It’s not the despair, Laura, I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand. Clockwise 1986
Before last Saturday my lovely wife predicted that the Senate would confirm Brett Kavanaugh. I hoped otherwise. She was right. By the smallest of majorities a lying, misogynistic political hack joined the Supreme Court.
Now, of course, President Donald Trump calls the allegations of Professor Christine Blasey Ford against Kavanaugh “a hoax dreamed up by Democrats,” [ http://digg.com/2018/trump-ford-hoax-kavanaugh ].
Yes, the same omnipotent party which planted fake birth announcements in two Honolulu newspapers (and created that phony Hawaii birth certificate) better than 50 years ago spent most of a decade plotting a scurrilous lie against a federal judge.
I am proud to be a member of such a forward acting group! (Please let me know how I can help sow the seeds of destructions for the 2052 GOP presidential candidates.)
In school young people are taught to venerate the Supreme Court, learning that they are not mere judges by “Justices” who make America a better place through brave decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education and U. S. v Nixon. Taught less often are Bush v. Gore (which essentially said the actual vote count doesn’t), Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (making corporations people with more rights than us), and golden oldies like Dred Scott v. Stanford and Plessy v. Ferguson (allowing Separate but Equal).
Remember, despite that All Men Are Created Equal stuff “one man, one vote” didn’t become a Supreme Court thing until 1963! [https://www.theconstitutionproject.com/portfolio/one-person-one-vote/ ]
So, the reality is that appointing political hacks committed to the status quo over common sense and decency is a Supreme tradition. Having the right background is now more important to becoming a Justice than having great skills. In the current era – beginning before Trump, alas, – the only Americans presumed worthy to sit on the highest court must have attended either Harvard or Yale law schools. Despite the 50 states, all must also have worked as a lawyer in Washington. It also helps to have been a part of a president’s administration and to have been a law clerk for a Justice.
In other words, today’s pool of potential Justices probably includes just a couple of thousand Americans. Trump picks come from the kiddie pool: they must come from one all-boys party-city high school with an annual graduating class of fewer than 100.
A quick reminder…Celebrated Chief Justice Earl Warren got his law degree from the University of California – Berkley. Warren Burger came from the St. Paul School of Law. William Rehnquist got his law degree at Stanford.
Over the coming years expect the Supreme Court to almost always rule for the powerful and rich over the weak and struggling. Do not expect fairness in taxation, a clear right to privacy, an ability to challenge bureaucratic decisions, nor having the federal government stand up to discrimination and recrimination by the states against their citizens.
This is no longer the United States Supreme Court, it is Their Court – another tool of the far right and the powerful.
With hard work and a touch of luck, the court will better emulate what’s taught in school. Perhaps by our grandkids’ time.
Submitted by Glenn Koenen, WCD Member