The Roberts Supreme Court: Too Extreme for Voters

By JAMIE STIEHM

The John Roberts Supreme Court, a.k.a. the Extreme Court, is a clear and present danger to democracy. Its approval rating has sunk to a record low, under 40%.

Chief Justice Roberts is responsible for the worst rulings since Chief Justice Roger Taney rode into town for 30 years and set off the Civil War.

In fact, the court may yet grant Donald Trump presidential immunity from crimes committed in office. After all, Trump gloated, he named three young conservative “Federalist Society” members.

We may witness a hard political bargain this year.

But few will forget the June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling against reproductive rights.

Roberts heads a partisan Republican majority of six to three liberal members, all women. He’s the one whose name will go down in history with Taney (“Tawny.”)

The Dobbs decision may split the electorate into a volcanic rupture. A protest vote could come to the ballot box. Such a harsh stand against abortion rights (for your daughter, sister, wife or partner) could turn out to be a gift to the blue side of the spectrum.

Democratic lawmakers and strategists say the extreme Supreme Court is their secret weapon.

Across the nation, people registered outrage at violating a constitutional right. Dobbs meant for the first time in American history, the high court took rights away from citizens.

Five men and one woman (all raised Catholic) didn’t blink an eye in reaching a radical opinion, blistering in tone, by Justice Samuel Alito, age 73.

As for Taney, he enraged the Northern half of the nation with his dreadful Dred Scott ruling in 1857. Considered a catalyst for the Civil War, the case helped lift Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in 1860.

Taney viciously denied all Blacks any rights “which the White man is bound to respect.” This made free states see red. Taney was the ugly face of antebellum America, President Andrew Jackson’s man.

Taney, from a slave state, went further: He decreed that Blacks, free or enslaved, could never become American citizens. Free states already hated slavecatchers for crossing borders to capture fugitives. The Dred Scott decision raised a hue and cry at a terrible injustice.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., calls the current Supreme Court “rogue.” Yes, sitting on high, judging the rest of us, with no checks or balances on their power. (Hello, James Madison?) Five of the nine were named by a president who lost the popular vote.

Roberts also overturned voting rights and campaign finance reform.

Other critics like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., say the Roberts Court is “captured” by dark money, with no enforceable ethics code on their conduct, plush vacations and lavish gifts. (Hello, Clarence Thomas?)

Remember the Supreme Court answers to nobody, with nine unelected justices given the last word (or vote) on democracy. I mean literally: 5-4, Bush v. Gore.

Roberts and alter-ego Taney felt they could turn the tide of American progress in the ocean of justice.

Now in an election year, Republicans don’t talk so loud, but make no mistake. They are still on the war path against health and human rights for women and girls, on the state and federal level.

The Alabama Supreme Court decision on IVF embryos only intensified the storm.

Americans of all kinds feel the court intruded too far into our personal lives, causing agonizing medical plights and travel to other states.

In a tragic result, Texas logged 26,000 rape-related pregnancies since Dobbs. The human toll that outlawing reproductive rights takes is coming home.

The first rule of politics: There is nothing like witnessing personal injustice to mobilize one. Life, liberty and all that jazz is on the line for women and girls. (Minors have it even worse.)

Dobbs is making females captive to their own bodies, forcing them to cross state lines for medical treatment. In Alito’s voice, the Roberts court is saying that females can never have full human rights. We are a second-class caste.

With sweet dreams of Brown v. Board of Education (desegregating schools), elite law professors teach the court as a fair, wise and rational branch. But students often challenge that.

The echo across time is all too clear.

Jamie Stiehm is a former assignment editor at CBS News in London, reporter at The Hill, metro reporter at the Baltimore Sun and public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She is author of a new play, “Across the River,” on Aaron Burr. See JamieStiehm.com.

From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2024

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