Who died and made the Supreme Court a Congress? [View all]

[In It to Win It]

Who died and made the Supreme Court a Congress?

June 24 marked one year since the Supreme Court, in the landmark Dobbs case, overturned Roe v. Wade, shockingly reversing almost 50 years of precedent to strip away what had been a constitutional right to an abortion.

You see, the conservative justices in the majority of that 5-4 decision argued the Roe decision was “egregiously wrong” because the Constitution never mentioned abortion. That meant, the justices said, abortion couldn’t possibly be a constitutional right and must be left to the states.

Doing anything else would amount to activist judges “making things up,” or as the phrase goes, “legislating from the bench.” To hear Republicans talk, that’s pretty much the worst thing a federal judge could do.

It’s one of Republicans' longest-running talking points: “Don’t legislate from the bench.”

Now that Republican appointees are a supermajority on the Supreme Court, you would think that this majority would steer clear of anything that might look like it was writing laws and thereby undermining the people’s representatives in Congress.

But you’d be wrong.

Today’s conservative justices are happily imposing their reactionary legislative vision on America, not just by interpreting laws, but by effectively rewriting them, in order to implement unpopular policies that could never get passed through Congress. Separation of powers be damned.