Over the last couple of years, as more young, sometimes unqualified (according to the American Bar Association), extremely radical GOP appointees have been rubber-stamped as judges in an extreme attempt to “take over” the SCOTUS, John Roberts has been unusually vocal.
“When you live in a polarized political environment, people tend to see everything in those terms. That’s not how we at the court function and the results in our cases do not suggest otherwise,” he said in September 2019. In arguing for the long-held deference to “precedent” in previous rulings – something the wave of Trump/McConnell appointees all nearly universally disagree with – Roberts said there is “no reason to suppose that I and my eight colleagues are any better at discerning the meaning of the constitution than members of the courts that went before us.”
Nearly everyone appointed by Trump/McConnell actually DOES think they know better. They aren’t jurists in the model of nearly all who have come before. They are ideologues who believe in a Ayn Randian individualism not shared by the Founders, and religious zealots hell-bent on overturning many, many precedents.
The majority of Americans disagree with the GOP on most policy. The Constitution disagrees with them on many of their policies. And the SCOTUS has consistently overthrown many of their unconstitutional laws. The ONLY way the GOP can make America into the ugly, selfish, corporatist version of America it so badly wants, is to stack the courts with people as greedy and religious as they are, who are also willing to completely disregard precedent so they can usher in their New American Order. In other words, the GOP has made the courts, and SCOTUS, much more driven by political ideology than Constitutional law or legal precedent.
Roberts has been aware of this and tried hard to proclaim it not true. The question was – would Roberts also be willing to act in ways to ensure SCOTUS was not political, or would he purposefully NOT do that, in order to keep the Court from seeming “political.” That question was brought into sharp focus in the “Russo” case because Roberts had voted in favor of allowing a nearly identical law in Texas 4 years ago, when the liberal-appointed judges had the majority.
In his clearest answer to that question yet, today he sided with the “liberal” judges overturning the Louisiana abortion law, citing “precedent” from the previous case. Roberts was personally against the bill, but more powerfully for the non-political precedents of previous courts. He was, completely non-political, placing the integrity of SCOTUS above politics.
Of course, in doing so, he is making SCOTUS a bigger political ISSUE in the coming election. But that should be little consolation for Democrats and freedom-loving independents. The GOP is close to having a court that cares nothing for precedent. They are very, very close to changing America for the next 50 years.
Vote like your freedom depends on it.
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Patrick On Politics 