The Radical Roberts Court

The current Supreme Court of the United States has just cemented its place in history as the most radical Supreme Court ever.

For a century and a half, that dishonor has gone to the antebellum court led by Chief Justice Roger Taney, whose pro-slavery perversions of the Constitution brought us such indefensible decisions as the infamous Dred Scott ruling.

The current court might not have issued a single ruling that rivals Dred Scott for sheer awfulness, but its broader record of capriciously overturning a much wider range of precedents and offering increasingly thin pretenses for its path of destruction puts the Roberts Court below the Taney Court in terms of its overall horrors.

When he was nominated to head the court, John Roberts pretended to revere the court’s norms of stare decisis and insisted that he believed judges should stand as impartial observers who would simply apply the existing laws. “I have no agenda,” Roberts lied in his confirmation hearings. “If I am confirmed, I will confront every case with an open mind. I will fully and fairly analyze the legal arguments that are presented. I will be open to the considered views of my colleagues on the bench, and I will decide every case based on the record, according to the rule of law, without fear or favor, to the best of my ability, and I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.”

And in the same vein, other members of the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority made similar promises under oath to respect and preserve the precedents already established by earlier iterations of the Court.

But in recent years, and especially in recent weeks, these self-described respecters of precedent have run roughshod over tradition and upended landmark rulings that have been the law of the land for most of my adult life.

In 2022, they overturned the 49-year-old precedent of Roe v. Wade, which provided a constitutional basis for the right to abortion. No more.

In 2023, they overturned the 46-year-old precedent of Bakke, which asserted that race-conscious admissions in higher education were constitutional. No more.

Last week, they overturned the 40-year-old precent of Chevron, which provided a key foundation for the modern regulatory state. No more.

And today, in their most brazen decision yet, they overturned a basic principle of American constitutional law from the founding — the idea that no one, not even a former president, is above the law.

Add to all of these staggering reversals of major precedents the decisions in which the Roberts Court discovered an individual right to virtually unlimited gun ownership where no historian and no prior Court had detected any such thing, or in which the Roberts Court decided that corporations are people, my friends, and therefore wiped away a century of campaign finance laws, and many many more.

And while the decisions coming out of this Court are bad enough, the fact that they’re coming from a collection of judges who have responded to serious charges of ethical lapses and outright corruption levied against them with nothing but contempt and condescension.

Make no mistake about it — this is the most radical, destructive, arrogant Supreme Court in the entire history of the United States of America.

John Roberts promised us it wasn’t his job to pick up a bat, and yet he’s spent his time as Chief Justice using a baseball bat to bludgeon the Constitution and the institutions of our government he promised to protect. It’s long past time for us to stop him and his fellow bagmen from the Federalist Society before they finish the hit job they’ve been contracted for.

Make no mistake: the Supreme Court will the most important issue of this election, and long beyond that.

Democrats need to treat it like the fundamental crisis it is, both on the campaign trail and in congressional committees which must hold in-depth hearings and advance legislative solutions immediately. The Court’s conservative majority has revealed itself to be the most direct threat to American democracy, and any Democrat who is not ready to shelve old fears about “court packing” and get serious about expanding and reforming the Court isn’t made for this moment, period.

This is serious. Act like it.