Supreme Court - Unelected tyrants and activists OR Sacred institution?

[ck4829]

The sudden respect for the judicial branch and proclaiming it to be a sacred institution is what we in sociology call an "invented tradition", but maybe some of us are old enough to remember when the "other side of the aisle" considered them to be "nine black-robed tyrants", let's look at the footage, shall we?

Conservatives today:

“Next we go after Obergefell v Hodges and then the rulings banning Christianity from public schools,” white nationalist Vincent James told his followers on Telegram last Tuesday afternoon, less than 24 hours after a draft opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito indicated that the Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.

James was among a chorus of far-right and Christian nationalist activists looking forward to using the SCOTUS decision to implement their theocratic agenda. Not satisfied with simply removing the right to abortion protected in Roe, they’re eager to pass a total abortion ban, dismantle the right to same-sex marriage, and institute their ultraconservative version of Christianity on others. They see an ally in the Supreme Court, and there’s reason to believe that they’re right.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/first-roe-then-obergefell-far-right-activists-are-eager-to-turn-back-the-clock/

And conservatives in the past:

Yesterday on Newsmax TV, Ben Carson said that the federal government does not need to recognize a Supreme Court decision on gay marriage because the president is only obligated to recognize laws passed by Congress, not judicial rulings.

“First of all, we have to understand how the Constitution works, the president is required to carry out the laws of the land, the laws of the land come from the legislative branch,” Carson said. “So if the legislative branch creates a law or changes a law, the executive branch has a responsibly to carry it out. It doesn’t say they have the responsibility to carry out a judicial law.”

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/ben-carson-federal-government-doesnt-need-to-recognize-gay-marriage-scotus-ruling/

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Conservatives today:

Now three Republican senators have unveiled a bill that would hold future Supreme Court leakers accountable with a $10,000 fine and 10 years in prison for releasing information about pending decisions.

“The recent leak was an attempt to publicly intimidate justices and undermine the integrity of the Court—all while putting lives at risk,” the main sponsor, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, said in a statement.

“My bill holds leakers accountable and takes away any hopes of profiting off their crimes.”

Marco Rubio, a co-sponsor, said: “You shouldn’t receive a badge of honor or financial reward for leaking confidential documents from one of our nation’s most sacred institutions - you should face serious penalties.

https://news.yahoo.com/roe-v-wade-supreme-court-202705380.html

And conservatives in the past:

This past Saturday, Phyllis Schlafly hosted former House GOP Majority Leader Tom DeLay on “Eagle Forum Live” to discuss the alleged threat of gay marriage. Schlafly segued into the topic of gay marriage by describing an open letter to the Supreme Court, signed by conservative pastors and politicians, pledging to defy any Court decision which strikes down state bans on same-sex marriage.

DeLay lamented that “people don’t understand the constitution. We haven’t taught our children now for three or four generations what the Constitution is, and the separation of powers, and what our Founding Fathers had in mind as this brilliant understanding of how you can limit government and limit the tyranny put on us through people or oligarchies.”

Because of this supposed constitutional ignorance, DeLay claimed, “right now, the American people don’t understand that the Supreme Court, when it makes a ruling, it’s just an opinion if no one enforces that ruling. The Supreme Court doesn’t have a police force; the Supreme Court doesn’t have an army; the Supreme Court doesn’t have people that can enforce their ruling.” Therefore, if conservatives “stand up to them and invoke the Constitution, then we don’t have to accept a ruling on marriage that redefines marriage. And that’s basically what this ad is all about. We’re sending a message to the Supreme Court that, number one, it’s illegal that they have this case before them; it’s not in their jurisdiction.”

Proving his Constitutional prowess, DeLay argued that “it’s not in their authority to write law by ten unelected, unaccountable people, lawyers, and if – this is a red line that we’re drawing. If they rule against marriage, we will all defy them.”

