A terrific piece and a great read. I’ve written a piece titled A Rogue Court: What To Do About It. You can find it at Substack.com/@markmansour. Please take a look.
SCOTUS, and, by extension, America, is the laughingstock amongst western democracies. What other western democracy has such a politicized Supreme Court?
There is much that needs to be done to right the ship beyond just fixing the recent decisions by this SCOTUS. Trump's presidency from 2016 to 2020 revealed how fragile democracy is, along with the political norms and guardrails. Long established political norms and guardrails need to now be converted into clearly defined laws backed by very severe financial penalties and a 10-12 year statute of limitation.
Sadly, nothing will happen until America reaches rock bottom. The belief in "American Exceptionalism" blinds most voters to consequences beyond the first-order. There is no national political figure that can successfully sound a clarion call to highlight the dangers.
These justices are antidemocratic. Their decisions are anti-constitutional. Most of these justices are illegitimate. They've violated ethics rules. They've broken their oath of office. Three of them were appointed by an illegitimate president, & rammed through bypassing due process. Therefore the only reasonable conclusion that can be made is that their decisions are illegitimate & should be ignored & defied.
I am serious. It's about time that the rest of us counter right-wing corruption, lawlessness & subversion by either locking them up like criminals & traitors should be locked up, or saying that we just won't abide with your illegitimate rulings. We can no longer let one side get away with constantly flaunting the Constitution, subverting democracy, taking away our rights & destroying our environment.
Just found out about you today, Qasim, and you’ve effectively fleshed out my arguments for why Biden needs to confirm four more justices for SCOTUS.
We used to think that being a Supreme Court Justice in itself would be a call to integrity. But now we realize how corruption and the delivering on promises to expand corporate power have made integrity a quaint memory with the Roberts Court making a mockery of precedent.
Thank you, Todd. Likewise I grew up thinking SCOTUS was the paragon of justice, only to discover in law school just how reckless an institution SCOTUS has always been. I detail some of those cases here: https://qasimrashid.substack.com/p/what-if-the-greatest-obstacle-to
What else is expected when corrupt judges sit on the bench with no code of ethics .... they have also recused themselves and gained immunity for their corrupt practices and open bribery. It was known and their political affiliation and ambitions were an open secret. Today SCOTUS is SCOT- FREE
Why does this Court majority seem to go out of its way to deliberately harm people?
If we can as citizens work very hard in what are very difficult political times for every American, then we may work, by means of the vote, and within the as yet not exhausted capacity of the Constitution and law, to reform and make novel changes in constitutional governance. Only then may we contribute to reconstituting the Court so that, with humanity and commitment to democratic rule of law, its Justices will reverse and condemn these harmful rulings.
We must choose to rebuild our democracy and affirm that it works well and equally for everyone.
I am grateful for your, Qasim's, resolve and professional commitment and honesty.
Call the political national governance by that term then. The term is non-binding politically. The Constitution is the formal heart, and the separation of powers is a vital element in the functional design.
The Supreme Court has not a constitutional mandate to act as this majority has. It exceeds its reason for being; it is an explicit and vital element of democratic government under the Constitution, but it is one of three, with the Congress being the most expressive representative organ of the thinking and the will of the American people.
The thanks really go to you. My gratitude to you for your work, for your conscious effort to live with the integrity that you explain to us that is important, and for your doing this substack can partially be expressed in any reply intended to give other or additional supporting facts and interpretations .
Importantly, yesterday evening the response publicly offered by Pres Biden is, in its brevity and its substantial conclusion, points to the human dilemma which institutional accumulation of many individual person's agency to effect social relationships: by who AND by what methods are the final determinations values and the prioritization of values made in society for the purpose of regulating the social choices and actions of many people? What ever person is collectively appointed and what ever set of methods are specified, it remains the appointed's character or personal integrity that guides the final decision and the 'apologies' offered for any of its obvious or its unintended consequences.
