The Supreme Court A Moral and Ethical Disgrace

THE SUPREME COURT
A MORAL AND ETHICAL DISGRACE
By Richard Davis

The current U.S. Supreme Court majority has created an institution that has little regard for the world we live in. Recent decisions by the court make it clear that they want to reconstruct a world that existed in 1788 rather than provide guidance for a world in the year 2022.

When supreme court justices hide behind the original wording and intent of the constitution they deny all of us the possibility of living in a world that has evolved since the founding of this country.

In a recent article in The Nation Louis Michael Seideman provides a perspective on the supreme court that makes it clear just how flawed the court is as well as pointing out that the U.S. Constitution has become irrelevant to the way we live today.

Seidman notes that, ” The Constitution protects the rights of people who want to make movies catering to individuals who get sexual pleasure from witnessing the sadistic crushing of innocent animals. Yet it doesn’t explicitly protect the rights of women, and it does nothing to protect the rights of all of us to live in a world that is not ravaged by global warming.”

He goes on. “Huge popular majorities favor measures including more effective gun regulation, limitations on campaign spending, and reductions to the cost of prescription drugs, yet because of the political structures that the framers imposed on us, we are unable to accomplish those objectives. These facts, and many more like them, should make any sensible person skeptical about our Constitution and about the role it plays in modern political culture. And yet constitutional skeptics almost never get a fair hearing. Instead, American politics is saturated by reverence for an ancient and anachronistic document, written by people who in many cases owned other human beings, and never endorsed by a majority of the inhabitants of our country.”

Seidman also makes it clear that the process for appointing supreme court justices does not provide for representation of the majority wishes of the American people. Republican Presidents have appointed 15 of the last 22 justices to the court. The fact that the most partisan person in the country has control over the composition of the supreme court should have been enough to make this country change the appointment process decades ago, but we continue to carry on a tradition that makes this country a less equitable place.

Seidman point out that, “…, nine individuals, appointed for life and responsible to no one, regularly make crucial and unreviewable decisions about matters such as the structure of health care in the United States, the nature of marriage, the right of women to reproductive justice, and the powers of the federal government and the states. All the justices on the Supreme Court insist that they are neutral and apolitical public servants who do no more than follow “the law” as it is written. Yet they are nominated by a process drenched in raw partisanship, and their votes regularly align with the partisan views of the people who appoint them.”

It is troubling that the court has no obligation to be accountable to the American people. They do a majority of their work behind closed doors and most Americans don’t find out about how their lives have been changed until a ruling is about to be made.

Seidman hits the nail on the head about the court when he says, “They protect their reputation by working in secret. According to hallowed tradition, no one other than the justices attends the sessions where cases are actually decided. The justices rarely hold press conferences or make public statements. Moreover, the quasi-religious claptrap that surrounds the court—the robes the justices wear, the marble temple in which they are housed, the solemnity and formality of the oral arguments that they conduct—is meant to symbolize the grandeur, neutrality, impersonality, and majesty of the law, and of the Constitution whence it derives.”

I wish there was a way to have a supreme court that provided hope for a better and more just world. Sadly, in today’s world that does not seem possible and the only recourse we have is at the ballot box. It will take decades of votes to undo the damage done by the radical right in this country.