We Have Every Right To Demand Our Elected Officials Protect Us From The Unelected Ones On The Court

The doctrine that Supreme Courts can over turn laws duly adopted by the Congress and either signed into law by a president or by the Congress overcoming a presidential veto is not a power granted to the Court by the Constitution, it's a power that Supreme Court justices created for themselves out of nothing more than their ability to strong arm the Congress and Executive branches into accepting it.  And it's not an ability that has been uniformly acknowledged by presidents when they had the power of oligarchs, crooks and racists behind them to ignore those.  Andrew Jackson did in his genocidal removals of Native Americans so he and his cronies could steal their land in the East, as we've been reminded recently.  That power or, rather, the willingness to attempt to ignore Supreme Court pronouncements has not, to my knowledge, ever been attempted on the behalf of the downtrodden and disadvantaged.

And a lot of what the Supreme Court consists of such as the number of members it contains is, as well, not spelled out in the Constitution and is a matter of tradition and what Presidents and Senates have either dared not to transgress or have found would not be deemed acceptable.  I think as was pointed out here recently, an analysis at FiveThirtyEight said that the glaring mathematical and scientific ignorance among the present members of the Supreme Court mixed with arrogant dismissal of the importance of them understanding such issues in their rulings, from Scalia and Roberts to Breyer,  will force an expansion on the Court with seats requiring demonstrated knowledge of statistics as well as the arcana of Constitutional Law.  Their rulings made in proud and blatant ignorance of the facts means that those rulings are a fraud.  It is disgusting and appalling for members of the Court such as Scalia  to airily dismiss the importance of them understanding the very matters before them because some math-free royal road to discernment is available to them just because.

A lot about the Supreme Court even at its best is a con job.  Stephen Bryer in that quote mentioned in a post over the weekend called the acceptance of it's authority over and not infrequently annulling the democratic process a "miracle" but it's not really miraculous, it is a con job and a game of chicken.  The sitting members of the Court, even the relative liberals among them have some stake in the maintenance of that con job, Kagan and Sotomayor gave their demonstrated support for placing a perjurer, liar, very likely a sex predator and drunken gambling addict on the Court by being present at his swearing in.  They did so knowing that he is only on the court due to the thuggery of Mitch McConnell and the massive cover-up of his record, a cover up which would only be necessary BECAUSE THERE IS SOMETHING IN THE RECORD THEY WANTED HIDDEN.   So I don't expect that they are going to be enthusiastic for what's necessary to keep their fellow court members from wrecking democracy.  Ruth Bader Ginsberg was best pals with Antonin Scalia even as he was enthusiastic about such things as executing likely innnocent people, depriving people of their voting rights and Women the rights of basic ownership of their bodies.  The extent to which that is a manifestation of all of the members of the Court being Ivy Leaguers - who tend to have each others's back - is of only secondary importance.

We have to start pressing Democrats in the Congress and who run for president to consider some radical measures such as the expansion of the Court - which I would favor only if there were Math-Science requirements for them.   I think short of that it is well worth considering that in matters of basic civil rights, voting rights, rights to personal ownership of our bodies, and other such things that it will take a unanimous vote of all members of the court to overturn duly adopted laws and that if a 5-4 or 6-3 or even 8-1 didn't like it then that was too bad.  I think one effect of that would be to force the de-radicalization of the members of the Supreme Court who, out of a desire to maintain their power would have to be more judicious in their ambitions as to the scope of that power.  The Court is and always has been an anti-democratic institution, under the present formulation and with the Republican ratfucking of the process, it has become as dangerous as it was during the reign of Taney, which took the horrible Civil War to correct.   The Supreme Court overturning Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Abortion Rights, Rights to healthcare, safe food, drinking water, clean air, kills people.  It is the most basic right, the first one that any Congress purporting to act on our behalf asserted, to life, that the Supreme Court violates when it acts as it does.  We have every right to demand that our elected officials protect us from the unelected ones on the Court.  I don't give a damn about the comity on and the traditions surrounding the Supreme Court, they're just hirelings that have been allowed to get entirely out of hand, most of them bad hires.