The Source Of The Roberts Court Putsch Against Democracy Has To Finally Be Cut Off

SO, IT'S BEEN just over a week since the Republican-fascist six on the Supreme Court, not being content with merely abolishing federal laws, officially abolished a country of laws and not of men. Or. rather, one Republican-fasicst man, Donald Trump, apparently making the stupidest, most vulgar, most fascist president in our history above the law is their judicial ideal.   As I will always bring up, Louis Boudin pointed out that the self-usurped powers of the Supreme Court had already done that in Marbury v Madison, making us a law of whatever the Supreme Court majority or consensus said the Constitution meant at any given time.  That had been accomplished by Court usurpation as the seed of Marbury v Madison came to harvest.  Though he was too polite to call it usurpation, I'm not polite when it comes to the Court.  Though there were some rare voices of dissent to that at planting time, such as when Jefferson warned of in at least one letter, that power lay there unused until the Taney Court used it to issue the Dred Scott decision, overturning a long standing and duly adopted federal law in order to turn Black People into non-people for all legal purposes and extending the practice of slavery throughout the United States and its territories, no matter what the Congress and Presidents  and what state governments had decided in that regard.  It is quite probable that that encouragement to the slave-power by the "justices" a number of whom benefitted personally from slavery is what led to the Civil War.  It was, in fact, the first significant use of the power John Marshall and his majority on the Court invented by way of unelected Supreme Court supremacy over the elected Congress and President, making them supreme over The People as well as their elected representatives.  So, in a way, they had demoted all People in the United States even as they reduced Black People to chattle having no rights that any white person was bound to respect.  That last point isn't one I can recall reading that point made before, that since the Supreme Court put itself above the elected representatives of The People, they have, in very real effect, already declared themselves to be above The People who vote for their representatives.  Under that rule, used that way, we are all less than 3/5ths persons whenever the Court majority decides we are.  Is it any wonder they decided to Dred Scott Women in this term?  

By stupid custom and even stupider habit and long standing Court practice, we have become accustomed to the very usurpation of unconstitutional power the Supreme Court has increasingly practiced, despite its major being used over and over again to violate the supposed separation of delegated powers under the Constitution though, with a few exceptions during such rarest eras in Court history as the Warren Court for less evil purposes.  But it is a power largely waged in the service of the richest, most privileged, largely white-straight-affluent males, in most of the use of that power. If that hadn't been the use of it, I doubt it would ever have survived the first time it was not used in for that purpose.  That history of the real effect of the Marbury power grab should convince any stupid liberals who believe it will be used the way Earl Warren and his colleagues tried to use it even most of the time should shatter their illusions about it.  That delusion extends, unfortunately, to our elected federal officials, perhaps because too many of them are lawyers who have been indoctrinated into that anti-democratic way of thought.  

It is astonishing, now, in 2024 that any Democratic President or Congress would respect that usurped unconstitutional power BECAUSE THE COURT SAYS IT'S THERE BECAUSE THE ROBERTS COURT PROVES EVEN THE SUPREME COURT DOESN'T PRESERVE SUPREME COURT DECISIONS.  If that power is legitimate, the current Court would feel bound to respect what they so mendaciously called "settled law" "long standing precedent" during their confirmation hearings, under oath.   President Biden and the Congress should make it clear that any ruling on the basis of the privilege the Court has given itself to overturn duly adopted federal law will not be implemented nor will it be allowed to stand.   The Courts should be required to enforce laws until they are overturned unless there is a clear and clearly unanimous holding that the law is obviously unconstitutional.  No split decision on that count should be allowed to stand as determinative.  As the Roberts Court should be infamous as having proved, they don't at any given time honor the meaning that even previous majorities, perhaps even unanimous decisions of even the most august of Supreme Court members in what they, themselves called "settled law" during their confirmation hearings.  All of those who voted to overturn previous precedent in numerous rulings lied about that during their own confirmations, committing blatant perjury under oath in front of the Senate.  Roberts lied through his teeth during his famous lie about only calling balls and strikes, Alito, Goresuch, Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett, lied about Roe v Wade in that regard,  Thomas lied about many things as well.  I have heard some lawyerly blather about there being a "moderate center" to be found on the Court as it is now,  there is no such moderation or center.  I heard someone say that Coney Barrett might set herself up as a swing vote.  I have said she is and will be the Susan Collins of the Roberts Court, doing the right thing sometimes but only when it doesn't matter.  You need to have a clear 4-5 set up for there to be any "swing vote" in the manner of a Sandra O'Connor conjob or an Anthony Kennedy one and there is not one and likely won't be one.  Any concurrence she has with the Democratic appointees will be on the losing side.  I'm tired of hearing such Court reporter fantasies, we need to face the fact of the utter corruption of the Court's Republican-fascist majority and the corrupt apparatus that packed them onto the court.  

It was always one of the stupidest things that those in the Congress and presidency have done that they allowed the Supreme Court to get away with maintaining that self-granted, unconstitutional power.  It must have been obvious to lawyers such as Madison and Jefferson that Marshall and his colleagues had lied in overturning the section of the Court organizing law in creating that power.  The seemingly insignificant detail* that Marshall declared that it was unconstitutional for the Supreme Court to issue a writ of mandamus though that act said it could was, in effect, overturning the legal belief of the author of that law who just happened to be Marshall's predecessor as Chief Justice, Oliver Ellsworth, who, unlike Marshall was one of the chief drafters of the Constitution as well as one of the most respected lawyers in the United States.  Ellsworth had been a member of the Committee of Detail in the Constitutional convention, who had, in fact, done the actual drafting of the Constitution,  Considering his professional representation including the provisions that created the Supreme Court.  The law the Marshall Court overturned was passed in the Congress with the votes of a number of other framers of the Constitution, including Madison and signed into law by none other than George Washington who, though not a lawyer, had as intimate a hand in framing the Constitution as anyone.  

