Taking it to the streets
It’s easy to take for granted one of our country’s greatest strengths: a legal system in which we settle our disputes peacefully in court. We do this without the type of violence, intimidation and threats against judges that occur in too many other countries.
That was true until someone leaked a draft opinion from the Supreme Court a few weeks ago.
Even though the Supreme Court hasn’t issued its official opinion in the case, pro-abortion protesters are gathering outside the homes of the five conservative justices who are assumed to be in the majority of the leaked draft. These crowds have engaged in illegal protests outside the homes of those justices each week since the leak, in clear violation of federal and state law.
So why aren’t Attorney General Merrick Garland and Steve Descano, the rogue state prosecutor of Fairfax County, Va., enforcing federal and state law to stop pro-abortion extremists invading the neighborhoods of Supreme Court justices in order to intimidate them?
Imagine for just a moment that an important Second Amendment case was pending before the Supreme Court and a memo was leaked indicating that the liberal justices were poised to do what the progressive left has wanted the court to do for years: Erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights.
Picture gun-rights advocates showing up at the homes of Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, shouting profanity-laced slogans, disrupting the peace of the neighborhood, and scaring the other families who live there—acting just like the abortion protesters are now.
Does anyone doubt that they’d be immediately arrested (and properly so), and Garland and Descano would be arguing over who was going to prosecute them first? But because Garland and Descano agree with the political views of these protesters, they refuse to do anything to stop what they are doing: trying to impede, obstruct, intimidate, and influence Supreme Court justices doing their jobs.
Even Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) says what’s happening is “reprehensible,” adding: “Stay away from the homes and families of election officials and members of the court.”
Federal law is quite clear. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1507, it is a criminal violation of federal law to picket or parade “near a building or residence occupied or used by [a federal] judge, juror, witness, or court officer” with the “intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty.”
While we have extensive First Amendment rights in this country to speak out, including criticizing decisions of federal courts, we do not have the right to try to abuse that freedom by trying to intimidate judges, jurors, and witnesses in ongoing cases to influence their decisions and their testimony.