Several years ago, if memory serves, I was talking politics with a couple of co-workers, most likely over a pitcher or two of cold, foamy brew in a noisy bar somewhere. I can’t remember where, or when, or with whom that conversation took place.
That was back when you could actually talk politics without raising your voice, threatening to kill somebody or using the words “woke,” “triggered,” “Communist” or “own the libs.”
I do remember making the statement, “One of the most important things a president has to do – which most voters never think about – is appoint judges to the federal courts.” Presidents come and go every four or eight years, I think I said, “but federal judges get their jobs for life, and possess unlimited power to affect the way the rest of us live our lives.”
I also posited the belief that the country could endure four years of a bad president, assuming that he or she was surrounded by good people to actually run the government and a Congress that was willing to help, but could not so easily survive controversial rulings by an out-of-control judiciary bent on pressing its own social and political agenda.
Fast forward a number of years and look where we find ourselves today. The Supreme Court of the United States is issuing ruling after ruling that strip us of our long-established rights and effectively make it legal to discriminate against people who they consider different from the “norm.” In the court’s majority view, the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness only applies to straight, white, evangelical Christians who vote Republican, treat women like chattel, love guns, hate history, worship a twice-impeached and recently indicted crime boss from Florida who’s running for president (again) and believe that children begin to lose their value as soon as they leave the womb … sort of like what happens to your new car as soon as you drive it off the lot.
In a few of their recent rulings, the conservative justices have gutted the Voting Rights Act, nullified affirmative action, overturned Roe v. Wade and upheld the right of a web designer to refuse to serve gay people, even though the “case” the court was considering didn’t really exist. Amateur web designer Lorie Smith had asked the court to grant her the right under the First Amendment to refuse service to gay and lesbian couples due to her Christian religious beliefs, but Smith had not been hired to make a wedding website for a same-sex couple and, in fact, has never made a single wedding website for anybody – gay or straight.
In other words, the highest court in America is doing what no court has ever done before – ignoring decades of precedent in order to apply its own political and philosophical beliefs to the laws that govern America, and even taking cases that aren’t really cases just to press its conservative position.
There’s a reason that a precedent is called a precedent. It refers to decisions that have “preceded” or gone before. According to its definition, a precedent is “a principle or rule established in a previous legal case relevant to a court … when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts.” Our legal system generally views a precedent as binding or persuasive, and it aims to apply similar facts to yield similar and predictable outcomes when making legal decisions.
The principle by which judges are bound to precedents is known as “stare decisis,” a Latin phrase which means “to stand in the things that have been decided.” At least, it used to mean that before the worst president in the history of the United States appointed three young conservatives to the bench, and they have joined the other right wingers in throwing precedents out the window.
I’m reminded of the confirmation hearings for two of the justices – Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – who proclaimed under questioning that prior cases such as Roe v. Wade were “settled law” and that precedent should be upheld, then turned around and voted the opposite way when the first opportunity arose. Clarence Thomas, who was one of six justices to vote down affirmative action, famously credited the policy with being “critical to minorities and women in this society” in a 1983 speech. “God only knows where I would be today” if not for the legal principles of affirmative action, Thomas said then.
The hypocrisy of the SCOTUS majority is way off the charts. And I haven’t even mentioned the billionaire donors who have been bribing justices with luxury vacations, houses, school tuition and other perks that somehow never get reported on the recipients’ financial disclosure forms, or the fact that there are currently no ethics rules for justices … and no desire by the chief justice to apply any. It’s a frightening scenario that may get worse before it gets better.
I stand by my belief that the two most important tools a president possesses are a hand to sign bills and a good quality pen, but that his most important job is appointing judges who will respect and honor decades of precedent while correctly interpreting the Constitution and the law. Unfortunately, we handed that job to a narcissistic white power buffoon in 2016 and the consequences have been devastating for our country, with many more years of damage still to come.
For the record, Clarence Thomas is the oldest justice at age 75 and Joseph Alito is 73. Chief Justice John Roberts is 68 and the three conservatives appointed by Donald Trump are all in their 50s, so all are young enough to serve another 15-20 years. That means until a liberal president can get a couple of appointments to the court we’re stuck with what we have. That’s something you might want to think about the next time you vote for a president.
No comments:
Post a Comment