SCOTUS, our very own Kangaroo Court
The Chief Justice John Roberts Court, is a threat to the very constitution that is their job to protect and interpret.
TAT readers,
Today I will discuss my deep disappointment and now, frustration with the Chief Justice John Roberts Supreme Court, SCOTUS for short. Not only am I ashamed of most of the right-wing justices but I am also furious with the oligarchs who are influencing their pro-oligarch decisions. Of course, no discussion would be complete on this subject, without pointing a finger at a disgraceful Mitch McConnell and his oligarch buddies, as the ones primarily to blame. When this absurdly dangerous MAGA era is over, Mitch and every single Republican now in Congress will have but one legacy in our history books, “selling out our republic,” and us, her citizens along with it.
Apparently Mitch and the right wing justices, care more about oligarchy than they do about the people. Perhaps they have forgotten that our government is designed to be, "of the people, by the people, for the people” or so said, President Abraham Lincoln in his iconic, Gettysburg Address.
The full quote which closed out President Lincoln's Address "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." - Gettysburg Address - President Abraham Lincoln - November 19th, 1863
President Lincoln did not mention corporations or other powerfully rich entities, just the people. Chief Justice Roberts, who penned the majority decision in the Citizens United decision that destroyed restrictions on dark funding for campaigns, apparently believes that the world’s richest people have far more sway than “the people” in our electoral process. It is not surprising that Justice Alito joined him in concurrence in that 5-4 vote that forever has changed our government.
Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch have now converted our constitutional republic into an authoritarian oligarchy. In countless decisions since, they have reaffirmed their assault on our founders brilliant inspiration. This isn’t simply my lay opinion either. Prestigious law schools that have produced some of our most scholarly constitutional experts, have penned endless analysis of the Roberts Court, often calling Roberts and his five right-wing Justices, enemies of democracy.
Abstract taken from a 28 page scholarly review from Harvard This article argues that economic and political developments in the last fifty years have in many respects undermined America’s democratic institutions and that, instead of working to strengthen democracy, the Supreme Court over which Chief Justice Roberts presides, is substantially contributing to its erosion. The Court has done this in two ways, first by carrying on a sustained assault on the right of poor people and minorities to vote. The Court has virtually eviscerated the landmark Voting Rights Act, it has upheld strict voter identification laws that serve no purpose other than to make voting more difficult, and it has authorized states to purge thousands of people from the voting rolls. In addition, the Court has abdicated its responsibility to end the anti-democratic process of partisan gerrymandering. The second way in which the Court is weakening democracy is by reinforcing the enormous imbalance in wealth and political power that has developed in recent decades and that has contributed to undermining democracy. The Court has done this by consistently strengthening the economic and political power of corporations and wealthy individuals, as, for example, through its campaign finance decisions, and by reducing that of ordinary Americans as, for example, through its decisions involving labor unions, forced arbitration and the expansion of Medicaid. - The Roberts Court’s Assault on Democracy - Harvard University Law School Journal - Lynn Adelman
Nearly as infamous as his Citizens United decision, is Chief Justice Roberts’ so-called, “immunity decision.” In short, the Roberts’ Court’s dalliance in hearing the case which delayed prosecution for aggressive and illegal attempts to overturn the 2020 Presidential Election prevented Special Counsel from having the time to prosecute Trump for his planned insurrection. In the interim, the so-called “benefits” of selected immunity have been utterly destroyed by the current court’s subservience to an out-of-control POTUS and Party in terms of breaking the law, ignoring our constitution and disregarding of judicial decisions.
"The judicial innovation of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution rested upon consequentialist grounds. For a majority of the Court, it appeared to be justified by the large costs of political prosecution; the benefits of warranted indictments seemed worth foregoing. Once we shift the analytic lens from the person of the president to the larger context of the executive branch, though, it becomes clear that matters are not so simple. Viewed in this wider context, the benefits of immunity are far more meager than the justices allow—and in large part arise out of recent doctrinal changes the justices themselves have made. In contrast, immunity’s costs are substantial. These come into view, however, only through an appreciation of how the formal prohibitions of the criminal law are entangled with the informal constraints generated through norms, beliefs, and dispositions. Put these findings together, and the conclusion is clear: Presidential immunity is a democratic catastrophe." - Conclusion, Presidential Criminal Immunity: A Rule-of-Law Threat Beyond the Oval Office - Lawfare in conjunction with the Brookings Institution - Aziz Huq - June 12, 2025
In short, we are now at the mercy of an unconstitutionally-aligned, right-wing SCOTUS. They now are not interpreting our constitution or support they are rewriting it. For the record, I can hardly call the Justices on the right, “conservative” after carefully evaluating their record over the Trump era. Like the Republican Party they identify with, their agenda is not “conservative,” it is simply extremist. For this reason, we must retake our government from this extremist version of the Republican Party and then begin impeachment proceedings against Justices Thomas and Alito, at a minimum.
One of the reasons that I see their so-called, “originalist” views of the constitution so disgraceful, rests in a founder quote that I learned years ago, but has stuck with me as if an actual bodily appendage. It comes from none other than Thomas Jefferson, who as the author of our Declaration of Independence, President, brilliant scholar of democratic revolution and so much more organic to the founding of our republic.
Chief Justice Roberts and his Republican AJs (Associate Justices) have twisted themselves and the law into pretzels in order for the law, to justify their agenda, not simply applying the intent of the law. Their immunity decision is a perfect example of which allowed a felonious and insurrectionist former president to once again take the reins of our republic. That individual, is now breaking our laws daily and then disregarding court rulings, whenever he and his party choose. On a personal basis, Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, have passed any ability of mine, to recover any former credibility and must be removed.
