Gee, it’s rather incredible to hear all the new voices finally recognizing that this Supreme Court, with its longest members and majority appointed by their side, is indeed running wild.
Activist? Where were they when the high bench, for the first time in history, crowned a president? Or later transformed our republic into a government by the super-rich, for the super-rich, and of the super-rich, as it has in Citizens United?
Utter silence.
But now, with a few recent flukes in its record, just listen to the outrage. If you’re trying to make sense of their decisions, good luck.
You can count me among the outraged, long ago – when our cries were ignored. When esteemed law school deans and professors warned of the top justices’ threats to our very legal system and its foundations. When we scratched our heads for any underlying sustained rudder in their course from one ruling to the next.
I’d crow now, except that the problem remains.
In its polarized atmosphere, the question keeps coming down to the swing vote — and it’s like watching a pinball machine. Which flipper will sway the course of action? The question everyone asks is who was the swing vote this time?
Who, even before Why.
With every ruling, we watch, often with horror. Will it be on the side of broad justice or instead on the side of big money? Will it be for the common American and justice for all? Or for something else, however vaguely defined?
My conclusion? What we’re seeing is not so much a matter of deciding case by case on its merits as it is an imposition of personalities from the bench. An opinion that includes “just ask a hippie” is hard to take seriously, no matter if you agree or disagree with the vote. America needs more judges of the people, for the people, and by the people throughout its ranks — more humanity and compassion rather than pompous circumstance. Not more political ideologues for the wealthy, as Republican senators have been doing in asserting privilege to obstruct presidential nominations. They even cloak themselves in anonymity in doing so without any grounds whatsoever.
When a Senate majority seeks a rubber-stamp to endorse one side only, perhaps an activist court is a foregone conclusion. And as long as we’re stuck with a Supreme Court lacking a stable center, we’ll have to wonder where the real authority is. The kind that endures rather than sways in the wind.
Maybe, in the new outcry, we in the public can come together. Wouldn’t that be something?
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