Justice Samuel Alito in 2017. Photo: JoshEllie1234/Wikimedia Commons/CC
While conservative Justice Samuel Alito’s new Wall Street Journalinterview covered various topics, one that provoked intense ire on Friday was his suggestion that federal lawmakers don’t have the power to regulate the U.S. Supreme Court.
For a series of Journal opinion pieces—the first was published in April—Alito spent four hours speaking on the record with David B. Rivkin Jr., an attorney who currently has a case before the high court, and James Taranto, the newspaper’s editorial features editor.
Far-right Republican lawmakers who have recently invoked Christian nationalist messages appear to be representing a growing portion of their voter base, according to a new poll released Wednesday showing that a sizable majority of Republicans believe the U.S. should be declared a “Christian nation.”
As Professors Stella Rouse and Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland wrote at Politico, the school’s critical issues poll found that while a majority of Republican voters agree that such a declaration would be unconstitutional, most also believe that the U.S. should be officially known as Christian. Continue reading →
Almost all American adults – including parents, medical patients and people who are sexually active – regularly exercise their right to privacy, even if they don’t know it.
Privacy is not specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. But for half a century, the Supreme Court has recognized it as an outgrowth of protections for individual liberty. As I have studied in my research on constitutional privacy rights, this implied right to privacy is the source of many of the nation’s most cherished, contentious and commonly used rights – including the right to have an abortion – until the court’s June 24, 2022, ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson. Continue reading →
Protesters used violence and intimidation to prevent federal officials from collecting a whiskey tax during George Washington’s presidency. Archive Photos/Getty Images
Meanwhile, the American founders are being literally taken off of their pedestals in a rejection of the history they represent. And, of course, a violent mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in early 2021, trying to disrupt that most fundamental of U.S. institutions, the peaceful transfer of presidential power. Continue reading →
We were very close [on the health care bill]. It was a very, very tight margin. We had no Democrat support. We had no votes from the Democrats. They weren’t going to give us a single vote, so it’s a very difficult thing to do. I’ve been saying for the last year and a half that the best thing we can do, politically speaking, is let Obamacare explode. It is exploding right now…. It’s going to have a very bad year…. This year should be much worse for Obamacare…. We’ll end up with a truly great healthcare bill in the future, after this mess known as Obamacare explodes…. I know some of the Democrats, and they’re good people – I honestly believe the Democrats will come to us and say, look, let’s get together and get a great healthcare bill or plan that’s really great for the people of our country. And I think that’s going to happen.
President-elect Trump promises to appoint a hard-right conservative to the U.S. Supreme Court, dashing progressive hopes for a liberal court in the foreseeable future. And he may well be appointing at least one other justice.
Progressives are panic-stricken. Conservatives are euphoric. But, regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, one thing is certain: The repercussions of the Supreme Court overturning decisions such as Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges will be palpable, affecting millions of lives.
In her iconic rendition of “Proud Mary,” Tina Turner begins with a sultry hiss:
Sometimes we like to do things nice and easy. But we never like to do things completely nice and easy, because sometimes we like to do things nice…and rough!
The same may be said when it comes to analyzing public survey data about the Supreme Court (to strengthen the metaphor, you could envision this law professor at his keyboard in a sequined cocktail dress, but I don’t recommend it).
There are certain “easy” things one can say about the numbers, and I will turn to them first. Then there are deeper implications, which is where the going gets rough, and I will discuss those second.
First, the easy bit.
Democrats and Republicans take turns yelling
The Pew Research Center has been conducting surveys on the Supreme Court for over 30 years. Their most recent survey from 2015 shows that 48 percent of the public holds a favorable opinion of the Supreme Court, as compared to 43 percent, who report a negative opinion.
Pew reports a recent decline in public approval, which it attributes to a sharp drop in support from conservatives after the Supreme Court’s decisions in the same-sex marriage and Obamacare cases.
But before you conservatives get too hot and bothered, note this: as recently as 2010, the shoe was on the other foot, when declining public support for the Supreme Court was accelerated by liberals, who then viewed the court less favorably than conservatives.
None of this is especially surprising.
First, 70 percent of us, according to Pew, think that politics influences the choices justices make. And social science data corroborate the public’s view, by showing a strong correlation between a justice’s ideological predilections and the decisions he or she makes.
Second, 56 percent believe that that the justices “should consider what most Americans think” when they decide cases.
It’s true that canons of judicial ethics direct judges not to be influenced by “public clamor” when deciding cases. And indeed many college-educated folk share this view.
But when a significant segment of the public thinks that the justices make political choices and that the public’s political preferences should influence those choices, it follows that the public will view the court more or less favorably depending on whether the court implements the public’s political preferences.
All of which may have little to do with the legal questions the court is deciding.
For example, whether the public thought favorably of the Supreme Court after its decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act case may have more to do with whether the public liked Obamacare than whether it thought the legislation exceeded Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate commerce or raise taxes.
And so, Republicans and Democrats take turns yelling at the court, depending on whose ox the court has gored lately.
So far, so easy.
But here is where the sledding gets rougher.
Long-term loss in popular support
Over the past 30 years, the Pew numbers show that favorable views of the Supreme Court have declined from 64 percent in 1985 to 48 percent in 2015, while unfavorable opinions have increased from 28 percent to 43 percent.
Why?
