Self-government is worth defending from an illegitimate Supreme Court
On this Independence Day, we should reaffirm the twin pillars of democracy: Voters (not the mob) pick their leaders, and elected leaders (not unelected judges) make policy decisions for which they are held accountable. Just as we need to preserve the sanctity of elections (by prosecuting coup instigators), democracy defenders need to address judicial radicals’ gross distortion of our system, resulting in the current Supreme Court’s subversion of democracy.
Unhinged from judicial standards, the court now roves through the policy landscape, overturning decades of law and reordering Americans’ lives and institutions. It upends women’s health, revamps college admissions, snatches student aid from millions and redefines public accommodations (allowing egregious discrimination). In aggrandizing power, the court illegitimately dominates policymaking, undermining democracy to an extent we have not seen in nearly 100 years. (Ronald Brownstein pointed out that similar constitutional collisions in the 1850s and 1930s took a civil war or threat of court-packing to resolve.)
Something must change if we want to preserve rule by the people’s elected leaders responsible to voters.
As a preliminary matter, it is essential to identify the problem. As morally and politically offensive as Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action, LGBTQ+ discrimination and student debt forgiveness might be to millions of Americans, merely criticizing the court’s result is misguided and unproductive. The task is to expose the court’s disintegration as a legitimate judicial body and note its emergence as a supreme right-wing policymaker. When the court operates on an ends-justify-the-means basis, shreds legal doctrine and dishonestly presents the facts, critics should not play whack-a-mole, decrying each individual rejection of widespread American values. In doing so, the court negates self-government.
One telltale sign that the justices have become partisan politicians: their refusal to adopt mandatory ethics rules, which destroys the essence of judicial impartiality that is the root of their legitimacy. When judges cease to eliminate conflicts of interest or the appearance thereof, they appear indistinguishable from politicians wined and dined in rarefied settings by lobbyists. The stench of financial corruption, coupled with justices’ intemperate rants in partisan settings and in op-eds, convinces Americans that the justices are partisan players out to score points for their own side.
https://wapo.st/46ytv2t
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