THE OUT-OF-CONTROL RADICAL REACTIONARY SUPREME COURT

The six radical reactionary Supreme Court justices have clearly demonstrated that they are unconstrained by precedents of any kind, i.e., they are truly out-of-control. To them the end justifies the means. Through their invented “major questions” doctrine they have crowned themselves the rulers over all government policies. Through their acceptance of contrived cases without true plaintiffs (i.e., ones with standing to bring a case to court) they rule over what is acceptable or not in all elements of our society. Through their rulings they are returning our society to one where some people are better and have more rights than others.

(Note: If you find my posts too much to read on occasion, please just read the bolded portions. They present the key points I’m making.)

Recent decisions by the Supreme Court clearly show that its radical reactionary six-justice majority (Roberts, Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas) is out-of-control. They are making up law, precedents, procedures, and conclusions that fit their white supremacist, evangelical Christian, plutocratic ideology. This is not hyperbole or political bias speaking, it is fact.

What worries me the most is not the substance of their decisions, as horrific as that is, it’s their process, their perversion of the law, their contorted “logic,” their disregard for facts, and their rejection of procedural standards and precedents. As Norman Ornstein, a respected political scientist and a senior fellow emeritus at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute (where he has been for over 40 years) wrote, “It is not just the rulings the Roberts Court is making. They created out of whole cloth a bogus, major questions doctrine. They made a mockery of standing. They rewrite laws to fit their radical ideological preferences. They have unilaterally blown up the legitimacy of the Court.”

Five recent blog posts or articles from my three favorite sources of intelligent, progressive policy analysis and commentary provide detail that documents the veracity of Ornstein’s statements. They document the radical reactionary nature of recent Supreme Court decisions – not just in terms of the specific outcomes and substance, but in terms of process and perversion of law and history.

David Dayen’s article, “Supreme Court decides fake plaintiffs are good plaintiffs,” on The American Prospect website, focuses on the issue of standing. Normally, for a plaintiff to file a suit in court, the individual(s) or organization(s) bringing the suit must have “standing” to sue, meaning they must have suffered actual harm – physical, financial, or an inability to do something, such as to vote. In both the student loan forgiveness case (Biden v. Nebraska) and the LGBTQ wedding website case (303 Creative LLC v. Elenis) the plaintiffs did NOT have standing to even bring the cases based on traditional definitions of standing or any normal interpretation of law, legal practice, or precedent.

The only rationale for the Supreme Court’s acceptance of these two cases and their granting of standing to the plaintiffs is that the six radical reactionary justices knew the ruling they wanted to make and were eager to accept any case that would allow them to do so. Dayen writes that beyond the ethical and financial corruption of Supreme Court justices that has recently come to light, “there is a subtler corruption, whereby the Court picks up whatever facts, whether true or untrue, [including on standing to sue] and wields them to decide cases that fit their prior beliefs.”

Robert Hubbell, a retired lawyer, in his Today’s Edition Newsletter blog on July 1, 2023, “Brute force in the service of religious nationalism,” also focuses on the Supreme Court’s willingness to accept and rule on cases where the plaintiff lacks standing to bring a lawsuit. Moreover, the “conflicts” underlying Biden v. Nebraska and 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis were contrived by right-wing advocates in a conscious and concerted effort to create a case so the Court could make a ruling. The Court was happy to take on these cases and make the ruling the advocates wanted and that fit with their radical, reactionary ideology.

My next post will review the six justices’ invented but powerful “major questions” doctrine and their efforts to turn back the pages of our history, allowing discrimination and asserting that all people are NOT equal, but that some are better, or at least more important before the law, than others.