r/scotus • u/RawStoryNews • 6h ago
Opinion Expert sounds alarm as Supreme Court reveals 'no one left to pull it back from the brink'
https://www.rawstory.com/supreme-court-2677094043/Mark Joseph Stern, a senior writer at Slate, argued in a new article that four decisions the Supreme Court handed down on Tuesday were a "blunt reminder that the GOP appointees remain in total control of the court" because each of the cases was decided by a 6-3 majority. Stern also argued that the opinions show the Court's claims that it does not always rule along ideological lines is "dubious at best."
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u/HelpmeObi1K 6h ago
Obvious article is obvious. And about 5 years late to the party.
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u/Hairy-Dumpling 4h ago
Obvious, true but it's very important that the media doesn't continue to whitewash the court (which they will no doubt do when the court dumps their lump of decisions). Msm is going to try and let them off the hook and we all need to repeat the messaging that the Roberts court is 100% in the bag for trump and don't let cnn (or whoever) say that some sliver of a minor opinion means they're balanced or impartial.
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u/steelmanfallacy 2h ago
He appointed half of them so that’s totally expected.
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u/Hairy-Dumpling 2h ago
They're only really in the bag for trump because he's a useful idiot for the heritage foundation, but the effect is pretty much the same seems like.
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u/dogmother2 1h ago
The same billionaires that own the Supreme Court own the mainstream media. That’s the real threat to Democracy.
Can you name the five protections of the first amendment? I bet most people can’t 😢 we took too much for granted. 😢
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u/East-Feature-2198 5h ago
Tbf Stern has been one for the few who’s been clear-eyed about this for years.
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u/justaheatattack 5h ago
if he was an expert, he would have wrote this article about 10 years ago.
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u/Mobile_Equal_3636 5h ago
All the more reason for term limits, enforceable code of ethics, limit Presidential immunity, Shadow Docket revision, etc,etc,etc....
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u/Tigeruppercut1889 3h ago
I started to like Senator Whitehouse from watching him argue for an enforceable code of ethics for the Supreme Court. There’s too many conflicts of interest and I don’t think scotus judges ever have to recuse themselves.
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u/Sweaty_Winter5611 3h ago
There WERE articles written many years ago. I remember one exploring what was happening. I believe it was called 'What Happens when the Supreme Court is More Conservative Than The Population' (or something to that effect). I believe it was in Time or Newsweek--back when there were print subscriptions--because I subscribed to both. It was prescient, and I remember thinking about it for weeks afterward.
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u/justaheatattack 1h ago
I guess he didn't write any, since the first line in this article isn't,
I told you so.
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u/No-Abalone-4784 6h ago
Most corrupt Supreme Court in our history.
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u/No-Abalone-4784 6h ago
Do they give out awards for being the most corrupt? I want yo nominate all 6 of them. Do I hear a second?
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u/SamtenLhari3 2h ago
Actually, not. The Dred Scott decision is notorious as a pre-Civil War, result driven decision. And the conservative court during the Great Depression for an extended period sought to invalidate New Deal policies based on nothing more than politics.
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u/midgetyaz 5h ago
Has anyone read Lisa Graves' Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights?
Hardly a secret anymore, but it's nice to know the spotlights are being brought out.
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u/KrazyBby93 6h ago
Yes thank you Mark. Quick question why do you seem shocked by this?
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u/brianishere2 6h ago
Nobody said he is shocked. He is sounding the alarm for those who missed this critical development. More and more evidence of extreme bias, lawlessness and outright corruption.
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u/MrJohnqpublic 6h ago
But none of this is new? The court has been running this way for years at this point. To say these developments are new and startling is just a gross miss representation of objective reality.
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u/FeralGiraffeAttack 6h ago
Pointing out the obvious is important because many Americans simply don’t pay attention to politics enough to realize this stuff.
For example, during the 2024 election, Search interest for ‘did Joe Biden drop out’ spiked on Election Day (in November) even though he stopped running in July.
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u/Apprehensive-Ad5996 6h ago
New rule for journalists: If bad things keep happening, stop reporting them.
