The first Monday in October marks the beginning of a new term for the Supreme Court. This tradition dates back to 1916.
But the Court has never marked this occasion with public opinion of its impartiality as low as it is today.
The Supreme Court’s approval rating is plummeting, its critics are more caustic, and justices are feeling compelled to plead the case to the public that they are judicial philosophers, not politicians in robes.
All of this as the court embarks Oct. 4 on one of the most potentially divisive terms in years. Docketed cases concern gun control, separation of church and state, and the biggest showdown in decades on the future of Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion.
(The Washington Post, September 26, 2021)
I see no point in speculating on how the Court will rule on those controversial cases. Except I feel constrained to note that, despite all the pain and suffering the infamous Texas anti-abortion law has caused, I am convinced the Court will not overturn Roe v. Wade.
That said, as the Post intimated, public perception of Supreme Court justices as little more than political hacks has finally reached critical mass. Of course, it did not help that former President Trump trumpeted the three he nominated as his justices, and denounced those his predecessors nominated as their justices.
Proving that he’ll never learn, he is making it impossible for his Supreme Court picks to do his bidding, despite their obvious interest in doing so. The problem is that he keeps telling everyone what he should be telling no one. In this case, it is that he expects his three nominees to rule in his favor in every case challenging the presidential result, which even he clearly expects Biden to win.
(“Trump Is Making It Impossible for His Supreme Court Picks to Do His Bidding for Re-election,” October 31, 2020)
Indeed, no less a person than Chief Justice John Roberts tried to admonish Trump against speaking so openly about the Court’s increasingly partisan nature.
Normally restrained Chief Justice John Roberts took issue on Wednesday with President Donald Trump’s characterization of a federal judge who ruled against his administration as an ‘Obama judge.’…
The president, who is spending time in Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday, disagreed and posted a response on Twitter Wednesday afternoon detailing his complaints with the court.
‘Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’ and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country,’ Trump posted on Twitter.
(USA Today, November 21, 2018)
But, truth be told, it has been self-evident for decades that a judge’s ruling invariably reflects the political ideology, or further the political agenda, of the president who nominated them. Here is how I lamented this fact years ago in “Supreme Court Rules Voter ID Laws OK,” October 18, 2014:
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Neither this decision, nor its breakdown along partisan lines, should surprise anyone who knows anything about the ‘politics’ (as opposed to the legal reasoning and judicial precedents) that guide this Court’s rulings. For the one thing that distinguishes this Court is that the justices Republican presidents nominated invariably vote on the side of issues that affirms conservative ideology; whereas those Democratic presidents nominated invariably vote on the side that affirms liberal ideology.
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In other words, conservatives and liberals on the Court have devolved into little more than glorified hired guns for the Republican Party and Democratic Party, respectively. This was thrown into political relief just weeks ago when conservative justices tacitly affirmed a Texas law that effectively outlawed abortions.
I wrote about it in “Civil War II Looms Larger as Texas Suppresses Voting Rights and Bans Abortions…,” September 2, 2021. This is why I was so dismayed when liberal Justice Stephen Breyer insisted there was nothing political about conservative justices giving that tacit affirmation.
After watching his judicial gaslighting during an appearance on the September 19 edition of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, I commented online as follows:
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They are all ‘driven by judicial philosophy’? Sadly, this makes Justice Breyer seem either naive or senile. Because it’s clearly not a judicious opinion.
In fact, Justice Coney-Barrett betrayed the truth when she appeared at an event with partisan hack-in-chief Mitch McConnell just days ago. During her remarks, she claimed that the Supreme Court ‘is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks’. ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’
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Cheap shot…? Re Breyer being senile, that is.
Well, it just so happens that I felt compelled to leap to his defense early last summer when fellow progressives were publicly trying to bully him into retirement. They felt justice warranted forcing him to make way for Biden to nominate a young hired gun to oppose Trump’s young nominees.
I sounded a decidedly discordant note when I jumped into the fray by appending the following comment to a July 16 CNN report on their campaign:
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I sympathize with the anxieties that are causing progressives to pressure Breyer to retire. But their pressure amounts to political impudence and bullying in equal measure. Hell, you’d think they know more, or care more, about the fate of American democracy than he does.
Frankly, they seem too consumed with their own self-righteousness to appreciate how Breyer might be reflecting on the way they hailed RBG as a living icon, but then pissed all over her grave just because she failed to retire according to their political calculations. But why would, indeed how could, any eminent justice give even the appearance of basing this seismic decision (in so many respects) on pressure from a left-wing mob…? RBG did not. Breyer will not. And no justice should.
It is self-evident that the prudent thing to do is to leave Breyer to his own wise counsel – to do the right thing … in a timely manner. Yes, fate could hand Republicans control of the Senate tomorrow. But it could just as easily reinforce the Democrats’ control. So …
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For the record, in another online comment back then, I shared my belief that Breyer’s wise counsel will lead him announce his retirement in late June or early July of 2022.
I rest my case.
Related commentaries:
voter ID… Trump’s supreme court justices… civil war II…
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