Hunter has the news about Neil Gorsuch purposely endangering Justice Sotomayor’s health. But it appears that this latest incident of Republican “Fuck You”ism has opened up the huge political paritsan abscess we refer to as the Supreme Court of the United States. However, I feel the infection or partisan reactionary Republicanism is far to advanced to ever heal the present makeup of the SCOTUS.
I’m no lawyer, but I know political partisanship when I see it.
How often do you hear any liberal member of the SCOTUS say this about their institution with regards to abortion rights and legal precedent?
About 11 minutes into this week’s hearing on abortion rights at the US supreme court, the floor was taken by Sonia Sotomayor, one of the three beleaguered liberal-leaning justices left on the court after its sharp rightward shift under Donald Trump
Sotomayor began by noting that in the past 30 years no fewer than 15 justices of all political backgrounds had supported the right to an abortion up to the point of fetal viability. Only four had objected.
Now after so many years of relative consensus, the legality of abortion enshrined in the landmark 1973 ruling Roe v Wade and reaffirmed in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v Casey was suddenly on the line.
Politicians in Mississippi, Sotomayor remarked (while leaving it unsaid that they were rightwing Republicans), had devised new legislation to ban abortions after just 15 weeks of pregnancy. By these politicians’ own admission, their bills were targeted specifically at the three new justices on the supreme court (all appointed by Trump, though she left that unspoken too).
Then she went in for the kill.
She addressed the danger posed by the court’s sudden and apparently politically motivated change of heart not just to abortion rights but to the rule of law itself.
If the nation’s highest court, with its newly constituted Trumpian majority, were to go along with the ploy set for it by Mississippi and throw out half a century of settled law affirming a woman’s right to choose, then what would happen to the court’s legitimacy as a place in American democracy that rises above the cut and thrust of grubby partisanship?
“Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the constitution and its reading are just political acts?” she said. “I don’t see how it is possible.”
Stench. The word ricocheted off the august walls of the courtroom like a bullet.
“It was a shocking moment,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “An unadorned recognition of the legitimacy issues that are clearly preoccupying a number of the justices.”
For Stephen Vladeck, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Texas at Austin, the takeaway of this week’s hearing was not how many justices were preoccupied with the reputational damage facing an increasingly politicised court, but how few. “To me, the single most distressing feature of Justice Sotomayor’s arguments was how little anyone else seemed to care,” he told the Guardian.
And this has become more apparent with each new ruling. Look at what the SCOTUS did to the Biden Administration’s efforts to enforce vaccine mandates. It was purely political. Republicans do not believe in vaccine mandates nor wearing masks. And Gorsuch pulling this shit with no mask is just an open acknowledgement of a “Fuck You!” liberals attitude.
MSNBC reported (no link yet) on some more of the political toxicity of the Republican block on the SCOTUS.
- Chief Justice Roberts is considered a “squish” by the other reactionaries.
- The reactionaries have been griping that they just need to get on with overturning other legal precedents that liberals have come to rely upon (little things like abortion rights for one).
- Justice Alito has been pissed off for years that he was not given the chief justice job.
- Kagan and Breyer have been trying to play a long game by not attacking their reactionary colleagues, but it has become obvious to Court watchers that Kagan and Breyer have been swallowing their anger (the coloring from Kagan’s face drains away when the reactionaries speak, and Breyer just gets this frozen or stone look).
- The three Trump appointees now openly attend political events (kissing the ring of McConnell in KY for one).
This is really unheard of in the past because the Court has purposely been hiding any of their politics with past decisions. We can see the obvious with their rulings, but all Court observers say that the Court is purposely “opaque” or has been in the past. Now, the reactonaries do not give a shit about who the Court is viewed. They only care about dragging us back to the 19th Century.
Sadly, the only alternative is Court reform. But we will not get that with Sinema and Manchin and the other 50 Republicans. Manchin doesn’t care for things like abortion rights, and Sinema would sell her parents out to make a buck. And the present partisan SCOTUS is what all those Senate Republicans worked for. In fact, Manchin voted for Kavanaugh.
And Biden and the other Senate Democrats have not wanted to deal with Court reform. But they are going to have to do that very soon. The SCOTUS will not be happy with just crippling Biden vaccine mandates. More reactionary rulings are coming down this summer.
The stench from this partisan group of justices will not be easy to ignore.