Then, also importantly, the ferreting of the plausible factual and historical circumstantial 'becauses' for the above governance system and for its actual operational effectiveness and deficiencies is subject to both thoughtful interpretations and gut-level expressions of approval, doubt, opposition and so on. In this respect and in this particular matter, one of quite a few sets of analysis was 'recently' presented through the Brennan Center in an article, " Founding-Era History Doesn’t Support Trump’s Immunity Claim ", at https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/founding-era-history-doesnt-support-trumps-immunity-claim . [ just fyi ]
It seems to me that the very human fact remains that it is absurdly nonsensical and dangerous to say the anyone has almost or complete immunity from some external collectively agreed on and formalized set of laws and of enforceable evaluation and corrective action. It is not just historically implausible but reckless and deceitful That the Court majority would entertain such an absurdity as plausible given the history of the US and of the American colonies political and social era politics . That so many well-educated and long-experienced people can share this absurdity is dangerous. The limb of collective responsibilities and collective protections on which the Justices sit while sawing to detach it from the constitutional tree is... well is the only limb they that and we have to sit on; when it is severed, when it is no longer one of the essential functional vital supporters of the whole, the whole looses a significant part of its being.
The Constitution is an incomplete governance statement, if only in so far as it presents, as guiding commentary and guiding relationships format, some to many and most of the contradictions and faults of human relationships thinking. However, it explicitly presents an alternative to no rules alternatives, to authoritarian alternatives, and to order-through-coercive-violence alternatives. The Constitution is an alternative that we all have to work with, an alternative stubborn and novel in its formal dependence on reasoned and inclusive participation of people in community.
"the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clearer thinking," Churchill wrote [reported in "This memo from Winston Churchill on 'Brevity' is all you need to improve your writing", Jim Edwards
Regarding #1, I'm certain that if Biden had done the things that drumpf did -- and of course he never would -- SCOTUS would not have ruled as they have. I'm not sure that expanding the court would help anything, since it may just wind up with even more, numerically speaking, conservative "justices". I'd rather see term limits or some requirement that the court be balanced to begin with.
I feel embarrassed and ashamed by what's been happening on so many levels, especially every time I have a chat with someone from another country, as I did yesterday. It's really exhausting.
This is excellent. Thank you. Its actually all quite terrifying. I keep thinking of Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. I remember when the court gave the presidency to Bush even as Gore clearly won and then the nightmare that followed. Truly frightening. I wish people would snap out of their complacency and delusions and see what’s happening.
That was my first Presidential election. I’d just turned 18. Right off the bat a message that my vote didn’t matter. Smh. Really depressing for a young adult to witness.
People are back and forth on Biden, but frankly, he’s practically a non-issue at this juncture—the Democratic Party is complicit and decades too late. The backlash against FDR’s New Deal and Eisenhower’s taxation on wealth began in the 1950s. With the Clintons, the party embraced White supremacy, the private prison industry & prison slavery, corporatism and rule by wealth—hook, line, and sinker. If the GOP gave Reagan carte blanche to sell America to his cronies, the Dems soon followed in lock step with the Clintons to do the same. The Clintons peddled the 3-Strikes Law written by the private prison industry all over the country; Hillary prevented Haiti’s
garment workers from making more than 57 cents an hour—her interference is partially responsible for Haiti’s mess today, and as Secty of State she did far worse in other countries. She never took any Bar exam except in Arkansas! (Yet people think she’s great, who knows why.) Allowing McConnell to refuse Garland even an interview a year before end of Obama’s term—and doing nothing when Barrett was pushed through when presidential mail-in ballots had already begun—with nary so much as a whimper among Dems—sealed what’s happening now. Still. Dick Durbin cowardly refused to bring Roberts before the Judicial Committee when Roberts refused to meet—why be suddenly stunned that SCROTUS has now legalized bribery?? 4 of the 6 MAGA Justices were appointed by presidents who LOST their general elections. And Dems sat on their thumbs through all of it. Have they done ANYTHING to staunch insider trading in Congress? No. Instead they quietly voted against Obama’s requirement that such trading be made public. Did they do ANYTHING when SCROTUS allowed a never ending flood of dark money into campaigns by, for example, forwarding legislation to make all elections funded by taxpayers through their tax forms? NO. There have been endless opportunities for simple or at least achievable fixes all along. Instead Dems are voting WITH MAGA to support Israel’s genocide and stifle protests, joining in to erode a right guaranteed by the Constitution.
The Constitution provides that when government fails the people, we retain the right to end the government. Very soon it won’t be only Don the Con’s cultists who are ready for it.
You are so right. The democrats are almost as corrupt and have done such harm in keeping progressives who truly represent the people from gaining power. Now we self destruct.