It’s not as simple as saying that the Supreme Court has gotten too liberal or too conservative, because liberals and conservatives have both contributed to the long, slow decline in popular support for the Supreme Court.
Part of the answer may be that the public is simply fed up with the federal government generally, which includes the Supreme Court for reasons having nothing to do with the court specifically.
But something more is at work here, which has politicized the court in new and different ways. Just check out this political cartoon where a tree that has lost its leaves reveals twigs spelling out the faults of each of the government’s three branches. “Incompetence” is the legislative branch’s problem and “secrecy” the executive’s.
And the judiciary’s? “Politics.” But what does that mean?
The impact of the partisan divide
It is not just that the court or its justices have acquired an ideological bent – we’ve known that for a long time, and political scientists Greg Caldeira and James Gibson have shown that the public does not second-guess the court’s legitimacy on that basis.
Ronald Reagan with Robert Bork in the Oval Office. US Government
This began in earnest in 1987 with the Senate’s rejection of Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court. It was a nomination process so contentious that it inspired a new verb, “to bork,” defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as:
To obstruct (someone, especially a candidate for public office) through systematic defamation or vilification.
The new politics of judicial appointments have transformed judicial selection into an ideological battleground that gets amplified in the public debate.
The traditional media now explain Supreme Court decisions with reference to the court’s ideological voting blocs; cable news stations such as Fox and CNBC report on the Supreme Court from decidedly partisan perspectives; while a new breed of citizen journalists offer a critique of the courts in a host of online venues that are unconstrained by the norms of traditional journalism.
At the same time, legislative oversight of such seemingly benign subjects as court practice, procedure, structure, jurisdiction and budgets have become more and more politically charged. For example, with the court’s ruling on Obamacare impending, ideologically aligned interest groups clamored for the disqualification of both Justices Kagan and Thomas.
The public’s confidence in the courts does not turn on pretending that sterile interpretations of “law” are all that matter to justices or that ideology plays no part in the choices justices make.
But the public does expect judges to be fair and to take law seriously. When people start to think that judges are nothing more than political hacks in robes, trouble follows.
It’s not surprising, therefore, that Caldeira and Gibson have found that the court’s legitimacy suffers when Supreme Court appointments proceedings devolve into partisan warfare, in which each side accuses the other of appointing ideological extremists. This creates the perception that the judiciary is peopled with zealots who are indifferent to law and justice.
I don’t mean to suggest that the court itself shouldn’t bear some of the responsibility for declining public support. But it is hard for the public to feel good about its Supreme Court in a partisan climate this polarized.
After Justice Scalia’s death, for example, the Senate preemptively declared the president’s nominee unfit to serve before he or she was even named, on the assumption that working together to find an honorable, politically acceptable replacement was impossible.
Lost in this partisan fecal fest is an important truth: capable, qualified and honorable judges are not unicorns. They exist – and they are no less capable, qualified and honorable, simply because they do not always agree with each other, with us, or with the politicians who appointed them.
“This is total constitutional terra incognita,” one reporter said of an Article V convention. (Photo: Kim Davies/flickr/cc)
Under the radar of corporate media and general public, a “dangerous proposal” is bubbling up in state legislatures throughout the country—one that could trigger “political chaos that would make past upheavals like the Watergate scandal and the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton seem tame by comparison.”
The threat comes in the form of a constitutional convention, assembled under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, one of several mechanisms that enables future amendments. Article V requires Congress to call such a gathering once 34 state legislatures submit petitions to do so; new constitutional amendments agreed to at the confab would then be sent back to the states for ratification. Continue reading →
Friday’s House of Representatives vote against Trade Promotion Authority was a mixed victory, which some (like me) would say is a temporary one. The House had split TPA into two parts, unlike the Senate which had passed it—the second part being for Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) to fund retraining for job loss from the TPP. That’s the part that had Democrats angling to defeat the two-part “fast track” package—because on that vote they’d be joined by more Republicans who on ideological principle would vote against TAA along with them. One part goes down, the whole deal does. And that’s what happened.
For now. A re-vote on TAA is scheduled for Tuesday. Either the battle will be turned then, or the war will go on until a probable victory–even if it has to be later than sooner–for TPA and at least some of the trade agreements in its wake become a reality. I haven’t changed my mind on inevitability since Friday morning’s post Is It All Over But the Denying?
So the question is, what’s a 99-percenter citizenry going to do in order to turn the tide of trade dealing that’s swamping our lives? Continue reading →
Under fast track, ‘fast’ is little more than a euphemism for ‘avoid the public, and benefit the fortunate few,’ warns Ohio State law professor Margot Kaminski. (Photo: Backbone Campaign/cc/flickr)
When you know how the outcome is going to play out—and not well—the old expression goes “It’s all over but the crying.” We may very well be in that spot with passage of the Trade Promotion Authority(TPA)—which has already passed in the U.S. Senate and is due for a vote in the House of Representatives today. Like the followup trade agreements that TPA is meant to grease the skids for—the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), and now TiSA (Trade in Services Agreement)—it may get as many repeat votes as needed to force it through to a foregone conclusion.
So at this moment, it makes sense to look at a few specific issues: TPA or “fast track” itself, the constitutionality of the whole alphabet soup, and the naked power relationship between government and the forces of capitalism. Both crying and denying are part of the view here. Continue reading →
