For American progressives, the Supreme Court has become a maddening institution. The comforting notion of the court as umpire lies in tatters. It is Justice Samuel Alito’s court now: methodologically flexible but ideologically rigid.
Last term, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court struck down Roe v. Wade on ostensibly originalist grounds, yet this term it is poised to strike down affirmative action on grounds that make a mockery of original understandings. The court proclaims its fidelity to the past but is actually a font of legal innovation, inventing, for example, novel counter-reforms to the American political system that entrench minority rule by the Republican Party.
These disparate outcomes are consistent in precisely one way: They turn the ideological and partisan preferences of conservative Republicans into legal changes, and these are reshaping our political and economic systems, making them more hospitable to oligarchy.
But the Supreme Court does not have the only word, or […]
I would also suggest a Permanent Committee on Impeachment in both houses of Congress to review all Federal judiciary decisions to ensure that the judges are following Congressional intent. As the authors point out, it has taken more than 200 years, but the public is finally realizing that the American judiciary, unless completely reformed, is an anti-democratic force that should have very limited powers. The more you know about judicial decisions, the more attractive legislative sausage-making appears to be.