04 July 2023 | Supremely Corrupted, Supremely Unchecked

In one term of the Supreme Court, fundamental rights have been taken away from people and the idea that precedent exists as a firewall has been thoroughly demolished. And they are not done with you yet.

Congress has ceded a lot of power to the judicial branch over the decades, allowing it become an unchecked level of government that literally legislates from the bench. If the response is merely “to vote,” well, what exactly are you voting *for* if Congress itself makes no effort to act like a check on the Court? Waiting for a justice to retire is not a strategy, given the fickle nature of American voters who tend to forget things very quickly and there goes your majority. Members of Congress have not advanced anything resembling an outline about dealing with an unchecked judicial branch outside of calling vaguely for “reform.” This is useless.

It’s been pointed out that there are nine Supreme Court justices because are there are nine federal circuit courts, and that this number was set after the Civil War almost 160 years ago. There are now 13 circuits, whose load is unevenly distributed. But for some reason in the land of the free and the home of the brave, expanding the Court to 13 to match the circuits they oversee is some herculean if not impossible task, and something to be feared. It’s a practical solution that will be challenging to implement given who holds the majority, but again, no one is even bothering to try. Instead, everyone, including the White House, is shying away as they continue to whistle past the expanding graveyard of lost rights.

This from a country that stormed the beaches of Normandy to destroy Nazism, rebuilt Europe, won the Cold War and put a man on the moon? In less than a few generations we have gone from doing things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard” to “best not to rock the boat.”