The situation is dire. We must work to keep the anti-christ out of the whitehouse as our number one priority right now yet we also need to start a movement to impeach justices who lie in their nomination process and those who take after the fact bribes that they have now declared legal. Perhaps we need term limits or more justices too. Thank you for covering the issues so skillfully and honestly. Overturning Chevron shows that freedom from harm caused by others is not universally accepted as the highest freedom. We need to work on cultivating political education and compassion for the plight of others then too.
The real coup was the make up of SCOTUS for which we have to thank Mitch McConnell. Jan. 6th will just be a foot note. They wanted to get one of their own in the White House, but it really doesn’t matter. They - White Nationalist, racist, corporate power - were working towards this moment for decades. Read colleague Robert Reich today. “We” all saw it coming but greed and money kept any meaningful resistance at bay in carefully taking over the media, State Houses and Congress. Mitch McConnell was the master behind the curtain. The Dems were too indebted to corporate money themselves, they now admit; but too little too late. No one could have made up how we arrived here. I am in a terrible state of alarm. This used to be the one country everyone could turn to. We have destroyed ourselves from within - as we were warned by many of our former truly great leaders. Everything I loved about my country was the ability to recognize mistakes and try to always do better. And we did better for a good period. I guess doing better was a threat to the wealthy and powerful who didn’t want to share or cede control, even though it would mean a better life for them, their children and our Earth. America used to stand for hope. The great experiment is over, I fear.
Thank you for this article. This is indeed a sad time as basic rights begin to disappear. There are some more rulings which could appear here, but t=just these show just how powerful this court is and how little they respect the very country their opinions affect. Biden should campaign on undoing the damage which has been done, but it probably will not. Too many lies have been told and retold to get us where we are today. May we find our way back from this dark place we are in now.
A terrific piece and a great read. I’ve written a piece titled A Rogue Court: What To Do About It. You can find it at Substack.com/@markmansour. Please take a look.
SCOTUS, and, by extension, America, is the laughingstock amongst western democracies. What other western democracy has such a politicized Supreme Court?
There is much that needs to be done to right the ship beyond just fixing the recent decisions by this SCOTUS. Trump's presidency from 2016 to 2020 revealed how fragile democracy is, along with the political norms and guardrails. Long established political norms and guardrails need to now be converted into clearly defined laws backed by very severe financial penalties and a 10-12 year statute of limitation.
Sadly, nothing will happen until America reaches rock bottom. The belief in "American Exceptionalism" blinds most voters to consequences beyond the first-order. There is no national political figure that can successfully sound a clarion call to highlight the dangers.
These justices are antidemocratic. Their decisions are anti-constitutional. Most of these justices are illegitimate. They've violated ethics rules. They've broken their oath of office. Three of them were appointed by an illegitimate president, & rammed through bypassing due process. Therefore the only reasonable conclusion that can be made is that their decisions are illegitimate & should be ignored & defied.
I am serious. It's about time that the rest of us counter right-wing corruption, lawlessness & subversion by either locking them up like criminals & traitors should be locked up, or saying that we just won't abide with your illegitimate rulings. We can no longer let one side get away with constantly flaunting the Constitution, subverting democracy, taking away our rights & destroying our environment.
The bribes to the Biden Cartel get a pass though, obviously. Because you're a dishonest shill.
Just found out about you today, Qasim, and you’ve effectively fleshed out my arguments for why Biden needs to confirm four more justices for SCOTUS.
We used to think that being a Supreme Court Justice in itself would be a call to integrity. But now we realize how corruption and the delivering on promises to expand corporate power have made integrity a quaint memory with the Roberts Court making a mockery of precedent.
Thank you, Todd. Likewise I grew up thinking SCOTUS was the paragon of justice, only to discover in law school just how reckless an institution SCOTUS has always been. I detail some of those cases here: https://qasimrashid.substack.com/p/what-if-the-greatest-obstacle-to
Because convictions you agree with are legit, all others are horrific.
You're a walking joke.
Wow, thanks! I really look forward to expanding my knowledge base as a subscriber.
What else is expected when corrupt judges sit on the bench with no code of ethics .... they have also recused themselves and gained immunity for their corrupt practices and open bribery. It was known and their political affiliation and ambitions were an open secret. Today SCOTUS is SCOT- FREE
Only Their Death Can Keep us and US Apart !! Amen
FBI lying about the Hunter laptop? Russia collusion hoax? Biden Crime Family bribes?
