Before the election, there was talk of appointing new members of the Supreme Court to nullify the Republican judicial takeover. It’s time now. Let the Supreme Court nominations roll.
The Court’s done enough damage. Its outrageous misreading of the Second Amendment helped unleash a flood of murders at New Year parties, schools, churches, temples, grocery stores and the US Capital, and unleashed the traitors who want to tear this country apart and overturn our democratic institutions. It embittered the lives of women, took away their ability to control their own bodies, and turned them over to the extremists who are ready to hunt them down around the country. It overturned democracy by blessing gerrymandering and other ways of controlling elections so people can’t choose their representatives and, instead, officials choose which voters they prefer. Its lids on the EPA and other environmental agencies contributed to fouling the air and the climate. And it protected corporate officials and businesses that have wreaked economic havoc[1] and protected public officials who use their offices to keep innocent people in prison.[2]
So it's time to pack, rebalance and fix this Court. Without major change the Court does more harm than good.
The Court under Chief Justice Roberts is an abomination. It does almost everything wrong – blocking every attempt to protect the people and protecting every villain trying to strip the people of their rights.
Some have worried about the “legitimacy” of the Court. Why? The abuses of the Roberts Court have been typical of the Court’s destructive behavior for most of American history.
- We fought a Civil War because the Court denied that our African-American brothers and sisters have any rights under the law
- Between the end of the Civil War and the end of World War II they nullified the Reconstruction Amendments deciding that
- Federal officials had no right to protect the lives and voting rights of Americans, unleashing a century long reign of terror in the former slave states
- Overruling provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment that were specifically designed to apply the Bill of Rights to the States
- Declaring that separating and blocking Blacks out of every aspect of American life was equal
- Repeatedly overruling the voters’ and state legislatures’ efforts to protect workers, consumers and enforce the antitrust laws[3]
- And they decided they were just fine with American concentration camps as long as Japanese-Americans were in them.
- Federal officials had no right to protect the lives and voting rights of Americans, unleashing a century long reign of terror in the former slave states
There’s nothing “legitimate” about any of that. This Court has been an abomination. Their decisions derailed much of what the American people and our elected representatives wanted and tried to do. Republicans focused on gaining control of the Court because the American people wouldn’t give them what they wanted. They decided the Supreme Court could be an American version of the Iranian Guardian Council – to heck with what the Constitution actually says, and to heck with human rights for Americans. So what’s worth saving?
Can we do anything about it? Of course.[4] The most straightforward solution is to change it, to nominate and confirm new justices until the honorific, “Justice,” actually describes what they do.
There are other solutions. Term limits would take a constitutional amendment. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I’ve suggested defunding the Court since the Constitution protects only their terms and their salaries, not the expenses of running a Court. However we do it, it is time to fix this Court, to retrieve justice from these black-robed villains.
[1] Stephen E. Gottlieb, Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and the Breakdown of American Politics 212-26 (New York: NYU Press 2016).
[2] Id. at 189-194.
[3] Erwin Chemerinsky, The Case Against the Supreme Court, 90-119 (Viking 2015).
[4] See id. at 293-330 for a mix of suggestions.
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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