{"id":22390,"date":"2022-05-11T12:12:46","date_gmt":"2022-05-11T19:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=22390"},"modified":"2022-05-11T12:15:33","modified_gmt":"2022-05-11T19:15:33","slug":"the-case-against-the-supreme-court-of-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/05\/11\/the-case-against-the-supreme-court-of-the-united-states\/","title":{"rendered":"The case against the Supreme Court of the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>The Court was the midwife of Jim Crow, the right hand of union busters, and the dead hand of the Confederacy, and is now one of the chief architects of America\u2019s democratic decline.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/authors\/ian-millhiser\">Ian Millhiser<\/a>&nbsp;&nbsp;May 3, 2022, 9:08pm EDT (Vox.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/thumbor\/1RwWJgfh8svOJeGauuAvrjcrWz0=\/0x0:2645x3376\/1200x800\/filters:focal(1047x971:1469x1393)\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/uploads\/chorus_image\/image\/70829334\/517215976.0.jpg\" alt=\"Portrait Of Slave Dred Scott\"\/><figcaption>Dred Scott, whom the Supreme Court of the United States described as a being \u201cof an inferior order.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Two events occurred Monday night \u2014 one historic, the other rather insignificant \u2014 which placed an unflattering spotlight on the Supreme Court of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The historic event was that Politico published an unprecedented leak of a draft majority opinion, by Justice Samuel Alito, which would&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2022\/5\/3\/23054543\/supreme-court-roe-wade-abortion-samuel-alito-overruled-draft-politico\">overrule&nbsp;<em>Roe v. Wade<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;and permit state lawmakers to ban abortion in its entirety in the US. Alito\u2019s draft opinion is not the Court\u2019s final word on this case,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotusblog.com\/case-files\/cases\/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization\/\"><em>Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization<\/em><\/a>, but the leaked opinion is the latest in a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2021\/12\/10\/22827899\/supreme-court-texas-abortion-law-sb8-decision-whole-womans-health\">long<\/a>&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2021\/12\/1\/22811837\/supreme-court-roe-wade-abortion-doomed-jackson-womens-health-dobbs-barrett-kavanaugh-roberts\">list<\/a>&nbsp;of signs that&nbsp;<em>Roe<\/em>&nbsp;may be in its final days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other event that also occurred last night is that I sent two tweets. One praised whoever leaked Alito\u2019s opinion for disrupting an institution that, as I have written about many times in many forums,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Injustices-Comforting-Comfortable-Afflicting-Afflicted\/dp\/1568585691?ots=1&amp;slotNum=0&amp;imprToken=46c05a43-c969-f12f-9c6&amp;tag=curbedcom06-20&amp;linkCode=w50\">including my first book<\/a>, has historically been a malign force within the United States. And a second&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/imillhiser\/status\/1521292360721879042?s=20&amp;t=ifUq--hQXbrbulnZyqSJCA\">celebrated the leak<\/a>&nbsp;for the distrust it might foster in such a malign institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure><iframe allowfullscreen=\"true\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/Tweet.html?dnt=false&amp;embedId=twitter-widget-0&amp;features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3NlbnNpdGl2ZV9tZWRpYV9pbnRlcnN0aXRpYWxfMTM5NjMiOnsiYnVja2V0IjoiaW50ZXJzdGl0aWFsIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&amp;frame=false&amp;hideCard=false&amp;hideThread=false&amp;id=1521294917577973760&amp;lang=en&amp;origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F2022%2F5%2F3%2F23055427%2Fsupreme-court-abortion-alito-dobbs-roe-wade-voting-race&amp;sessionId=aeac3eaac73c4f08ee18597f8c0e6ca5ff080a6a&amp;siteScreenName=voxdotcom&amp;theme=light&amp;widgetsVersion=c8fe9736dd6fb%3A1649830956492&amp;width=550px\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The former tweet was phrased provocatively, and it attracted some attention from those on the right,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/atrupar\/status\/1521514642178248705\">including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)<\/a>. So let me clarify that I do not advocate arson as a solution to the Republican Party\u2019s capture of the Supreme Court. I metaphorically compared the leak of Alito\u2019s opinion to lighting the Court on fire because, as Chief Justice John Roberts&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/johnkruzel\/status\/1521508763861192706\">noted in his statement on the leak<\/a>, the Court has extraordinarily strong norms of confidentiality that it zealously protects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The fact that someone inside the Court\u2019s very small circle of trust apparently decided to leak a draft opinion is likely to be perceived by the justices, as SCOTUSBlog tweeted out Monday night, as \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SCOTUSblog\/status\/1521295411545260035\">the gravest, most unforgivable sin<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To this I say, \u201cgood.