You dare speak of ethics?
Thank you, Qasim, for this assessment.
Why does this Court majority seem to go out of its way to deliberately harm people?
If we can as citizens work very hard in what are very difficult political times for every American, then we may work, by means of the vote, and within the as yet not exhausted capacity of the Constitution and law, to reform and make novel changes in constitutional governance. Only then may we contribute to reconstituting the Court so that, with humanity and commitment to democratic rule of law, its Justices will reverse and condemn these harmful rulings.
We must choose to rebuild our democracy and affirm that it works well and equally for everyone.
I am grateful for your, Qasim's, resolve and professional commitment and honesty.
We're a republic, retard.
Call the political national governance by that term then. The term is non-binding politically. The Constitution is the formal heart, and the separation of powers is a vital element in the functional design.
The Supreme Court has not a constitutional mandate to act as this majority has. It exceeds its reason for being; it is an explicit and vital element of democratic government under the Constitution, but it is one of three, with the Congress being the most expressive representative organ of the thinking and the will of the American people.
Thank you, Bob, and well said.
The thanks really go to you. My gratitude to you for your work, for your conscious effort to live with the integrity that you explain to us that is important, and for your doing this substack can partially be expressed in any reply intended to give other or additional supporting facts and interpretations .
Importantly, yesterday evening the response publicly offered by Pres Biden is, in its brevity and its substantial conclusion, points to the human dilemma which institutional accumulation of many individual person's agency to effect social relationships: by who AND by what methods are the final determinations values and the prioritization of values made in society for the purpose of regulating the social choices and actions of many people? What ever person is collectively appointed and what ever set of methods are specified, it remains the appointed's character or personal integrity that guides the final decision and the 'apologies' offered for any of its obvious or its unintended consequences.
Then, also importantly, the ferreting of the plausible factual and historical circumstantial 'becauses' for the above governance system and for its actual operational effectiveness and deficiencies is subject to both thoughtful interpretations and gut-level expressions of approval, doubt, opposition and so on. In this respect and in this particular matter, one of quite a few sets of analysis was 'recently' presented through the Brennan Center in an article, " Founding-Era History Doesn’t Support Trump’s Immunity Claim ", at https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/founding-era-history-doesnt-support-trumps-immunity-claim . [ just fyi ]
It seems to me that the very human fact remains that it is absurdly nonsensical and dangerous to say the anyone has almost or complete immunity from some external collectively agreed on and formalized set of laws and of enforceable evaluation and corrective action. It is not just historically implausible but reckless and deceitful That the Court majority would entertain such an absurdity as plausible given the history of the US and of the American colonies political and social era politics . That so many well-educated and long-experienced people can share this absurdity is dangerous. The limb of collective responsibilities and collective protections on which the Justices sit while sawing to detach it from the constitutional tree is... well is the only limb they that and we have to sit on; when it is severed, when it is no longer one of the essential functional vital supporters of the whole, the whole looses a significant part of its being.
The Constitution is an incomplete governance statement, if only in so far as it presents, as guiding commentary and guiding relationships format, some to many and most of the contradictions and faults of human relationships thinking. However, it explicitly presents an alternative to no rules alternatives, to authoritarian alternatives, and to order-through-coercive-violence alternatives. The Constitution is an alternative that we all have to work with, an alternative stubborn and novel in its formal dependence on reasoned and inclusive participation of people in community.
Learn "brevity".
"the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clearer thinking," Churchill wrote [reported in "This memo from Winston Churchill on 'Brevity' is all you need to improve your writing", Jim Edwards
May 26, 2017]
What is in it for them, to tule in such a way?
There is nothing in it for anyone.
Sorry. Rule, i meant. And i have lost how to edit away my blurry eyes and fat fingers.
Regarding #1, I'm certain that if Biden had done the things that drumpf did -- and of course he never would -- SCOTUS would not have ruled as they have. I'm not sure that expanding the court would help anything, since it may just wind up with even more, numerically speaking, conservative "justices". I'd rather see term limits or some requirement that the court be balanced to begin with.
I feel embarrassed and ashamed by what's been happening on so many levels, especially every time I have a chat with someone from another country, as I did yesterday. It's really exhausting.
