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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA Federal Judge Condemned the "Roberts Court's Assault on Democracy.'' It's About Time
A Federal Judge Condemned the Roberts Courts Assault on Democracy. Its About Time.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/federal-judge-condemns-roberts-courts-assault-on-democracy.html
Nowhere is the problem of asymmetrical rhetorical warfare more apparent than in the federal judiciary. For the past several years, federal judges, notably those appointed by Donald J. Trump, have felt unmoored from any standard judicial conventions of circumspection and restraint, penning screeds about the evils of big government and rants against Planned Parenthood. Most of the judicial branch, though, has declined to engage in this kind of rhetoric. There are norms, after all, and conventions, standards, and protocols. There seems to also be an agreement that conservative judges demonstrate deeply felt passion when they delve into such issues, while everyone else just demonstrates bias if they decide to weigh in. So when Justice Clarence Thomas just last year used a dissent to attack the integrity of a sitting federal judge in the census case, it was mere clever wordsmithing. But when Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggests, as she did recently, that the conservative wing of the high court seems to be privileging the Trump administrations emergency petitions, she is labeledby the president himselfunfit to judge. Its such a long-standing trick, and its so well supported by the conservative outrage machine, that its easy to believe that critiques of fellow judges by conservative judges are legitimate, while such critiques from liberal judges are an affront to the legitimacy of the entire federal judiciary.
This dynamic is why its so astonishing to see progressive judges really go for broke in criticizing conservative bias in the judiciary, as U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman does in criticizing the five conservative justices on the Roberts Supreme Court in an upcoming Harvard Law review article. The article begins, brutally:
By now, it is a truism that Chief Justice John Roberts statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee that a Supreme Court justices role is the passive one of a neutral baseball umpire who [merely] calls the balls and strikes was a masterpiece of disingenuousness. Roberts misleading testimony inevitably comes to mind when one considers the course of decision-making by the Court over which he presides. This is so because the Roberts Court has been anything but passive. Rather, the Courts hard right majority is actively participating in undermining American democracy. Indeed, the Roberts Court has contributed to insuring that the political system in the United States pays little attention to ordinary Americans and responds only to the wishes of a relatively small number of powerful corporations and individuals.
Adelman, who sits in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, goes on to methodically chronicle that which is hardly news to anyone who has observed the rightward turn of the Supreme Court. His article brings into clear relief the courts systemic attack on voting rights for minority and other marginalized communities, by way of striking down a key section of the Voting Rights Act, as well as repeated blessing of voter suppression and decisions not to adjudicate political gerrymandering. He notes that the court privileges the wealthy and corporate interests at the expense of the public. He lays out in detail the rise of the conservative legal movement, starting with the infamous 1971 Lewis Powell memo that served as a right-wing call to arms and tracing its progress through the current well-funded effort to reverse the New Deal in the courts. The article ultimately portrays the slow movement of the Supreme Court to the rightand then the far rightthrough a long line of cases that reversed the Warren courts protections for minority groups and poor and working-class Americans. It shows how the court has undermined unions and boosted corporate interests. The court, he notes, has greatly contributed to income inequality, health care inequality, and the hollowing out of the American middle class.
Adelman ends with this caution:
We are thus in a new and arguably dangerous phase in American history. Democracy is inherently fragile, and it is even more so when government eschews policies that benefit all classes of Americans. We desperately need public officials who will work to revitalize our democratic republic. Unfortunately, the conservative Justices on the Roberts Court are not among them.
<<snip>>
Glorfindel
(9,728 posts)We need more patriotic judges to speak out while there are still some left.
rickyhall
(4,889 posts)mountain grammy
(26,619 posts)Calling out Roberts for the partisan hack he is. It wont change him but he must be exposed.
ancianita
(36,032 posts)FBaggins
(26,731 posts)Perhaps a note of thanks instead?
ancianita
(36,032 posts)How about he recommend someone like him for Biden to nominate, then.
Nitram
(22,794 posts)We have to speak out and never stop speaking out until balance is restored.
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)Let's not minimize or forget the role of the Senate in confirming these court nominations, infesting the judiciary with these poisonous toadstools. No other administration has put forward so many court candidates rated unqualified by the American Bar Association, and the Senate Republicans have rubber-stamped just about all of them.
not fooled
(5,801 posts)I wish more American understood what has been happening to the judiciary, why, and the impact on their lives.
calimary
(81,220 posts)GOOD one!
malaise
(268,952 posts)This is excellent
Pepsidog
(6,254 posts)Club, Boof, blacked out drinking as a teen. A full and proper investigation needs to be done and he should be impeached and removed. If i lied and acted like he did at his confirmation I would be disbarred and locked up. This lifetime appointment for federal judges needs to be revamped as well.
Rob2861
(39 posts)In a real world Kavenaugh would never became a nominee. Hopefully when we get a decent government we can do something about this.
Response to Rob2861 (Reply #17)
hangaleft This message was self-deleted by its author.
burrowowl
(17,639 posts)lastlib
(23,220 posts)The only way I'm reaching across the aisle is with dimensional lumber--and I'm gonna whip some GOPher a-- with it.
ehrnst
(32,640 posts)Acknowledging Trump's success in taping into economic resentment in his astounding electoral win Wednesday morning, Sanders cast Trump's candidacy in a light similar to his own failed presidential run during the Democratic primaries.
Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media," the senator said in a statement released Wednesday.
Trump And Sanders Try To Show New Hampshire They Can Reach Across The Aisle
As WBUR's Fred Bever reported both men were out to demonstrate that they are practitioners of the art of compromise.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/9/14/sanders-reaches-across-aisle-at-liberty-university.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/us/politics/bernie-sanders-2020.html
Bernie Sanders Republican Buddy Reaches Across the Aisle To Endorse Clinton
Said Pomerleau:
I am a loyal Republican born in 1917 and the first time a woman could vote was in 1919, the letter reads. I will be most happy to cast my vote to the first woman president of the United States of America. I am a loyal friend of Bernie Sanders and in Vermont they call us the Odd Couple.
Uncle Joe
(58,355 posts)Thanks for the thread dajoki.
hangaleft
(649 posts)zentrum
(9,865 posts)Never thought protest would happen.
Karadeniz
(22,511 posts)Seinan Sensei
(361 posts)First umpire: "I call 'em as they are."
Second umpire: "I call 'em as I see 'em."
Third umpire: "They are what I call 'em."