\u201d If the Court does what Alito proposed in his draft opinion, and overrules&nbsp;<em>Roe v. Wade<\/em>, that decision will be the culmination of a decades-long effort by Republicans to capture the institution and use it, not just to undercut abortion rights but also to implement an unpopular agenda they&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/03\/30\/opinion\/republican-party-supreme-court.html\">cannot implement through the democratic process<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the Court\u2019s Republican majority hasn\u2019t simply handed the Republican Party substantive policy victories. It is&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/22575435\/voting-rights-supreme-court-john-roberts-shelby-county-constitution-brnovich-elena-kagan\">systematically dismantling voting rights protections<\/a>&nbsp;that make it possible for every voter to have an equal voice, and for every political party to compete fairly for control of the United States government. Justice Alito, the author of the draft opinion overturning&nbsp;<em>Roe<\/em>, is also the author of two&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/17pdf\/17-586_o7kq.pdf\">important<\/a>&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/20pdf\/19-1257_g204.pdf\">decisions<\/a>&nbsp;dismantling much of the Voting Rights Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This behavior, moreover, is consistent with the history of an institution that once blessed slavery and described Black people as \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/60\/393\/\">beings of an inferior order<\/a>.\u201d It is consistent with the Court\u2019s history of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/scholar_case?case=3072585965506695672&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=6&amp;as_vis=1&amp;oi=scholarr\">union-busting<\/a>, of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/wex\/plessy_v_ferguson_(1896)\">supporting racial segregation<\/a>, and of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supremecourt\/text\/323\/214\">upholding concentration camps<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moreover, while the present Court is unusually conservative, the judiciary as an institution has an&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/democracyjournal.org\/magazine\/38\/keep-fearing-the-supreme-court\/\">inherent conservative bias<\/a>. Courts have a great deal of power to strike down programs created by elected officials, but little ability to build such programs from the ground up. Thus, when an anti-governmental political movement controls the judiciary, it will likely be able to exploit that control to great effect. But when a more left-leaning movement controls the courts, it is likely to find judicial power to be an ineffective tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Court, in other words, simply does not deserve the reverence it still enjoys in much of American society, and especially from the legal profession. For nearly all of its history, it\u2019s been a reactionary institution, a political one that serves the interests of the already powerful at the expense of the most vulnerable. And it currently appears to be reverting to that historic mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"zAU0W9\">Alito wants abortion supporters to play a rigged game<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>There have&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2020\/10\/26\/21534358\/supreme-court-amy-coney-barrett-constitution-anti-democratic-electoral-college-senate\">only been three justices in American history<\/a>&nbsp;who were appointed by a president who lost the popular vote, and who were confirmed by a bloc of senators who represent less than half the country. All three of them sit on the Supreme Court right now, and all three were appointed by Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, if not for anti-democratic institutions such as the Senate and the Electoral College, it\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2022\/2\/14\/22925457\/supreme-court-senate-confirmation-ketanji-brown-jackson-leondra-kruger-michelle-childs\">likely that Democrats would control a majority of the seats<\/a>&nbsp;on the Supreme Court, and a decision overruling&nbsp;<em>Roe<\/em>&nbsp;would not be on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it is ironic \u2014 for that reason, and others \u2014 that Alito\u2019s draft opinion overruling&nbsp;<em>Roe<\/em>&nbsp;leans heavily on appeals to democracy. Quoting from an opinion by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Alito writes that \u201cthe permissibility of abortion, and the limitations upon it,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2022\/5\/3\/23054543\/supreme-court-roe-wade-abortion-samuel-alito-overruled-draft-politico\">are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy<\/a>: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If Alito truly wants to put the question of whether pregnant individuals have a right to terminate that pregnancy up to a free and fair democratic process, polling indicates that liberals could probably win that fight on a national level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure><iframe allowfullscreen=\"true\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/Tweet.html?dnt=false&amp;embedId=twitter-widget-1&amp;features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3NlbnNpdGl2ZV9tZWRpYV9pbnRlcnN0aXRpYWxfMTM5NjMiOnsiYnVja2V0IjoiaW50ZXJzdGl0aWFsIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&amp;frame=false&amp;hideCard=false&amp;hideThread=false&amp;id=1518927874811744258&amp;lang=en&amp;origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F2022%2F5%2F3%2F23055427%2Fsupreme-court-abortion-alito-dobbs-roe-wade-voting-race&amp;sessionId=aeac3eaac73c4f08ee18597f8c0e6ca5ff080a6a&amp;siteScreenName=voxdotcom&amp;theme=light&amp;widgetsVersion=c8fe9736dd6fb%3A1649830956492&amp;width=550px\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In fairness, polling on abortion often misses the