This is excellent. Thank you. Its actually all quite terrifying. I keep thinking of Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. I remember when the court gave the presidency to Bush even as Gore clearly won and then the nightmare that followed. Truly frightening. I wish people would snap out of their complacency and delusions and see what’s happening.
That was my first Presidential election. I’d just turned 18. Right off the bat a message that my vote didn’t matter. Smh. Really depressing for a young adult to witness.
People are back and forth on Biden, but frankly, he’s practically a non-issue at this juncture—the Democratic Party is complicit and decades too late. The backlash against FDR’s New Deal and Eisenhower’s taxation on wealth began in the 1950s. With the Clintons, the party embraced White supremacy, the private prison industry & prison slavery, corporatism and rule by wealth—hook, line, and sinker. If the GOP gave Reagan carte blanche to sell America to his cronies, the Dems soon followed in lock step with the Clintons to do the same. The Clintons peddled the 3-Strikes Law written by the private prison industry all over the country; Hillary prevented Haiti’s
garment workers from making more than 57 cents an hour—her interference is partially responsible for Haiti’s mess today, and as Secty of State she did far worse in other countries. She never took any Bar exam except in Arkansas! (Yet people think she’s great, who knows why.) Allowing McConnell to refuse Garland even an interview a year before end of Obama’s term—and doing nothing when Barrett was pushed through when presidential mail-in ballots had already begun—with nary so much as a whimper among Dems—sealed what’s happening now. Still. Dick Durbin cowardly refused to bring Roberts before the Judicial Committee when Roberts refused to meet—why be suddenly stunned that SCROTUS has now legalized bribery?? 4 of the 6 MAGA Justices were appointed by presidents who LOST their general elections. And Dems sat on their thumbs through all of it. Have they done ANYTHING to staunch insider trading in Congress? No. Instead they quietly voted against Obama’s requirement that such trading be made public. Did they do ANYTHING when SCROTUS allowed a never ending flood of dark money into campaigns by, for example, forwarding legislation to make all elections funded by taxpayers through their tax forms? NO. There have been endless opportunities for simple or at least achievable fixes all along. Instead Dems are voting WITH MAGA to support Israel’s genocide and stifle protests, joining in to erode a right guaranteed by the Constitution.
The Constitution provides that when government fails the people, we retain the right to end the government. Very soon it won’t be only Don the Con’s cultists who are ready for it.
You are so right. The democrats are almost as corrupt and have done such harm in keeping progressives who truly represent the people from gaining power. Now we self destruct.
Is it legal therefore to obstruct the supreme court?
I just posted a comment arguing just that point due to their illegitimacy in so many ways, both the decisions & the justices themselves.
The situation is dire. We must work to keep the anti-christ out of the whitehouse as our number one priority right now yet we also need to start a movement to impeach justices who lie in their nomination process and those who take after the fact bribes that they have now declared legal. Perhaps we need term limits or more justices too. Thank you for covering the issues so skillfully and honestly. Overturning Chevron shows that freedom from harm caused by others is not universally accepted as the highest freedom. We need to work on cultivating political education and compassion for the plight of others then too.
ZioNaziBacked $$upreme Court
The real coup was the make up of SCOTUS for which we have to thank Mitch McConnell. Jan. 6th will just be a foot note. They wanted to get one of their own in the White House, but it really doesn’t matter. They - White Nationalist, racist, corporate power - were working towards this moment for decades. Read colleague Robert Reich today. “We” all saw it coming but greed and money kept any meaningful resistance at bay in carefully taking over the media, State Houses and Congress. Mitch McConnell was the master behind the curtain. The Dems were too indebted to corporate money themselves, they now admit; but too little too late. No one could have made up how we arrived here. I am in a terrible state of alarm. This used to be the one country everyone could turn to. We have destroyed ourselves from within - as we were warned by many of our former truly great leaders. Everything I loved about my country was the ability to recognize mistakes and try to always do better. And we did better for a good period. I guess doing better was a threat to the wealthy and powerful who didn’t want to share or cede control, even though it would mean a better life for them, their children and our Earth. America used to stand for hope. The great experiment is over, I fear.
Thank you for this article. This is indeed a sad time as basic rights begin to disappear. There are some more rulings which could appear here, but t=just these show just how powerful this court is and how little they respect the very country their opinions affect. Biden should campaign on undoing the damage which has been done, but it probably will not. Too many lies have been told and retold to get us where we are today. May we find our way back from this dark place we are in now.