The U.S. Supreme Court is no longer supreme
While giving a lecture at the University of Louisville hosted by Mitch McConnell, Justice Amy Coney Barrett expressed concern about the public perception that the U.S. Supreme Court has become partisan. She voiced that, “justices must be hyper vigilant to make sure they’re not letting personal biases creep into their decisions.” That perception is right on target. One doesn’t have to be a constitutional lawyer to recognize the direction the conservative dominated court has been heading in the last decade. In 2010, Citizens United reversed old campaign finance restrictions, allowing “dark money” from corporations and wealthy Americans to contaminate the electoral process. Then in 2013, the court decision in Shelby County v. Holder gutted the Voting Rights Act, beginning the ever-oppressive trend of Republican-controlled legislatures attacking hard-won voting rights.
Is it any surprise that the court recently refused to block the irrational and clearly unconstitutional Texas law prohibiting any abortion after six weeks and rewarding citizens with no vested interest to sue anyone aiding a woman seeking this medical procedure? Who does Justice Barrett think she’s kidding with her “concern?”
Mitch McConnell and his cronies exacerbated this trend when he connived to prohibit Merrick Garland’s confirmation, and then back-tracked and pushed through Barrett’s confirmation just before the election. As a result, under this conservative majority, the court has become the arm of the right-wing of the Republican Party.
Whatever happened to the concept that members of the Supreme Court were individuals of exceptional integrity and wisdom, versed in law and devoted to justice? Now the Republican-appointed justices are merely the voice of the party. No longer do they interpret the law to protect American rights; instead, they turn back the direction of progress in a disgraceful manner. Out of touch with today’s issues, the conservative members of the court have lost all sense of the consequences of their decisions.
Under this majority, the court has reached a very low point and no longer has the confidence or respect of the American public. The founders placed no term limits on federal justices so they would be impartial and not influenced by politics. Evidently, today that concept has failed. The court is no longer supreme.
Betty Kleinberg, Deerfield