The Extreme Partisanship of John Roberts's Supreme Court

[n2doc]

“Politics are closely divided,” John Roberts told scholar Jeffrey Rosen after his first term as chief justice. “The same with the Congress. There ought to be some sense of some stability, if the government is not going to polarize completely. It’s a high priority to keep any kind of partisan divide out of the judiciary as well.”

No one who observes the chief justice would doubt he was sincere in his wish for greater unanimity, greater judicial modesty, a widely respected Supreme Court quietly calling “balls and strikes.” But human beings are capable of wishing for mutually incompatible things—commitment and freedom, for example, or safety and excitement. In his desire for harmony, acclaim, and legitimate hegemony, the chief was fighting himself. As he enters his 10th term, his quest for a non-partisan Court seems in retrospect like the impossible dream.

The Supreme Court’s 2013 term began with oral argument in a divisive, highly political case about campaign finance and concluded with two 5-4 decisions of divisive, highly political cases, one about public-employee unions and the other about contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act. In all three cases, the result furthered a high-profile objective of the Republican Party. In all three cases, the voting precisely followed the partisan makeup of the Court, with the five Republican appointees voting one way and the four Democratic appointees bitterly dissenting. In all three cases, the chief voted with the hard-right position. By the end of the term, the polarization Roberts had seen in the nation had clearly spread to the Court. In fact, the clerk’s final gavel on June 30 did not signal even a momentary respite from the bitterness.

The day after the decision, 14 religious leaders sent a letter to President Obama asking for a new kind of religious exemption. Many religious charities provide various social services under contracts funded by the federal government. Obama had proposed rules banning government contractors from discriminating in employment against gays and lesbians. The singers wanted religious objectors to be free to continue policies of excluding them from employment. There was certainly language in the opinion to encourage those hopes. Could religious objections now override a civic commitment to equality?

more

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/john-robertss-dream-of-a-unifying-court-has-dissolved/379220/

[Thinkingabout]

1. I wish it was the judges on the Supreme Court made the effort to rule based on the laws rather

Than their political affiliation. It should not this or that judge voted according to party platforms but I see this often. I am disappointed, I consider SC above the fray, hopefully they will change their ways.

[BlueCaliDem]

2. No one can deny (not even the Teahadists) that this is *the most* activist Supreme Court

in the history of SCOTUS. Teahadists have crowed loudly that "their" Supreme Court will undo all the "damage" President Obama and "libruls" have done to this country (like fighting to raise the minimum wage, health care, expanded Medi-caid for them and theirs - yeah, real damage there). So they know how partisan and anti-American the Roberts' Court is.

This SCOTUS has proven to be the most pro-Corporation/anti-worker/anti-We the People rights and most conservative court in our history.

I don't know whether Chief Justice Roberts was being sincere in his wish for greater unanimity but, personally, I doubt it. He was giving wonderful and flowery lip-service, and he was better at bamboozling the public (and Senators) and eager-to-please-their-corporate-bosses journalists than (Sc)Alito was. (Sc)Alito had been pretty much in your face about how he thought he should vote - and he's held true to it all throughout, never once floundering.

It is because of the balance of this highly partisan Supreme Court that it's crucial we elect a Democratic president and fight to keep a Democratic majority in the Senate. Since these seats are lifetime seats, Roberts and (Sc)Alito aren't going anywhere, but we can neuter their influence when three seats open on the bench in the coming years, and replace Kennedy, Scalia, and Justice Bader-Ginsberg with Democratic-appointed justices.

If we fail, be prepared to live in an extremely conservative America where all our Rights as given under the Constitution, its amendments, and our Bill of Rights will be crushed. Remember, there is NO appealing a SCOTUS decision.

We might not be able to change much in the House because of heavily gerrymandered districts - although it's not entirely impossible - until 2020 when we really, really, need to GOTV to secure governorships and legislatures so that we can un-gerrymander those districts to reflect a more fairly elected congressional body.

[Jim Lane]

5. Well, second-most activist.

In the 1920s and 1930s, a conservative Supreme Court routinely struck down governmental regulations of business that seem commonplace today, such as a law that restricted employment in bakeries to ten hours per day and 60 hours per week. The Court majority adhered to laissez-faire economics, with its veneration of the "free market" and its hostility to any role for government. In his dissent in the bakery case, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to one prominent book extolling laissez faire and said, "The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics."

Of course, the prospect of decisions like that from the Supreme Court only emphasizes your point about the importance of the Court's composition. Effectively, the only appeal from a SCOTUS decision is an amendment to the Constitution, an enormously difficult process. For example, one decision from that era struck down child labor laws. Despite the widespread popular sentiment against child labor, an amendment to authorize such laws was ratified by only some states, not enough for enactment. Child labor laws would still be unconstitutional if the Court hadn't changed its mind.

[BlueCaliDem]

7. Thank you for the correction, Jim Lane. I didn't know about that SCOTUS.

I should have written, "This SCOTUS has proven to be the most pro-Corporation/anti-worker/anti-We the People rights and most conservative court in our history my lifetime ( or since the 1960's ).

Effectively, the only appeal from a SCOTUS decision is an amendment to the Constitution, an enormously difficult process.

That's why I mentioned that there's no appealing a decision from SCOTUS. Getting 2/3rds of State legislatures to ratify an amendment to our Constitution is only second to impossible if it can even leave the lower and upper chambers in Congress.

However, Congress can draft and pass new laws that are cleverly written that will reinstate laws that SCOTUS has so far overturned and/or struck down. But with this RW partisan bunch in ultra-safe seats in the House (a phenomenon that should have never happened), it's going to be a long slog.

In the meantime, effectively neutering the corporate-conservatives on SCOTUS by continuously electing Democrats to the Senate and the WH who will then appoint Democratic candidates for justices, is an effective strategy to keep the Roberts Court from completely destroying what few rights we still have.

[former9thward]

3. It is just not true.

It is a media myth that the court is hyper partisan. A majority of decisions are unanimous and in split decisions most Justices agree with each other most of the time as statistics found at the link shows. As examples Roberts and Kagan agree 83% of the time and Scalia and Kagan agree with each other 85% of the time.

http://www.scotusblog.com/statistics/

[Gothmog]

4. Roberts has been working to gut the voting rights act since he was in the Reagan DOJ

Roberts is a very partisan judge and has an agenda

[conservaphobe]

6. The current makeup of SCOTUS is one of the most frightening things in our entire political system.