One of the things that do not seem to have been made great again by former President Donald Trump is Americans’ respect for the Supreme Court. Yanked hard to the hard Right by Trump’s appointment of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, the Court has auto-plunged into public disrepute, with regard for our highest court at an all-time low. Two recent polls taken by Marquette Law School and Quinnipiac University showed identical results: 59% of Americans disapprove of the court, adding to the disrespect for the rule of law that has reached crisis levels.
The arrogance displayed by certain of the justices in insisting that they are free to violate self-evident ethical norms has not exactly burnished the court’s sagging reputation.
Clarence Thomas’ serial acceptance of lavish vacations and other financial assistance from wealthy Republican donor Harlan Crow has strained whatever existed of his credibility, and his repeated, deliberate failures to disclose any of this speak volumes. Thomas’ claim that he relied on people he declined to identify for advice he declined to describe has made him a laughingstock.
Now it emerges that conservative firebrand Samuel Alito is of the same let-them-eat-cake mindset when it comes to judicial ethics. Alito confirmed reports that he had been treated to a spectacular Alaska vacation by conservative megadonor and hedge fund titan Paul Singer, and then not only did not disclose it, but proceeded to vote on cases in which Singer’s businesses were litigants before him. This was quite the display of disregard for fundamental judicial ethics, but as far as Alito was concerned, the only wrongdoers were the investigative reporters who disclosed that which he refused to. Requested by the Senate to answer questions that surely interest the American people about what, precisely, the Court’s Justices perceive to be their ethical obligations, Chief Justice John Roberts declined.
It isn’t only contempt for obvious ethics that has placed the court’s credibility in the tank.
When it came to reversing the 50-year-old precedent recognizing women’s right to determine whether to terminate their own pregnancies, the Right’s braying about keeping government out of citizens’ lives proved to be balderdash. Americans’ overwhelming disapproval of the court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade further eroded its legitimacy.
Last week the court again jettisoned judicial precedent, reversing its 1978 decision permitting the use of affirmative action to admit minority students for the purpose of promoting educational diversity. It had reaffirmed that decision just 20 years ago, authorizing the “narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.”
In its decision now holding that the very affirmative action that it has held for 45 years was constitutional is now unconstitutional, the court was good enough to acknowledge that the two centuries of slavery followed by the century of state-mandated segregation to which Black Americans were subjected were “regrettable.” But it found that the discriminatory legacy of those three centuries was now over, which was nice of it, but also dead wrong.
The baked-in, unjust and adverse effects of 200 years of slavery and then a hundred years of legalized discrimination do not simply evaporate overnight. The justices who argued that affirmative action is warranted as a means of remedying centuries of restraints — physical, legal or institutional — were correct.
The Trump Court is a gift from the Hillary-haters and the Bernie Bros who decided in 2016 either that there wasn’t sufficient difference between Clinton and Trump to warrant voting — or that a Trump presidency would be “cleansing” for the country.
Some cleansing. If those who whine about how President Joe Biden doesn’t agree with them on everything don’t cut it out, this country is really going to be taken to the cleaners, maybe for good.
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