One another level, the oligarchy that these five enable, violates the intent of our constitution, considered by scholars to be an, anti-oligarchy constitution. Not only do I no longer respect these Justices but their sellout of the law, is unforgivable. As Jefferson said, the law should be easy to understand for the “ordinary man” which I consider myself. From my perch, I see little respect for our founders in the decisions of the Roberts’ court.
James Madison, the “father of our constitution” agreed and his quote follows Jefferson’s quite closely. Madison at the time of his construction of our constitution, was seen as a world class scholar of how representative governments should work, in order to not fail. Like Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Adams, I believe they were quite clear regarding the intent of our nascent republic, something the Roberts’ court seems to be ignoring altogether and has for years.
I have written on the Roberts’ court in the past and for those interested in a little additional reading, those essays are below. The first link is to the oldest and goes through the newest.
Well my fellow citizens, it is time wrap up this essay. It is safe to say that my opinion of our Republican Justices, with the exception of Justice Amy Coney-Barrett on some occasions, is somewhat less than favorable. They are continually eroding the checks and balances that Madison, the brilliant scholar insisted be in our constitution. They do this for power and money, not the nation or us, its citizens. It is beyond absurd that in their Citizens United debacle, they equate the world’s largest corporations, men and multi-national conglomerates with us, individual voters. Musk’s carnival barker theatrics and buying votes in the last election, they approved of. That alone, should be enough to impeach them.
It is also SCOTUS that tolerates the Republican Congress’ give away to the Executive Branch of their constitutional powers. This is pure Project 2025 in every respect, the Republican’s attempt to toss our precious constitution onto the trash heap of history. All across the nation, judges are doing their best to keep our laws intact, only to have a far-right agenda by the Roberts’ court, fail them on a regular basis.
The right-wing Justices claim to be “originalists” but fail to understand that 18th century America, is not the same as today. If it were, Justice Thomas and Justice Jackson would be struggling with the 3/5 compromise.
The Three-Fifths Compromise "The Three-Fifths Compromise was reached among state delegates during the 1787 Constitutional Convention. It determined that three out of every five slaves were counted when determining a state’s total population for legislative representation and taxation. Before the Civil War, the Three-Fifths Compromise gave a disproportionate representation of slave states in the House of Representatives." - Perspectives of change - Harvard
Further, I will add the following quote regarding “originalism”, compliments of Yale.
"While judicial originalists continue to trumpet the importance of history, they rarely take that history on its own terms. They claim to be wedded to the Constitution’s eighteenth-century meaning, yet they fail to engage in the deeper work of reconstructing the often-unfamiliar understandings of constitutionalism on which that original meaning was based. Justice Gorsuch insisted in Rahimi that originalism was the only thing that could keep judges on the straight and narrow, “seeking to honor the supreme law the people have ordained rather than substituting our will for theirs.”8 Yet in foisting modern constitutional assumptions on an eighteenth-century past that did not share them, jurists like Gorsuch ignore the supreme law those earlier people in fact made. These originalist jurists end up rewriting the constitutional past based on the logic of the legal present. In that respect, their interpretive approach resembles the living constitutionalism they otherwise disparage. A better understanding of early American constitutionalism might not be able to solve all the constitutional problems of today, but it can expose how faithless today’s Supreme Court originalists too often are to the history they claim is the lodestar of our law." - Why is the Supreme Court Obsessed with Originalism? - Jonathan Gienapp - Yale University Press - October 21, 2024
With these prestigious quotes under our belt, I will now bid everyone a fine and restful evening. With this court, Republican-led Congress and their dear leader in the White House, we’re going to need all the strength and rest we can get, to do to the Republican coup, what our founders did to their oppressive overlord, King George III. This is in our DNA and I have little doubt that we will succeed, not for a party, but as free citizens in a free nation, won and sustained in blood.
Onward fellow patriots… always onward,
Paul
As an economist by avocation (albeit in energy/environment/regulatory) and lapsed historian (Russian/Cold War, military, diplomacy) I find similarities between what the founders wanted for government and the ideal of perfectly competitive markets to be striking. For example, Jefferson envisioned a country of farmers, well educated and read (at least enough) where no single individual could control the outcome. This is no different in economics where the firms are not of sufficient size to set market prices on their own.
But slavery was the “original sin” not just in governance and rights, but also in economic terms! Large plantations made up agriculture in the south (a form of oligopoly), 3/5 gave outsize political power akin to market power. In the north, small farms were the norm, it began to industrialize, but it was not until AFTER the Civil War those large industries truly became oligopolies or monopolies holding undue political influence (the Gilded Age).
Oligopoly in economics (few firms that could control price), monopolies (single firm market) are anti-competitive as they can control prices. This is what has been created de facto in the political and governing sphere. The old slogan, “Beware the Generals: General Motors, General Foods, General Dynamics, General (fill in the blank if your most despised high ranking officer).” It lead Ike to warn us of the military, industrial complex which itself is economically and now politically oligarchic and monopolistic.
I am no legal scholar, but the plain reading of the law should always hold. Laws need not be so complex, but yet it is as a barrier to entry…in this case to keep people out of the loop and ignorant rather than keeping competition out. I wonder if anybody has examined the connection between the underpinnings of the Scottish Enlightenment ideas and the beginnings of modern Economics? In writing this I find it “coincidental” that Adam Smith wrote “Wealth of Nations” in the same period as the Scottish Enlightenment…as a Scot no less!
More interesting food for thought. To come up with a good NW, do we link economic outcomes to good governance? Maybe it is a way to get more people to see how this works in their lives.