Today, I got six “Breaking News” alerts from the New York Times about disastrous SCOTUS decisions. All of them were regressive as hell and overturning either progressive state laws OR long established federal laws. The current conservative majority of the Supreme Inquisition seems to believe that federal laws that protect us from whatever brain fart Trump has today are useless, but were quite necessary when Joe Biden wanted to commit high crimes like forgiving a small amount of federal student loan.
We all know the Supreme Cult is out of control. And this is why court reform MUST be a top priority for Democrats in 2029.
I know, I know, I know, they seem reluctant to do that, or even properly commit to addressing it. But what choice do they really have if the Supreme Inquisition of corrupt, obscurantist, hyper-Catholic dickheads is just going to overturn whatever laws they pass in Democratic President [Fill in the blank]’s first year? The only honest answer is that they don’t really have a choice if they hope to do anything meaningful, and then have it actually matter a year down the road.
So what is the solution? To be honest, I haven’t heard a bad idea so far. Court expansion? Overdue. Term limits? You had me at “hello.” Yanking Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas off the court because of obvious corruption? Sounds amazing. Severely limiting the shadow docket and what cases they can use that for? Mild, but absolutely…
Fox News, and the 20% of the country that’s going to vote conservative no matter what happens will be screaming, but let them scream. It doesn’t really matter, because you’re talking about the people that probably would’ve voted for Herbert Hoover in 1932, and would absolutely still vote for Trump if he finally made good on the promise to kill somebody on 5th Avenue. These people don’t really matter, and it’s not like 80% of the country is really that attached to the current SCOTUS or actively following what they’re doing anyway. People want the freedom to have an abortion, and they don’t really associate the failure of losing that freedom in half the country with “respecting the will of America’s clerical ruling body, aka an aloof court nobody voted for who will stay in power forever.” It would surprise no one (except maybe Democratic Party officials) that many people are not saying “Welp, nothing we can do about that, sorry. How on Earth can we defy the will of five conservative men that have profited handsomely off the court while we suffer?”
There is no alternative to changing the court, and Democrats can’t get anything substantial done if they allow this SCOTUS to stay there. This is only the second time in our nation’s history that a majority of the court has been appointed by Presidents that didn’t initially win the popular vote, but back in the 1880’s the average life expectancy meant the repercussions of that anti-majority court didn’t matter past a decade. Today, letting a corrupt, out-of-step court that the majority of the country didn’t vote for reign for decades is insane. [Thomas has served on the court for as long as the entire life expectancy was in the 1770’s.]
If Democrats really need to justify it to themselves, they can consider many alternative histories like the one where the 2000’s conservative majority of the SCOTUS didn’t screw Al Gore out of the Presidency, and High Cleric Roberts or Commander of the Faithful Alito were never appointed to the court… Or perhaps the other alternative history where Scalia’s death in early 2016 was actually filled by Barack Obama instead of stalled for a full year so Trumpolini could appoint Ayatollah Gorsuch… Or perhaps yet another alternative history wherein the Electoral College didn’t ignore the will of the majority of people in 2016, and sat Hillary Clinton into the White House where she belonged, and thus Gorsuch, Party Boy Kavanaugh, and “Aunt Lydia” Barrett were never on the court… Or at least the alternative history wherein Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn’t stay on the court too long, didn’t betray everything she’d ever worked for so she could spend her last couple of years on Earth being in the minority opinion of the Court not getting a damn thing done, and actually left the SCOTUS when she should have. In that case, President Obama appointed her replacement, and then “Aunt Amy” still never gets on the court.
Any of these alternative histories show our court should not look like what it does today. The extremely peculiar and specific circumstances that have allowed the current 6-3 reactionary SCOTUS majority to exist today are a freak accident that has benefitted conservatives at every turn, and exclusively hurt liberals. Rectifying even a seat or two of this situation is merely fair play rather than some egregious overstep.