Can’t We Just Say the Roberts Court Is Corrupt?

[n2doc]

You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.
But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there’s
no occasion to.

–Humbert Wolf, from The Uncelestial City (1930)

The Supreme Court’s decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission was not about aggregate limits on individual campaign donations to candidates in federal elections. The case was about what constitutes a bribe, how big that bribe has to be and whether an electoral system can be corrupt even in the absence of a legally demonstrable cash payment to an office holder or candidate for an explicitly specified favor. The Roberts court, or five of its nine members, adopted the misanthrope’s faux-naïve pose in ruling that private money in politics, far from promoting corruption, causes democracy to thrive because, money being speech, the more speech, the freer the politics. Anatole France mocked this kind of legal casuistry by saying, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.”

James Fallows has reminded us that during Chief Justice John Roberts’ confirmation hearing, the nominee described his own judicial approach as “Humility. Modesty. Restraint. Deference to precedent. ‘We’re just calling balls and strikes.’” Fallows goes on to say that Roberts is cynical for adopting that pose to get through the hearing. It is true that he is cynical, no doubt in the same way that prostitutes are cynical women, but I don’t think that term quite captures the key quality that makes Roberts decide legal cases the way he does. Nor does his cynicism differentiate him from his jurisprudential clones named Thomas, Scalia, Alito and Kennedy.

There is unquestionably a bit of role playing on the court – Scalia, the opinionated blowhard at your local saloon; Thomas, the total cipher; Alito, the professional Catholic who might have come from the curia at Rome; Kennedy, the guy who purports to be a swing vote when his mind is already made up. Roberts’ role is that of chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He can’t very well clown around in the manner of Scalia, who acts like Bill O’Reilly in judicial robes. The five justices’ bedrock beliefs may well be as identical to one another’s as those of the creepy alien children of Village of the Damned. Roberts is different only insofar as he is the more strategic front man. [1]

more

http://billmoyers.com/2014/04/14/cant-we-just-say-the-roberts-court-is-corrupt/
Yes.

[lostincalifornia]

1. At least for the republican appointees we can say that

[Kelvin Mace]

2. The Scalia 5 should have been impeached

for Bush v. Gore, but the Dem leadership doesn't have the spine.

[n2doc]

3. Dems have only held control of both houses for 2 terms in this century

2007-2011. I guess they could have done it then, but there was no push from the leadership to do this either. They could not have done this in 2001, as the repubs in the house would have blocked it.

[truebluegreen]

4. Yes.

I believe that 4 of the 9 are not, and are capable of following the law and precedents as opposed to ideology, but since the majority is unable and unwilling to do those things, it is fair to call the Court corrupt.

[Dragonfli]

5. Yes we can and I often do, quite loudly in fact

[Donald Ian Rankin]

6. Yes, you can say that, silly as it is, because it isn't.

If it was, you might well not be able to.

Some people have different opinions to you. That does not mean they are corrupt.

[Enthusiast]

7. The Roberts Court takes money bribes to hand down unconstitutional decisions.

The Roberts Court is thoroughly corrupt.

The Roberts Court has destroyed our very democracy through their malfeasance.

[mulsh]

8. They will get their bribes after retirement. They'll be called things like "gifts' and "honorarium"

but they'll be the bribes this block have earned over the years. no one will be prosecuted it will all be above board and bribery accusations will be swatted aside at light speed. But that's what these guys will be collecting for their decisions. It's a pretty standard political reward and so much more civilized than handling bag of money.

[onecaliberal]

9. Without question.

Have been since they appointed W in 2000. They're not even worried about pretense anymore.

[rickyhall]

10. And he'll remind us of W's regime as long he's there. . .

[Demeter]

11. Sure, you can say it. Doing something about it is a whole 'nother thing.

I'll hold your coat.

[Jack Rabbit]

12. When a majority of the court signs on to the view that accepting large campaign contributions

. . . should raise no suspicion that the politician is going to provide his corporate masters with a return on their investment, then yes, the court majority is every bit as corrupt as the politician and the corporate executive.

Do Roberts and Scalia really think we don't know a bribe when we see one just because it isn't coming our way?