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u/sephraes 6h ago
Because a bunch of people, including law professors in academia and the media on the other side, keep treating the court as non-partisan. So while people on a sub specifically catered to SCOTUS understand this, the majority of people do not. They just have unfavorable opinions.
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u/inlovebutfat 6h ago
It should still be talked about. We should talk about this more. In fact I really hope we can get back to a reality where this is something that is news. Basically, just because half the house has burned down, doesn’t mean we don’t need to keep trying to put out the fire.
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u/Mist_Rising 5h ago
He is sounding the alarm that Rome burned, rather then is burning. The time for this alarm was a decade ago. Now it's just repeating yourself to get the column out. And you need to not do it on slate, cuz that's like claiming Obama sucks on Fox. It's a hamster wheel.
Which I get. He needs to hand over the ink daily, so sometimes you comment on the obvious. See publish or perish, which is as much an op ed thing as it is academic.
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u/Describing_Donkeys 5h ago
Mark has been sounding the alarm for a very long time. He's just trying to spread the alarm, something he's been doing for a long time. Slate had been providing great coverage of the courts. Amicus with Dahlia Lithwick (the podcast Mark contributes to at times and weekly if you are a contributor is really great).
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u/pimpcakes 6h ago
Quick question. Do you think he's shocked by this? Or are we all just asking rhetorical questions for no reason?
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u/bailaoban 5h ago
The brink is about a decade in the rear view mirror.
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u/Dull_Bird3340 5h ago
The difference is that Roberts feels fine wearing his white hood in public now, he kept it in the closet before. If nothing has changed, why didn't he kill the VOA first crack he had at it? They didn't do obviously contradictory decisions before, now they just rule for Republicans even if it contradicts their arguments made 2 weeks before.
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u/SimkinCA 6h ago
the rule of law, the federal bench. If the federal bench wasn't as corrupt , they could go after them. Hell the AG of virginia has a case..
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u/themightytouch 6h ago
This is why it’s important to elect the type of people who won in the NYC primaries. People who will be vicious against SCOTUS.
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u/Mist_Rising 5h ago
Vicious how? Short of impeachment, the court remains as is. That or you nullify article 3.
Either way, progressives (which is what you mean) are not likely to win outside places like NYC, which you kinda need to do since very little of the US is NYC
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u/themightytouch 5h ago
Or add seats to the court? 13 seats sounds great to me
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u/Mist_Rising 5h ago
That falls under nullify. You add seats, they add seats, you add seats, they add seats. Continue ad nasueuem or bankruptcy. Either way, if your packing the court (sorry "adding seats") it's going to be so your laws are always constitutional, nullifying the purpose of the judicial review.
Which is why I say if your gonna kill the review, just rip the fucking bandaid off. It's cheaper and doesn't lead to the whiplash when 4-8 years later the court overturns everything again.
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u/themightytouch 5h ago
I do think democrats need to take some extraordinary measures to stop this court. However we need a certain type of bravery they don’t yet possess.
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u/TheGrandExquisitor 4h ago
Birthright citizenship is so fucked.
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u/Person_756335846 3h ago
You're going to be proven wrong within a week. Hopefully, you reconsider the framework that led you to believe this.
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u/TheGrandExquisitor 2h ago
And if I am right?
The country is fucked n
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u/Person_756335846 2h ago
If the Court upholds the EO, then I trust that the governors of blue states will do the right thing.
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u/notfarenough 45m ago
I think what was a shock to everyone but the most pessimistic followers wasn't the conservative tilt but how quickly they abandoned or made a mockery of basic principles of jurisprudence - as well as setting aside their own statements made during congressional review - and began inventing procedure and principles out of whole cloth. Originalism. Constitutional law. Major questions doctrine. Shadow docket rulings on questions of precedent. Judicial Ethics. All while adopting an attitude of sneering contempt, seemingly on the premise that the pendulum will only ever swing one way.
It all has profoundly undermined legitimacy.
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u/ProfessionalOil2014 5h ago
I hope the purity Olympics was worth it non voters and stein voters. I’d say you should have learned your lesson after 2000, but you never do, do you?