nuances of public opinion. Many polls, for example, allow respondents to say that they believe that abortion should be legal \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/1576\/abortion.aspx\">under certain circumstances<\/a>\u201d or in \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/religion\/fact-sheet\/public-opinion-on-abortion\/\">most cases<\/a>,\u201d leaving anyone who reads those polls to speculate under which specific circumstances people think that abortion should be legal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps the best evidence that proponents of legal abortion could win a fair political fight, however, is the Supreme Court\u2019s own polling. After the Court allowed a strict anti-abortion law to take effect in Texas last fall, multiple polls found the Supreme Court\u2019s approval rating at its&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/regulation\/court-battles\/572471-supreme-court-job-approval-sinks-to-all-time-low-poll-shows\/\">lowest<\/a>&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/354908\/approval-supreme-court-down-new-low.aspx\">point<\/a>&nbsp;ever recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But public opinion may not matter much in the coming political fight over abortion, becauseAlito and his fellow Republican justices have spent the past decade placing a thumb on the scales of democracy \u2014 making our system even less democratic than one that already features the Electoral College and a malapportioned Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Alito authored two opinions and joined a third that, when combined,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/22575435\/voting-rights-supreme-court-john-roberts-shelby-county-constitution-brnovich-elena-kagan\">almost completely neutralize the Voting Rights Act<\/a>, the landmark legislation that took power away from Jim Crow and ensured that every American would be able to vote, regardless of their race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Similarly, the Court\u2019s Republican majority held in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/18pdf\/18-422_9ol1.pdf\"><em>Rucho v. Common Cause<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;(2019) that federal courts will do nothing to stop partisan gerrymandering. Alito is also one of the Court\u2019s most outspoken proponents of the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/22958543\/supreme-court-gerrymandering-redistricting-north-carolina-pennsylvania-moore-toth-amy-coney-barrett\">independent state legislature doctrine<\/a>,\u201d a doctrine that, in its strongest form, would give gerrymandered Republican legislatures nearly limitless power to determine how federal elections are conducted in their state \u2014 even if those gerrymandered legislatures violate their state constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the most troubling aspects of this Court\u2019s jurisprudence is that it often seems to apply one set of rules to Democrats and a different, more permissive set of rules to Republicans. Last February, for example, Alito voted with four of his fellow Republicans to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2022\/2\/8\/22922774\/supreme-court-merrill-milligan-alabama-brett-kavanaugh-racial-gerrymandering-voting-rights-act\">reinstate an Alabama congressional map<\/a>&nbsp;that a lower court determined to be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In blocking the lower court\u2019s order, Alito joined an opinion arguing that the lower court\u2019s decision was wrong because it was&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2022\/2\/8\/22922774\/supreme-court-merrill-milligan-alabama-brett-kavanaugh-racial-gerrymandering-voting-rights-act\">handed down too close to the next election<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But then, in late March, the Court enjoined Wisconsin\u2019s state legislative maps, due to concerns that those maps&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2022\/3\/23\/22993107\/supreme-court-wisconsin-race-gerrymander-voting-rights-act-legislature-elections-commission\">may give too much political power to Black people<\/a>. March is, of course, closer to the next Election Day than February. So it is difficult to square the March decision with the approach Alito endorsed in February \u2014 though it is notable that the March decision by the Supreme Court benefited the Republican Party, while the previous decision was likely to benefit Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I could list more examples of how this Court, often relying on novel legal reasoning, has advanced the Republican Party\u2019s substantive agenda \u2014 on areas as diverse as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/22889417\/supreme-court-religious-liberty-christian-right-revolution-amy-coney-barrett\">religion<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/22883639\/supreme-court-vaccines-osha-cms-biden-mandate-nfib-labor-missouri\">vaccination<\/a>, and the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/20pdf\/20-107_ihdj.pdf\">right of workers to organize<\/a>. But really, every issue pales in importance to the right to vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If this right is not protected, then liberals are truly defenseless \u2014 even when they enjoy overwhelming majority support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"sIS3rO\">The Court\u2019s current behavior is consistent with its history<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/5\/137\/\"><em>Marbury v. Madison<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;(1803), the Supreme Court held that it has the power to strike down federal laws. But the actual issue at stake in&nbsp;<em>Marbury<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014 whether a single individual named to a low-ranking federal job was entitled to that appointment \u2014 was insignificant. And, after&nbsp;<em>Marbury<\/em>, the Court\u2019s power to strike down federal laws&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/law.justia.com\/constitution\/us\/acts-of-congress-held-unconstitutional.html\">lay dormant until the 1850s<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then came&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/60\/393\/\"><em>Dred Scott v. Sandford<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;(1857), the pro-slavery decision describing Black people as \u201cbeings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.