I have always been a strong advocate for the Supreme Court till recently. That is because they so often ruled in favor of liberty and freedom. They ruled that LGBTQ persons had equal rights as one prime example. But even as early as 1973, they ruled for Roe Vs Wade and a woman’s right to choice about her health care needs, including an abortion if she was unable or unwilling to carry a fetus (not a baby yet…lets not buy into extreme right wing talking points here). In other words, they often ruled FOR people to have the right to live as they saw fit without demands on their action based on religious beliefs or any other criteria that other citizens might use to decide their behavior. i will a step further and say that any action against LGBTQ persons or abortion choices available to women is a direct effort to impose a religious belief on people that do not necessarily subscribe to that religious belief. In other words, it is a more or less violation of the “no religious establishment rule” that is part of the very constitution that the Supreme Court was created to protect.
Now, the Supreme Court has always been wonky on rulings. The Citizens United was a decision that was misguided from the first. Corporations are NOT people, they are created entities for the purpose of making money without letting the investors lose more than their investment should the corporation go belly-up. The continued support and cover for rich corporations buying of the politics of this country was sealed with Supreme Court approval on the day that wrong decision was passed. However, even with that disaster in place, I supported the Constitution protection functions of the Supreme Court.
Now, they have gone rogue, and therefore are no longer protecting the Constitution and the American People from over-reach. The activist conservative Judges are now trying to enforce their moral standards on the entire population of this country. The fact that the Republican Party is also in the Authoritarian mood doesn’t made things any better — in fact worse.
Most recent decision that flew in the fact of freedom was the deletion of the Roe Vs Wade bill. And Clarance, who should know better, actually suggested more rights that the American people have grown accustomed to that he would be open to repealing. He suggests that the Equal Marriage ruling needs to be repealed. If he was successful in that attempt, his own marriage could easily be in danger. The same article of the Constitution that opened up what is incorrectly, but most often, called inter-racial marriage was also the article used to support the right of same gendered persons to have that federal benefit as well. Don’t try to tell me that in todays re-racialized society with Neo-Nazi’s and other groups of their ilk matching in the street, and in some cases engaging in violence, that marriage between two persons like Clarence and Ginny wouldn’t be on the ballot in some backward jurisdiction for repeal.
There has been a recent effort, which only the Democrats seem to be supporting, to investigation the rules by which the Supreme Court functions. Sadly, it is not just Clarence showing his disdain for the human rights of many across the country. Unfortunately, the worst person to ever get in the White House, Trump, was able to infiltrate the court with three of his nominees. All three claimed that they would honor precedent, both decisions and supporting cases for those decisions of the past. They all three then voted to do away with Roe Vs Wade and force women who either because of rape, incest or poverty or physical health wanted to abort the fetus. (fetus not baby….) So the question becomes “what can we as a people do?
First thing we need to do is have congress move toward an ethics code for the justices. That is already in the works, I believe from the Democratic end. Those judges that claimed when being questioned by Congress not to ignore precedent….all three of trump’s appointees should be impeached and removed for that reason if no other. Clarence has apparently sold himself to the highest bidden AND has not recused himself from things like trump investigations knowing that his own wife is tied to the trump insurrection herself. That should be seen as a conflict of interest, and those 4 judges are an insult to the idea of a separate and equal unbiased part of the government and should be removed from their position, pronto~!!!!!!
Then if we want to increase the size of the court, we can take that additional step….but with a clean court to begin with. But, we might not even have to increase the size if we got rid of the bad actors on the Court. Return it to being a court that rules FOR human rights and dignity and the right to choice how to live, instead of exactly the opposite.