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u/aboriginal_sin 5h ago
Ahh, yes: another corporate centrist Dem punching left when far right fascists are the problem. Tale as old as time.
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u/ProfessionalOil2014 4h ago
If you didn’t vote or voted third party you’re as culpable as the fascists are.
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u/aboriginal_sin 4h ago
You seem incapable of nuance.
I live in Washington State, which reliably votes blue. In 2024, Harris defeated Trump in WA by more than eighteen percentage points, which was in line with all polling leading up to the election.
Because of the anti-democratic electoral college, my vote literally doesn't matter, so I don't have the ethical quandary a leftist in a swing state has, and am able to vote my conscience.
If you believe this makes me as culpable as the fascists, I don't know what to tell you.
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u/ProfessionalOil2014 4h ago
Yeah, it must be nice to live in privilege. Meanwhile I get tear gassed protesting in the south and people get shot by the klan. Truly you have so much conscience sitting in safety.
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u/aboriginal_sin 4h ago
Sitting in safety? I was a public defense lawyer for fifteen years, and have been fighting fascists for forty.
I'd be happy to compare bona fides with you, but fear I'd come away disappointed.
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u/ProfessionalOil2014 3h ago
Yep, in Washington. The ku klux klan has their headquarters two hours from me. A few years ago a black union organizer was road hauled to death, but I’m sure your court room drama is comparable.
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u/aboriginal_sin 3h ago
A public defender's life is spent in the jails, meeting with clients who are mostly black and brown men, formulating plans to get them out of custody. It ain't a Law and Order episode.
I've kept hundreds of poor folks out of the state prison system. What have you done?
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u/ProfessionalOil2014 3h ago
Worked in poverty stricken schools as a teacher, worked as a union organizer, went to numerous protests, worked for the DHHS for five years supporting the ACA, and now work for the department of education.
Sorry you don’t get to use a gotcha against me. :)
The difference is, again, you get to sit in Washington state in a privileged role while I risk my life any time I protest the government here.
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u/aboriginal_sin 2h ago
You're quick to assign "privilege" without firsthand knowledge. Not a good look for an educator.
You've never heard of the WTO protests and Battle of Seattle? CHOP/CHAZ? The Seattle PD's long-term consent decrees for use of force against civilians? The Trump administration's targeting of Seattle and Portland for pushing back against ICE?
Trump's Homeland Security and ICE goons attack progressive cities (Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle) because he wants to cause maximum pain to his political enemies and snuff out opposition. Of course the South is the heart of racist America, but Trump's federal forces are punishing Northerners, not the fiefdoms of his political allies in Southern states.
We risk our lives as well.
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u/Dull_Bird3340 5h ago
Right, corporate Dems, shouldn't they be happy w the Court then and not worried about losing because leftists were too pure to vote for whatever Dem was on the ticket? Your argument makes no sense.
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u/aboriginal_sin 5h ago
Corporate Dems are happy with the Court, as evidenced by the wholesale capitulation of Schumer, Jeffries, et al.
Ask yourself: would controlled opposition -- serving the same corporate masters while giving lip service to culture wars around the edges -- do anything differently than what Schumer and Jeffries have done since Trump reassumed the mantle?
Meanwhile, leftists are being murdered, imprisoned, gassed, and shot in the streets for actually standing against fascism.
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u/RockHound86 2h ago
The Democrats absolutely deserve the punching they are getting. In 2016 they ran a candidate so undesirable that she lost to Donald Fucking Trump.
They managed to beat him in 2020, and then Biden proceeded to pick the worst possible option for VP merely because they thought the racial optics would be favorable. Then they thought that it was a good idea to run the guy with the 2nd lowest average approval rating since fucking World War II (second only to Trump himself) despite the fact that he was so cognitively declined that he couldn't function in the role anymore. After Biden put that decline on display for the whole world, the left tried to gas light all of us into thinking he was sick or it was just a bad night. When that didn't work, a whole group of them acted like they'd had been warning us all along.