\u201d&nbsp;<em>Dred Scott,&nbsp;<\/em>the Court\u2019s very first opinion striking down a significant federal law, went after the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Missouri_Compromise\">Missouri Compromise\u2019s<\/a>&nbsp;provisions limiting the scope of slavery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s not surprising that an institution made up entirely of elite lawyers, who are immune from political accountability and cannot be fired, tends to protect people who are already powerful and cast a much more skeptical eye on people who are marginalized because of their race, gender, or class.&nbsp;<em>Dred Scott<\/em>&nbsp;is widely recognized as the worst decision in the Court\u2019s history, but it began a nearly century-long trend of Supreme Court decisions preserving white supremacy and relegating workers into destitution \u2014 a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Injustices-Comforting-Comfortable-Afflicting-Afflicted\/dp\/1568585691?ots=1&amp;slotNum=1&amp;imprToken=46c05a43-c969-f12f-9c6&amp;tag=curbedcom06-20&amp;linkCode=w50\">history<\/a>&nbsp;that is glossed over in most American civics classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The American people ratified three constitutional amendments \u2014 the 13th, 14th, and 15th \u2014 to eradicate&nbsp;<em>Dred Scott<\/em>&nbsp;and ensure that Black Americans would enjoy, in the 14th Amendment\u2019s words, all of the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/constitution\/amendmentxiv\">privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But then the Court spent the next three decades largely dismantling these three amendments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just 10 years after the Civil War, the Supreme Court handed down&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supremecourt\/text\/92\/542\"><em>United States v. Cruikshank<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;(1875), a decision favoring a white supremacist mob that armed itself with guns and cannons to kill a rival Black militia defending its right to self-governance. Black people, the Court held in&nbsp;<em>Cruikshank<\/em>, \u201cmust look to the States\u201d to protect civil rights such as the right to peacefully assemble \u2014 a decision that should send a chill down the spine of anyone familiar with the history of the Jim Crow South.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The culmination of this age of white supremacist jurisprudence was&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/tile.loc.gov\/storage-services\/service\/ll\/usrep\/usrep163\/usrep163537\/usrep163537.pdf\"><em>Plessy v. Ferguson<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;(1896), which blessed the idea of \u201cseparate but equal.\u201d<em>Plessy&nbsp;<\/em>remained good law for nearly six decades after it was decided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After decisions like&nbsp;<em>Plessy<\/em>&nbsp;effectively dismantled the Reconstruction Amendments\u2019 promise of racial equality, the Court spent the next 40 years transforming the 14th Amendment into a bludgeon to be used against labor. This was the age of decisions like&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supremecourt\/text\/198\/45\"><em>Lochner v. New York<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;(1905), which struck down a New York law preventing bakery owners from overworking their workers. It was also the age of decisions like&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/261\/525\/\"><em>Adkins v. Children\u2019s Hospital<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;(1923), which struck down minimum wage laws, and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/scholar_case?case=3072585965506695672&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=6&amp;as_vis=1&amp;oi=scholarr\"><em>Adair v. United States<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;(1908), which prohibited lawmakers from protecting the right to unionize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The logic of decisions like&nbsp;<em>Lochner<\/em>&nbsp;is that the 14th Amendment\u2019s language providing that no state may \u201cdeprive any person of life, liberty, or property,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/constitution\/amendmentxiv\">without due process of law<\/a>\u201d created a \u201cright to contract.