help. And the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy will make it worse. He was the only conservative who understood that vote rigging is inconsistent with a democratic constitution and sometimes acted on that understanding. With a less principled replacement, the current court will present an even bigger barrier to protecting American democracy.
This isn’t about law and all about partisanship. It’s not, in Roberts famous example, like an umpire calling balls and strikes. It’s an umpire in one ball club’s pay, corrupt even as courts across the globe are gaining the confidence to insist on clean elections. To put it another way, the U.S. court system is being corrupted by the rewards of capitalism.
Still more is at stake. Roe v. Wade,[3] protecting a right to abortion, is at stake in the changes in the membership of the Court along with a panoply of labor, consumer, environmental and civil rights protections.
Discouraged? This is the worst time to be discouraged. We can take the country back. But first we must win two elections, the 2018 legislative election and the 2020 presidential election.
Winning the 2018 legislative elections on both the state and national levels can reduce the damage. Fairer state legislatures can insist on fairer elections. Congress has the power to regulate national elections to block states from using unfair rules. And it can block Trump’s plan to abuse the census to further turn the Republican minority of voters into national dominance.
Along the way, winning in 2018 can prevent any more bad nominations to our court system. It can block the Administration’s abuse of everyone from workers to women to immigrants.
Winning in 2020 will make all that easier and it will make it possible to get the Court back. Yes I said we can get the Court back; we can end the rule by the US Guardian Counsel that masquerades as a Court.
The Constitution does not specify the number of justices on the Supreme Court. That is set by law.[4] The number of justices has been set as low as five and as high as ten.[5] Although a controversial proposition, it has been argued that the number can be changed by the simple process of nomination and confirmation.[6] Either way, it is not set in stone.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed to increase the number when the Court was blocking his efforts to deal with the Depression. In the event, the Court backed down without any change in the number. But the point is that it can be done and should be.
This is a time to get fired up by the efforts of the capitalists, corporations and wrong-wing religious groups to use the courts to take our country away from us. We can take it back. We must and will take it back.
[1] Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, 2018 U.S. LEXIS 4028 (2018).
[2] Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010).
[3] Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
[4] 28 USC § 1.
[5] Act of Feb. 13, 1801, § 3, 2 Stat. 89; Act of March 3, 1863, ch. 100, 12 Stat. 794.
[6] Peter Nicolas, "Nine, Of Course": A Dialogue On Congressional Power To Set By Statute The Number Of Justices On The Supreme Court, 2 NYU J.L. & Liberty 86 (2006).
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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