The collapse of the elected institutions of our national leadership have given our unelected institution wide latitude to experiment with one-party rule. Under the guise of Constitutional review, we sometimes see new rights made up out of nothing - and 'laws' issued as judicial 'findings' (ie, decrees which are not themselves subject to review).
That is, we sometimes see the Supreme Court acting as a political body - and it has a marker: a 5 to 4 division, meaning one person decides the law!
This is not a new thing - for example, Dred Scott - and the left is as guilty as the right in regard to judicial overreach (for example, 'right to privacy,' which I cannot find anywhere in my copy of the Constitution though this is actually an exception - a decision that grants a right We the People, not just to Them the Corporations).
Sometimes the Supreme Court can acquit itself rather well... when it focuses on Constitutional issues. And the Roberts court, when it does this, does it remarkably well - even in cases in which I personally don't like the decision, I can agree with their logic.
When the elected institutions of government work for the good of the entire nation, we have legislative redress that can produce better legislation, and even amendments. But the vacuum left by the failure of both the presidency and the congress has ceded an incredible amount of authority to the Supreme Court to act as Politburo - legislating from inside their own buffer zone, and rarely has anyone on the bench had actual political and legislative experience.
And when the Roberts Court does this, they are rather frightening. As it has taken decades to redress some terrible political decisions of earlier liberal courts (the tortured legal insanity known as Roe v. Wade, comes to mind; regardless of how you feel about a woman's [legitimate] right to choose, that was a political decision), it will likewise take decades to wring out the coming nightmares of such one-man decisions that have recently given corporations more rights than actual citizens (Citizens United), invented 'constitutional' gun rights that simply don't exist, and have now created religion-based corporate exemptions to comply with the laws of this country (Hobby Lobby).
And it doesn't help that 2/5 of the usual majority in that situation are almost certainly mentally ill to a pathological degree. The other 3/5 are obtuse in their utopian naivete.
God save us. It seems unlikely the body politick is going to be able to save itself.
