The Supreme Court is ‘Turning Its Guns’ on Americans

Since I wrote my last blog article about the Supreme court and Justice Kavanaugh, I have learned with additional research that our Supreme Court has been taken over by a group of conservative extremists, including the selection of judicial candidates.

The American Bar Association used to have the final say on who was well qualified to fill a vacancy. But the Trump administration eliminated the American Bar Association’s long-standing role of evaluating judicial candidates before their nominations were announced – something that was done since 1953. The reason the Trump White House gave was that the ABA was “biased against conservatives.” Tellingly, the ABA rated ten of Trump’s nominees as “not qualified.” For the first time, the Senate voted to place a candidate on the Federal bench who the ABA rated as not qualified. Trump instead relied on the Federalist Society to choose those candidates. Even before his election, Trump made his Supreme Court list public and even bragged “that all the candidates had been picked by the Federalist Society.”

The Federalist Society began as a discussion society for conservative and libertarian law students and has grown to become the single most important right-leaning legal institution in the country. Its founders have gone on to become celebrated law professors, Members of Congress, Cabinet officials and, of course, judges on benches across the nation at every level of the Judiciary Branch. The Society has close ties to five of the nine justices of the Supreme Court and, as mentioned, directly provided shortlists of judges that President Trump used to make his appointments, including the two arguably stolen for him by Senator Mitch McConnell. 

Trump fulfilled his campaign pledge with the selection of Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, and finally, Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation in 2020, which brought the number of former or current Federalist Society members on the tribunal to six. Justices Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Roberts, Gorsuch, and Barrett. (Though Roberts says he doesn’t recall belonging to the Federalist Society, the group listed him as a member in its 1997- 98 directory. 

The Supreme Court’s inconclusive 20-page report on the investigation of the leak before its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling failed to determine who leaked, which will rightly add to public distrust of the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, this latest leak is not the first time for the Supreme Court. Years before a leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a landmark contraception ruling was disclosed, according to a minister who led a secretive effort to influence justices. In the Hobby Lobby case, a letter was sent to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and in interviews with The New York Times, where Rev. Rob Schenck said he was told the outcome of the 2014 case weeks before it was announced. He used that information to prepare a public relations push and tipped off the president of Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain owned by Christian evangelicals that were the winning party in the case. The Times found a trail of contemporaneous emails and conversations that strongly suggested he (Mr. Schenck) knew the outcome and the author of the Hobby Lobby decision before it was made public. 

In early June 2014, an Ohio couple who were Mr. Schenck’s star donors shared a meal with Justice Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann. A day later, Gayle Wright contacted Mr. Schenck, according to an email reviewed by The Times. “Rob, if you want some interesting news please call. No emails.” she wrote. Mr. Schenck said Mrs. Wright told him that the decision would be favorable to Hobby Lobby and that Justice Alito had written the majority opinion. Three weeks later, that’s exactly what happened. The court ruled, in a 5-4 vote, that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance covering contraception violated their religious freedoms. The decision has had major implications for birth control access, President Barack Obama’s new health care law, and corporations’ ability to claim religious rights.

Perhaps it may be wise to read what two of our former Presidents who were skeptical of judicial power warned us about our judiciary:

“The original error [was in] establishing a judiciary independent of the nation, and which, from the citadel of the law, can turn its guns on those they were meant to defend, and control and fashion their proceedings to its own will.” —Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1807.

“In framing a government that is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place it must control itself. The greatest guard against judicial mischief is a right of the people that limits the role of a judge altogether. It is essential to secure the liberty of the people as any one of the pre-existent rights of nature. That right is enshrined in the Bill of Rights as the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution.” –James Madison, The Federalist Papers #51.

Recently, yet another bombshell scandal hit the Supreme Court, this one based upon new allegations of sexual impropriety committed by now-sitting Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In a new documentary film from noted filmmaker Doug Liman, Deborah Ramirez said she was never invited to testify during the Senate confirmation hearing, where she give a detailed description of her encounter with Kavanaugh while in college. The documentary also stated the FBI failed to follow up on 4,500 tips submitted during Kavanaugh’s confirmation process.

Is it any wonder why only 1 in 4 Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the high court, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday? That’s a record low, and down 11 percentage points from this time last year.