John Nichols: Justice Rebecca Bradley's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad historical analogy

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Rebecca Bradley: hyper-partisan, hyper-ideological judicial activist - the most strikingly ill-informed and wrongheaded of the Wisconsin justices (and her nose looks like a pig snout)

by John Nichols

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley is the most over-the-top judicial activist on a high court bench that is crowded with reactionaries who seek to impose their will on Wisconsin. Bradley is, as well, the most strikingly ill-informed and wrongheaded of the justices.

Bradley confirmed her status in an outrageously clumsy concurrence with the decision by the court’s right-wing majority to overturn the “Safer At Home” emergency order that state officials issued in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. As part of her critique of essential public health measures in Wisconsin — which joined other states in encouraging people to help slow the spread of the virus by staying at home — she devoted page after page of the concurrence to recalling the World War II-era removal of 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and communities and the forcible detention of these citizens in distant internment camps.

This was an extension of Bradley’s line of questioning during the oral arguments on the case, which inspired scathing media coverage and rebukes from Japanese-American civil rights leaders.

During the oral arguments, Bradley said, "I'll direct your attention to another time in history, in the Korematsu decision, where the (U.S. Supreme Court) said the need for action was great and time was short and that justified, and I'm quoting, 'assembling together and placing under guard all those of Japanese ancestry' in assembly centers during World War II.”

She then asked state Assistant Attorney General Colin Roth: "Could the secretary under this broad delegation of legislative power or legislative-like power order people out of their homes into centers where are they are properly social distanced in order to combat the pandemic? The point of my question is what are the limits, constitutional or statutory? There have to be some, don't there, counsel?"

Bradley kept peddling the fantasy that the state's stay-at-home order represented "the very definition of tyranny.” For his part, Roth calmly explained that — for good reason, and with proper concern for guarding against tyranny — the state’s statutes permit the Department of Department of Health Services to “forbid public gatherings in schools, churches, and other places to control outbreaks and epidemics,” and say DHS “may authorize and implement all emergency measures necessary to control communicable disease.”

The justice's line of questioning provoked a national outcry. Esquire's Charles Pierce suggested that Bradley was “boldly exploring the experimental side of Bad Historical Analogy Theater.” The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) rebuked Bradley, with the group’s Wisconsin chapter president, Ron Kuramoto, saying, “I believe Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley poses a false equivalency when she uses the ‘Safer at Home’ policy as a comparison for Executive Order 9066, which forced my parents, extended family, and over 120,000 Japanese Americans out of their homes and into, in some cases, horse stalls at Santa Anita Racetrack in California, then transferred and imprisoned my own and other families for over three years in shoddily built tarpaper barracks in the desert or other desolate places. Bradley’s hyperbole denigrates my parent’s suffering and endurance.”

Read more: https://madison.com/ct/opinion/column/john_nichols/john-nichols-justice-rebecca-bradley-s-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-historical-analogy/article_b3837013-8d84-5186-8097-5705fc0029a4.html

[Maraya1969]

1. I am getting so tired of stupid people. eom

[BComplex]

2. The majority of stupid people are republicans.

Just sayin'.
I'm tired of 'em, too.