Don’t Be Clueless, Supreme Court Justices are Elite Politicos
Despite Their Claims to the Contrary, SCOTUS Justices
Wield Savage Political Power
Have you met a U.S. Supreme Court justice, let alone chatted with one? You have likely not since there are nine of them in a nation of more than 300 million people. But I have met several because of my work at the neoliberal nonprofit group, American Constitution Society for Greater Networking (ACS).
The Supreme Court or SCOTUS justices I met and dealt with were disappointing, clownish, and obnoxious.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor for example is a poser extraordinaire. She is a diva, who at an ACS convention flaunted her ass all over the place, even directing stage setup for her grand boring appearance. What is ACS? See this Medium article for a closer look, but in a nutshell it’s a $4 million nonprofit to celebrate and advance the careers of centrist milquetoast judges, jurists, and even useless law professors. Its big claim to a bit of national attention is its discussions with Supreme Court justices at that annual convention.
I met and dealt with Sotomayor, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, bless her cold, aloof heart, and the stuffy, whiney, uppity Stephen Breyer.
What a mediocre cracker that guy is. Breyer excels at putting lawyers and wanker law students to sleep and that is about it, except for his rotten tenure on the Supreme Court.
Breyer was a corporatist tool, that is the truth. He served U.S. capitalism well. Breyer along with his centrist colleagues helped the right-wing justices, secure G.W. Bush a second term in office even though W. lost the popular vote and Florida, continue beefing up police power and shredding the weak Fourth Amendment, and paving the way for the end of Roe v. Wade.
I was a communications flack (vice president of communications) when I met Sotomayor, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Elena Kagan, who I remember telling an ACS audience how much she enjoyed speaking to the Federalist Society, a money-machine for the right-wing SCOTUS justices.
I also had the enormous pleasure of dealing with The New York Times beloved SCOTUS reporter and columnist Linda Greenhouse. Like the SCOTUS justices, there is a handful of SCOTUS reporters who are deified by the MSM. They include Greenhouse, her replacement Adam Liptak, a tiny man, and NPR’s Nina Totenberg, who can’t stop guzzling red wine, even at public events.
When I met Sotomayor at the ACS 2014 convention, she told me to get out of her way and find her five ibuprofen and two Xanax. How she knew I popped Xanax on the job, I will never know. She must have assumed ACS kept that shit on hand for divas just like her. Sotomayor then waddled her way to the stage and began to direct ACS staff who she called “helpers” on rearranging the set up including giant geraniums on the stage. When the ACS president showed, Sotomayor was ushered away to her suite where she was plied with alcohol and medication and tons of lies about her brilliance.
When Sotomayor did give her speech on a Thursday evening it was before a decent size crowd of white neoliberal ladder-climbers at the Hilton on 16th Street not far from the White House. Sotomayor shared forgettable stories about her love of civil rights lawyers and attorneys in general. The SCOTUS “reporters” noted above attended the event to kiss Sotomayor’s ass and nab photos with her. The event was broadcast on C-SPAN, and it may still live on C-SPAN’s website if you have no life.
Stephen Breyer was not so much a diva, as an everyday D.C. snot, and a bit slimy. When we first met, he winked at me before asking for the ACS president, shoving me aside to get to a principle of the organization. When the ACS President Caroline Fredrickson also author of a neoliberal and dry take on U.S. democracy, approached and embraced Breyer, he let out a noxious fart that sent Fredrickson two to three steps backward. Breyer with his long gangly arms grabbed her back in for a what had to be a hug Fredrickson will never forget. Hell, I almost puked watching it. Fredrickson is no fun to work with, but she did not deserve such outlandish and boorish behavior.
The thing is SCOTUS justices have been idolized by the nation’s elite legal network to the point they are deities. It is amazing that polling for decades showed Americans believing the justices are nice people and above politics. The flowery, naive picture of the court has declined in recent polling.
SCOTUS opinions are easy to find online. It does not take an Ivy League brainwashed mind to understand these decisions, even though the writing is often atrocious. The justices do excel at flattening pages.
Shelby County v. Holder is a good example of an outlandish SCOTUS case that has brought real harm to people who are not like the justices at all. The Holder decision gutted the enforcement provision of the Voting Rights Act, and it is why southern states are back to restricting who can vote and that means keeping Black people away from voting spots.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) is another example of an out-of-touch nine-justice affair handing over power to corporations. This case was not decided in the 1920s, it was issued in 2010 and has allowed private corporations and entities they create to spend unlimited sums of cash on political campaigns. Now what were the justices thinking? U.S. corporations need more power, more political power? This is an egregious case of an elite gaggle of justices throwing their weight behind glorious U.S. capitalism. It is small wonder that vast majorities of people from coast to coast do not vote in elections. Even the latest presidential election did not see a majority of eligible voters cast their ballots. Why should they? Thanks to SCOTUS, politics are for the monied elite.
Abortion care and the Supreme Court. Now that is an entire other piece unto itself, just to cover the outlandish failure of “progressive” nonprofits in Washington, D.C., New York City, and the Bay Area, to ever mount an aggressive, creative, radical strategy to combat the rightwing forces fomenting hatred of women and their health care rights.
But just know that the nine-justice Supreme Court is letting states like filthy Texas get away with banning abortion care. Roe v. Wade is all but dead and it will not matter who replaces Stephen Breyer, who relinquished his power earlier this year.
SCOTUS is an anti-democratic institution. Its justices have lifetime jobs, they are political appointees, and they have the cudgel of “judicial review.” In modern times, the Supreme Court has used judicial review in a broad manner striking down all kinds of legislation as “unconstitutional.” The silly nine-justice court sets the precedent for the entire federal judiciary. Federal courts from coast-to-coast passing along decisions good for corporations and fucking everyone else.
Do not celebrate the Supreme Court, call for its reform. President Joe Biden did say a “blue-ribbon” panel of “experts” must be created to examine reforms for SCOTUS. Biden needs reminding of that promise. This should be a time or moment when reform of an out-of-touch, anti-democratic institution is put front and center.