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/tom-delay-urges-americans-to-defy-the-ten-justices-of-the-supreme-court/

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Conservatives today:

While overturning Roe has been an intense focus and will be a massive victory for the religious right and right-wing legal movement, reversing Roe is just one part of a much broader agenda that has been promoted by the right-wing Federalist Society and allied political operatives who have worked with it to pack the federal courts. Trump basically outsourced his judicial picks to the group’s activists. Now, with the Trump justices cementing a hard-right majority on the Court, Federalist Society lawyers and judges and their political allies can move even more aggressively to reverse a century’s worth of precedents, pulling the constitutional rug out from under the New Deal and Great Society anti-poverty programs like Medicare and Social Security; further gutting voting rights in favor of states’ rights; weakening the separation of church and state; and undermining the federal government’s ability to regulate corporations and protect workers and communities.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/overturning-roe-is-just-the-beginning/

And conservatives in the past:

The goal of “court-stripping” legislation is to simply declare that federal courts are no longer allowed to hear the claims of citizens that their rights are violated. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins–decrying the “judicial activism” behind the Supreme Court decision finding unconstitutional Bush’s military commissions to try Guantanamo detainees–encourages court-stripping, along with right-wing judicial nominees, as a long-term strategy, citing two court-stripping bills in the works:

Congress needs to resist this judicial activism. One way to constitutionally check the courts is with measures like the Pledge Protection Act sponsored by Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) and another way is Cong. John Hostettler’s (R-IN) Public Expression of Religion Act (PERA). Finally, we can give a fair up or down vote to judicial nominees like William J. Haynes.

Now, even as the House vote on the anti-gay marriage amendment looks to fail, Human Events endorses a court-stripping bill to circumvent the Constitution on the issue of marriage:

Unfortunately, the (marriage) amendment failed in the Senate last month, receiving only 49 votes. It is also destined to fail in the House: In the last Congress, it received only 227 votes, more than 60 shy of the super-majority needed. But there is a way Congress can act this year to protect state marriage laws from activist liberal judges. Rep. John Hostettler (R.-Ind.) has proposed a bill that would strip all federal courts, including the Supreme Court, of jurisdiction to hear any challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). …

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/unable-to-find-votes-right-looks-to-court-stripping/

So are the courts, up to the Supreme Court, the bold stuff or the italicized stuff? Can someone help me out?

[RKP5637]

1. IMO SCOTUS today is just another political organization with far too much power. n/t

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Right wing charlatan prigs

I'd bet none of them have been to a 7-11, gassed their own vehicle, or paid less than $75 for a restaurant meal in the last 40 years.

[MurrayDelph]

10. That's assuming

they actually paid for it themselves.

[Thomas Hurt]

3. The SC has fallible human being on it. I was sacred or perfect.

The heart of the problem is now we have extremist christofascists who have jettisoned any pretense of being unbiased, abandoned precedent and turned the SC into a ecclesiastical court issuing christian edicts.

[Autumn]

4. A corrupt institution that has outlived it's time.

[FBaggins]

5. Nope

It’s both

[ck4829]

6. Oh, very true

[The Unmitigated Gall]

7. Republican'ts kill everything they touch.

[Ocelot II]

8. It's one of three supposedly equal branches of our government, a structure

that probably seemed like a good idea at the time. And it was a good idea, except for the fact that all of it depends on good-faith actors. The creators of the Constitution considered the possibility that one of the branches might assume too much power, and built in processes to ensure that wouldn't happen. But for any of it to work, the majority of the people in all of these branches have to take the Constitution seriously and act for the benefit of the country, not just to try to take power. If we had a strong majority of good-faith actors in the legislative branch, they would be able to control malfeasance in the other branches, as by impeachment. If a majority of the Supreme Court justices were good-faith actors they would police their own members and prevent the sort of unethical and corrupt behavior we're seeing from Thomas especially, as well as a couple of others. The men who wrote the Constitution were men of the Enlightenment who believed that people were rational actors, and that at least enough rational, ethical people would take positions in government to keep those who weren't rational or ethical from wrecking the place.

[LeftInTX]

9. And people like to bash the UK monarchy!

The SC is scarier