\u201d And that this supposed right prohibited the government from invalidating exploitative labor contracts that forced workers to labor for long hours with little pay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Alito notes in his&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/f\/?id=00000180-874f-dd36-a38c-c74f98520000\">draft opinion overruling&nbsp;<em>Roe<\/em><\/a>, the&nbsp;<em>Roe<\/em>&nbsp;opinion did rely on a similar methodology to&nbsp;<em>Lochner<\/em>. It found the right to an abortion to also be&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supremecourt\/text\/410\/113\">implicit in the 14th Amendment\u2019s due process clause<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For what it\u2019s worth, I actually find this portion of Alito\u2019s opinion persuasive. I\u2019ve argued that the&nbsp;<em>Roe<\/em>&nbsp;opinion&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Injustices-Comforting-Comfortable-Afflicting-Afflicted\/dp\/1568585691?ots=1&amp;slotNum=2&amp;imprToken=46c05a43-c969-f12f-9c6&amp;tag=curbedcom06-20&amp;linkCode=w50\">should have been rooted in the constitutional right to gender equality<\/a>&nbsp;\u2014 what the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once described as the \u201copportunity women will have to participate as men\u2019s full partners in the nation\u2019s social, political, and economic life\u201d \u2014 and not the extraordinarily vague and easily manipulated language of the due process clause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, one of the most striking things about the Court\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Lochner-<\/em>era jurisprudence is how willing the justices were to manipulate legal doctrines \u2014 applying one doctrine in one case, then ignoring it when it was likely to benefit a party that they did not want to prevail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/247\/251\/\"><em>Hammer v. Dagenhart<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;(1918), for example, the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that prohibited goods produced by child labor from traveling across state lines. The reason Congress structured this ban on child labor in such an unusual way is because the Supreme Court had repeatedly held prior to&nbsp;<em>Dagenhart<\/em>&nbsp;that Congress could ban products from traveling in interstate commerce \u2014 among other things, the Court upheld a law prohibiting lottery tickets from traveling across state lines in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/caselaw.findlaw.com\/us-supreme-court\/188\/321.html\"><em>Champion v. Ames<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;(1903).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the rule announced in&nbsp;<em>Champion<\/em>&nbsp;and similar cases was brushed aside once Congress decided to use its lawful authority to protect workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Court also did not exactly cover itself in glory after President Franklin Roosevelt filled it with New Dealers who rejected decisions like&nbsp;<em>Lochner<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>Hammer<\/em>. One of the most significant Supreme Court decisions of the Roosevelt era, for example, was&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supremecourt\/text\/323\/214\"><em>Korematsu v. United States<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;(1944), the decision holding that Japanese Americans could be forced into concentration camps during World War II,for the sin of having the wrong ancestors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The point is that decisions like Alito\u2019s draft&nbsp;<em>Dobbs<\/em>&nbsp;opinion, which would commandeer the bodies of millions of Americans \u2014 or decisions dismantling the Voting Rights Act \u2014 are entirely consistent with the Court\u2019s history as defender of traditional hierarchies. Alito is not an outlier in the Court\u2019s history. He is quite representative of the justices who came before him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"RbslQY\">The judiciary is structurally biased in favor of conservatives<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In offering this critique of the Supreme Court, I will acknowledge that the Court\u2019s history has not been an unbroken string of reactionary decisions dashing the hopes of liberalism. The Court\u2019s marriage equality decision in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/14pdf\/14-556_3204.pdf\"><em>Obergefell v. Hodges<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;(2015), for example, was a real victory for liberals \u2014 although, as several commentators have noted, there is language in Alito\u2019s draft&nbsp;<em>Dobbs<\/em>&nbsp;opinion suggesting that, if&nbsp;<em>Roe<\/em>&nbsp;falls,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mjs_DC\/status\/1521296185977417732\">LGBTQ+ rights could be next<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the Court\u2019s ability to spearhead progressive change that does not, like marriage equality,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/350486\/record-high-support-same-sex-marriage.aspx\">enjoy broad popular support<\/a>&nbsp;is quite limited. The seminal work warning of the heavy constraints on the Court\u2019s ability to effect such change is Gerald Rosenberg\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/press.uchicago.edu\/ucp\/books\/book\/chicago\/H\/bo5828816.html\"><em>The Hollow Hope<\/em><\/a>, which argues that \u201ccourts lack the tools to readily develop appropriate policies and implement decisions ordering significant social reform,\u201d at least when those reforms aren\u2019t also supported by elected officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This constraint on the judiciary\u2019s ability to effect progressive change was most apparent in the aftermath of perhaps the Court\u2019s most celebrated decision:&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/347\/483\/\"><em>Brown v. Board of Education<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;(1954).