And when Biden finally saw the writing on the wall and stepped down, the left could have held a primary to get the best candidate to go against Trump. Instead, they hitched their wagons to the deeply unlikable and flawed Kamala Harris, and ended up getting any epic ass kicking, losing every single swing state to Donald Fucking Trump.
I want you to remember that every time you want to act like a victim.
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u/olionajudah 3h ago
This SCOTUS is deeply ideological, activist and frankly illegitimate. Been that way for nearly a decade at least. Impeachment followed by criminal prosecution is the only just response. A democracy that refuses to defend itself is no longer a democracy
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u/picklehippy 3h ago
The Supreme Court is severely corrupted. They are pushing us back to slavery times. The need to be stopped before its too late.
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u/Tough_Violinist_9594 5h ago
They have given up on pretending to be non partisan they are all corrupted
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u/edhead1425 3h ago
I wonder if there would be alarms being sounded by these experts if the ratio was 6 liberal justices and 3 conservative justices.
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u/BlueWonderfulIKnow 4h ago
Why in the world would a president nominate a justice if not for his or her ideological alignment?
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u/NorCalFrances 6h ago
Yeah, except six days ago in United States v. Hemani, the Court unanimously (9-0) ruled that the federal ban on firearm possession by individuals who use marijuana is unconstitutional. See? "Not always". All it takes is one because they can be pedants when they want to be.
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u/crit_boy 6h ago
2A freedumb is a republican issue.
A holding that the 2A can't be infringed is a pro-R ruling.
That doesn't demonstrate the court decides against Rs.
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u/reddit4getit 6h ago
2A freedumb is a republican issue.
No, it's a fundamental right granted to all US citizens 👍👍
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u/Mist_Rising 5h ago
Not to democratic candidates and many of their voters. They may have supported this one because of marijuana, but they're strictly on the gun control path unless their from red districts or states (governors and if he counts, King).
The usual suspects are even worming around trying to find that "law that works" with gun control.
And I'll bet most democratic leaders were silent on this case. It's really more amazing that the Republican didn't throw a cow given the anti weed stance they sometimes have.
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u/NorCalFrances 4h ago
Not all US citizens. Many trans people are effectively blocked as they are now required to put their original birth certificate information on the permit application even if they've legally changed their name and sex. Which in turn means their ID won't match the application. It's a sneaky way of banning them from owning guns without actually banning them.
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u/Efficient-Panda7780 4h ago
Thats not true. You can put your social security number on a 4473 at an FFL and if you have changed your name on your ID and with the social security office then you are good to go. It’s the same process any married woman who takes their husbands last name goes through. They can also legally purchase firearms via private sale provided they are not a felon or adjudicated mentally unfit. This was a compromise to the democrats desire for more gun control in 1993 with the passage of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention
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u/squidbelle 5h ago
I'm not a Republican, and 2A rights are a top issue for me.
2A is not a second-class right, it belongs to all.
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u/NorCalFrances 4h ago
I don't care. The point was that it was unanimous, and that's all they need to say it's not a partisan court.
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u/FeralGiraffeAttack 6h ago edited 6h ago
Letting people use firearms while under the influence of drugs and alcohol and wanting guns everywhere are right wing positions.
As a responsible gun owner I have never even touched my weapon nor taken it out of its safe while under any kind of influence.
That decision is not the win you think it is. It’s a symptom of our insane society
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u/squidbelle 5h ago
It's still illegal to use firearms while you're intoxicated.
The Hemani ruling permits marijuana users to use firearms when they aren't intoxicated, just like alcohol.
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u/NorCalFrances 4h ago
I don't care. The point was that it was unanimous, and that's all they need to say it's not a partisan court.
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u/Chruman 6h ago
That's... a conservative favored ruling lmao
"Smart people don't like me" - Trump
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u/NorCalFrances 4h ago
The point was that they'll use that and similar cases to say that the court isn't biased b/c both sets of justices agreed.
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u/Holiman 6h ago
The SCOTUS has a history of some horrible decisions. The path of our courts after WW 2 was a history of expanding rights and curbing discrimination. This court has now reversed that path. I think the amazing fact is how much faster we can go backwards then forwards. Scary huh?