My fellow Americans, I believe we are witnessing in real time the systematic dismantling of a long-standing conservative doctrine that says, in effect, that judges never should “legislate from the bench.”
Because, folks, the U.S. Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative supermajority, is doing precisely what conservatives used to accuse liberal judges of doing. It has turned the judiciary into a legislative vehicle.
I am going to offer a grudging acknowledgment of a pledge that Donald Trump made when he was elected president in 2016. He said he would appoint justices who would change Americans’ lives. He delivered in spades by nominating, in order, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the nation’s highest court.
What have they done? They have tossed legalized abortion aside; they have eliminated affirmative action entrance requirements for colleges and universities; they have allowed a wedding designer to discriminate against a gay couple.
You want judicial activism? There it is in plain view!
Chief Justice John Roberts once said while he was being considered for the chief’s job that he only would “call balls strikes” from the bench. Well, he’s changed the strike zone to allow fellow conservatives to toss aside settled law and to re-define “equal protection under the law” to suit conservatives’ view of college admission standards.
The three SCOTUS newbies have been joined by conservative stalwarts Roberts, along with Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas in turning the court into an activist panel intent on changing the course of history.
The nation’s highest court, moreover, has become far more political than the founders — I am quite certain — ever imagined it would become. They crafted a government system designed to remove the federal judiciary from the political battles being fought between the legislative and executive branches of government.
I have stated before on this blog that our politics has been turned on its head. Small-government conservatives now favor government intrusion into Americans’ most intimate issues. Those same conservatives now believe it’s OK for the federal judiciary to toss standing law aside while writing news from the bench.
What is happening to my country?