[YOHABLO]

13. If we don't take over the House of Reps .. we're screwed ! Definitely impeach Scalia and Thomas

That would be a starter. There is no definition of a fair and balanced court when you have 5 of them working for corporate entities. I live in Georgia which could possibly turn blue if people would just get registered and vote. We have hundreds of thousands of eligible voters who have not registered .. just in the Atlanta area. We're talking 600,000 people folks. This is part and partial to the problem .. people who are so totally disengaged with all things political. We're walking on a tight rope.

[GeorgeGist]

14. Roberts Rules:

Money speaks first and last.

[warrprayer]

15. apt description.

kick and rec.

[calimary]

16. YES.

THOROUGHLY.

And completely idiotic and ideologically out of touch.

[Gothmog]

17. The decision in the Voting Rights Act case is really a horrible decision

In that case, it is clear that Roberts was following a long term agenda to gut the voting rights act and in order to rule against the Voting Rights Act, Roberts had to use the same legal theory used to justify the Dred Scott decision.. Since 1981, Justice Roberts has been on a mission to gut or limit the Voting Rights Act. Chief Justice Roberts' Long War Against the Voting Rights Act,
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/john-roberts-long-war-against-voting-rights-act

When he was in his late 20s, John Roberts was a foot soldier in the Reagan administration's crusade against the Voting Rights Act. Now, as chief justice of the Supreme Court, he will help determine whether a key part of the law survives a constitutional challenge.

Memos that Roberts wrote as a lawyer in President Reagan's Justice Department during the 1980s show that he was deeply involved in efforts to curtail the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act, the hard-won landmark 1965 law that is intended to ensure all Americans can vote. Roberts' anti-VRA efforts during the 1980s ultimately failed. But on Wednesday, when the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder, he'll get another chance to gut the law. Roberts' history suggests a crucial part of the VRA may not survive the rematch.

Given Justice Roberts long term dislike of the Voting Rights Act it is not surprising that the legal reasoning behind this opinion is suspect. The key legal principle cited by Justice Roberts in his majority opinion is the concept of “equality of state sovereignty.” Adam Serwer, ‘Demeaning insult’ in John Roberts’s Voting Rights Act decision http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/demeaning-insult-chief-justice-john-roberts-voting-rights-act-decision

One of the enduring mysteries of Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion striking down part of the Voting Rights Act is which part of the Constitution the landmark civil rights law actually violated.

Roberts argued that the Voting Rights Act violated the “tradition” of “equal sovereignty” of the states. That concept is far more dubious than it might seem at first glance, according to a legal paper published by two longtime voting rights experts.

“The ‘equal sovereignty’ principle is not in the Constitution,” said James Blacksher, an Alabama attorney with a long career in Voting Rights. “It is, as the Chief Justice says, a ‘historical tradition.” Go straight past the penumbras, hang a right at the emanations.

Blacksher’s paper, co-authored with Harvard law professor Lani Guinier, argues that Roberts’s opinion in the Voting Rights Act case is a descendant of what is widely regarded as the worst Supreme Court decision in American history: The 1857 Dred Scott case, in which the high court held that blacks, slave or free, could never be citizens of the United States. That case is the “origin story” of the “equal sovereignty” principle, the authors argue, because the opinion by Chief Justice Roger Taney held that it would violate the sovereignty of the slave states to recognize blacks as American citizens. By invoking that principle, the authors write in Free at Last: Rejecting Equal Sovereignty and Restoring the Constitutional Right to Vote, Roberts was reviving “the oldest and most demeaning official insult to African-Americans in American constitutional history.”

“ ‘Equal sovereignty’ was the basis of the longstanding argument, going all the way back to the founding of the United States, between the slave states and the free states. The slave states claimed that they were equally sovereign with the other states to decide whether to have slavery or not to have slavery,” Blacksher said. “The ‘equal sovereignty’ doctrine that Chief Justice Roberts relied on last year is rooted in the jurisprudence of slavery.”….

Prior to last year’s ruling, Akhil Reed Amar, a Yale law professor, wrote a Harvard Law Review article arguing that the Voting Rights Act was clearly constitutional. Amar wrote that an “extravagant anti-congressional theory of state equality” drove the Dred Scott decision, and that the court should “take care to avoid the decision’s biggest mistakes.”…

The days of Dred Scott are long gone, but as long as conservatives control the high court “equal sovereignty” has a bright future.

While Justice Roberts did not directly cite the Dred Scott case, it is clear that the Shelby County decision is based on Dred Scott and its progeny. The Shelby County case is one of the worse decisions issued by the Roberts court