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Brown&nbsp;<\/em>triggered&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/archive\/brown-v-board-education-didnt-end-segregation-big-government-did\/\">\u201cmassive resistance\u201d from white supremacists<\/a>, especially in the Deep South. As Harvard legal historian Michael Klarman has documented, five years after&nbsp;<em>Brown<\/em>, only 40 of North Carolina\u2019s 300,000 Black students attended an integrated school. Six years after&nbsp;<em>Brown<\/em>, only 42 of Nashville\u2019s 12,000 Black students were integrated. A decade after&nbsp;<em>Brown<\/em>, only 1 in 85 African American students in the South attended an integrated school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The courts simply lacked the institutional capacity to implement a school desegregation decision that Southern states were determined to resist. Among other things, when a school district refused to integrate, the only way to obtain a court order mandating desegregation was for a Black family to file a lawsuit against it. But terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan used the very real threat of violence to ensure few lawsuits were filed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No one dared to file such a lawsuit seeking to integrate a Mississippi grade school, for example,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/archive\/brown-v-board-education-didnt-end-segregation-big-government-did\/\">until 1963<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, much of the South did not really begin to integrate&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/archive\/brown-v-board-education-didnt-end-segregation-big-government-did\/\">until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964<\/a>, which allowed the Justice Department to sue segregated schools, and which allowed federal officials to withhold funding from schools that refused to integrate. Within two years after this act became law, the number of Southern Black students attending integrated schools increased fivefold. By 1973, 90 percent of these students were desegregated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rosenberg\u2019s most depressing conclusion is that, while liberal judges are severely constrained in their ability to effect progressive change, reactionary judges have&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/democracyjournal.org\/magazine\/38\/keep-fearing-the-supreme-court\/\">tremendous ability to hold back such change<\/a>. \u201cStudies of the role of the courts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,\u201d Rosenberg writes, \u201c\u2009show that courts can effectively block significant social reform.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, while such reactionary decisions may eventually fall if there is a sustained political effort to overrule them, this process can take a very long time.&nbsp;<em>Dagenhart<\/em>&nbsp;was decided in 1918. The Court did not overrule it, and thus permit Congress to ban child labor,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/312\/100\/\">until 1941<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/democracyjournal.org\/magazine\/38\/keep-fearing-the-supreme-court\/\">several structural reasons<\/a>&nbsp;courts are a stronger ally for conservative movements than they are for progressive ones. For starters, in most constitutional cases courts only have the power to strike down a law \u2014 that is, to destroy an edifice that the legislature has built. The Supreme Court could repeal Obamacare, but it couldn\u2019t have created the Affordable Care Act\u2019s complex array of government-run marketplaces, subsidies, and mandates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Litigation, in other words, is a far more potent tool in the hands of an anti-governmental movement than it is in the hands of one seeking to build a more robust regulatory and welfare state. It\u2019s hard to cure poverty when your only tool is a bomb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, to summarize my argument, the judiciary, for reasons laid out by Rosenberg and others, structurally favors conservatives. People who want to dismantle government programs can accomplish far more, when they control the courts, than people who want to build up those programs. And, as the Court\u2019s history shows, when conservatives do control the Court, they use their power to devastating effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This alone is a reason for liberals, small-d democrats, large-D Democrats, and marginalized groups more broadly, to take a more critical eye to the courts. And the judiciary\u2019s structural conservatism is augmented by the fact that, in the United States, institutions like the Electoral College and Senate malapportionment give Republicans a huge leg up in the battle for control of the judiciary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course I do not believe that we should literally light the Supreme Court of the United States on fire, but I do believe that diminished public trust in the Court is a good thing. This institution has not served the American people well, and it\u2019s time to start treating it that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Court was the midwife of Jim Crow, the right hand of union busters, and the dead hand of the Confederacy, and is now one of the chief architects of America\u2019s democratic decline. By&nbsp;Ian Millhiser&nbsp;&nbsp;May 3, 2022, 9:08pm EDT (Vox.com) Two events occurred Monday night \u2014 one historic, the other&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/05\/11\/the-case-against-the-supreme-court-of-the-united-states\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22390"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22390"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22396,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22390\/revisions\/22396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}