June 22, 2024
Our country has become a sinkhole of corruption, full of people chasing the fever dream of white supremacy. Our Congress is paralyzed by a small cadre of attention-seeking arsonists sent to Washington from gerrymandered districts stuffed with bitter voters whose minds are curdled by hate.
The most prominent example, though, is the Supreme Court. The only thing that outstrips the craven corruption of JusticesThomas and Alito is the aggressive mediocrity of their intellect. The two are in a cynical contest to see who can fetch the highest price for their fealty, while Justice Roberts is like a dejected ringmaster who has lost control of the circus. It is the entirely predictable result of allowing dark money into politics through its 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) and supercharging the disenfranchisement of Black and Brown voters in 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013).
How else can we explain last week’s decision written by Thomas for the 6-3 majority in Garland v. Cargill? The decision overturned a Trump-era rule banning bump stocks,a device that renders semi-automatic weapons capable of firing 400 or 500 shots at a time without having to re-engage the trigger. The 19 page majority opinion used “six diagrams” of the internal firing mechanism of guns with bump stock devices, to substitute a tortured argument centered on the “function of the trigger,” to achieve their desired result— to legalize bump stocks, (Source: Garland v. Cargill, 602 U.S. ___, dissent of Sotomayor, J. at 7).
Justice Sotomayor’s dissent argued for a humane and common sense interpretation of the BATF regulation, stating that by “focusing on the internal mechanisms that initiate fire…the majority eviscerates Congress’s regulation of machine guns and enables gun users and manufacturers to circumvent federal law,” (Cargill, 602 U.S. ___, dissent of Sotomayor, J.at 7). As Justice Sotomayor pointed out, the majority’s approach “flies in the face of this Court’s standard tools of statutory interpretation,” (ibid).
The decision in Garland v, Cargill, which will inexorably lead to deadlier mass shootings, is in line with the conservative supermajority’s effort to jettison reliance on legal precedent and substitute 19th century “history and tradition.” This doctrinal shift seeks to erase modernity and hamstring the law by limiting protections to those in place well before anyone other than straight, Christian, white men had rights that “the law was bound to respect.” Thomas doubled down on this hidebound judicial philosophy in his lone dissent in the 8-1 decision in United States v. Rahimi, which upheld the constitutionality of a law which strips guns from domestic abusers.
It is no surprise that this approach is led by Alito and Thomas, the two most corrupt and least intellectually serious justices on the Court. Neither man makes any secret of their extreme right wing views and Alito, in particular, seems to relish flaunting them. After Alito was exposed for having two insurrectionist flags flying on his property (one for each home), he was caught on tape enthusiastically agreeing with journalist Lauren Windsor’s statement that “people in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting…to return our country to a place of godliness,” (Source: “Justice Alito Caught on Tape Discussing How Battle For America ‘Can’t Be Compromised’,” by Tessa Stuart, Tim Dickinson, Rollingstone.com, 6/10/24). Yet despite these shocking disclosures, Alito has rebuffed all calls that he recuse himself from the January 6th case.
Clarence Thomas seems determined to beat Alito in the race to the bottom. We have known for more than two years that Thomas’s wife Ginni played a key role in the January 6th insurrection, pleading with Mark Meadows via text to keep Trump from conceding the election and lobbying legislators in Wisconsin to install a slate of fake electors (Source: “Ginni Thomas pressed Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory,” by Emma Brown, The Washington Post, 9/1/22). In addition, thanks to ProPublica, we know that for twenty years billionaire Harlan Crow has showered Thomas with lavish vacations and private jet trips, as well as paying private school tuition for Thomas’s nephew and even buying Thomas’s mother’s house! (Source: “Clarence Thomas Had a Child in Private School. Harlan Crow Paid the Tuition,” by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica.com, 5/14/23).
The combination of blatant corruption and naked extremism is shocking to those of us who grew up shaped by the legacy of the Warren Court. The Warren Court, which lasted from 1953-1969, is rightly revered for harnessing the law to eradicate segregation (Brown v. Board of Education, (1954)), to enshrine fairness and due process for criminal defendants, (Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), and Miranda v. Arizona, (1966)), and to establish the marital and personal right of privacy in Griswold v.Connecticut, (1965) that was the foundation for the right to birth control, abortion and overturning the sodomy laws that criminalized sex for LGBTQ people.
Yet we would do well to remember that the Warren Court was an anomaly. From Dred Scott to Plessy v. Ferguson to the 1935 “Black Monday” cases invalidating important New Deal policies, for most of its 234 year history the Supreme Court has protected the interests of the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the working or marginalized person. The corruption is new, but the alignment of interest is not. Now is a critical time for us to realize, neither the cavalry, nor the Supreme Court, is going to save us. We are the only ones who can do that.
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