To say that Ellsworth, Madison, Washington, didn't know the Constitution and what it said, what it allowed and what it disallowed over someone who had not been part of its drafting was ridiculous on its face.  Though Madison and Jefferson may have thought that allowing the Supreme Court to get away with that power grab over what was a matter of minuscule importance over a last minute appointment to a minor office by the last Federalist President, John Adams, the term of that office already expired by the time the Marbury decision as issued, it has been one of the most destructive and consequential usurpations of power in the history of the country.  The Taney Court which used it in a significant matter for the first time is rightly seen as having incited the Confederate rebellion against the United States and caused the Civil War.  

If the Roberts Court does what they plainly risk, setting up a Republican-fascist, even a Trump dictatorship, with modern weaponry held in such abundance by fascists and fanatics around the country instead of just in one region of it, ALSO SOMETHING THE COURT ENABLED,  they may outdo Taney in the consequences of their decisions.  The last one which is even more corrupt in Constitutional terms, destroying the very structure of the government, the supposed system of checks and balances put into place to prevent exactly the despotism the Roberts Court legalized, a partisan dictator.  They not only overruled the Constitution, definitively, they have overruled the Declaration of Independence, making a Republican-fascist president a king above legal restraint and with powers to pardon his assassins and henchmen.  Powers that may have, in the imaginations of the Framers, been safe with the likes of Washington or Adams or Jefferson has proven to be extremely dangerous in the hands of a Trump.  

There is not going to be a day for as long as that ruling stands as the lawless law of the land when it should not be held to be an outrage and assault on not only democracy, but on the United States as a republic instead of a dictatorship.  This Court term has produced so many of the worst decisions in the history of that Court that its Republican-fascist majority should be considered out-laws instead of treated royally as they are accustomed to.  They should feel the heat of that rage every day from now until they die because they have done some of the worst things any public official in the history of the country has done.

If, by some miracle, Joe Biden wins the election and takes office he should use the power the Roberts thugs gave him to investigate THEM.  It doesn't have to be for a criminal trial overseen by the court, it should be for a public trial of the members of that Court.  THEY SHOULD GET TO EXPERIENCE WHAT THEY HAVE UNLEASHED ON ALL OF US NOW.   The model for that already exists in a minor way in the scandals from when J. Edgar Hoover ran the FBI, when it collected information on the private lives of Americans to use to use to blackmail and attack them.  It was filthy but now presidential filthiness is the Roberts law of the land and, as I always say, NO ONE IN ANY GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO ESCAPE THE CONSEQUENCES OF WHAT THEY DO IN PUBLIC OFFICE, what the Roberts Court says presidents can do now.  The private lives, the business lives, the associations and alliances that the Supreme Court members AND THEIR FAMILIES should be thoroughly investigated by President Biden, using all of the powers the Constitution gives him in line with the Roberts Court immunity given to him.  If one of his agents oversteps the law in carrying out his order to investigate or expose them, he should pardon them.  If he discovers they have broken laws, he should order his Department of Justice to prosecute them.  If the case goes to a judge he believes will be lenient to a member of the Supreme Court, he should take means to get the case taken from them.  That will be easy if the prosecution is brought by the Department of Justice, as, no doubt, the infamous Roberts Court majority are hoping will happen when Trump gets back into power.  Since the Supreme Court majority have given him immunity to commit murder, he should consider the summary execution of them and the pardon of anyone he assigns to carry that out.  That the Roberts Court thugs gave those powers to someone they have every reason to know would use them, no doubt never imagining that someone who would do that would use it against the likes of them, makes the use of it by those who oppose that granting of dictatorial power not only permissible, but necessary.  Democratic presidents swear to uphold and defend the Constitution AND THE COUNTRY against all enemies foreign AND DOMESTIC.  The Roberts Court majority are enemies of the United States, the principle of governing by a majority vote of the population, they are enemies of equal justice under laws, they are, in fact, the most anti-American people to have held office, perhaps since those Second World War Nazi-friendly seditionists Rachel Maddow has taught us so much about.  

Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett should not rest comfortably, convinced that they couldn't experience the consequences of what they did.  Not anymore.  No Court should get to exempt themselves from the consequences of their rulings as the Supreme Court regularly does.  That should be the law of the land, one which the Supreme Court can't overturn by 5-4, 6-3 or 9-0.  They should immediately have the heat turned up on them and they should be made to know that they will be liable to either the whims of the president they have enabled or his cold, rational calculations.   Just as Thomas and his wife should feel the heat if he gets his way and he guts the privacy basis of the Loving decision, making their marriage legal in Virginia, none of them should get to sleep any easier than we have this past week.  

* The insignificance of the case in Marbury v Madison, moot by the time that the decision was issued makes me suspect that Marshall, one of the major slave-holding class, may well have had its usefulness in protecting slave-holding from the majority opinion in the future as his motive.  Modern historical research into John Marshall proves that, contrary to previous hagiographic biographic bilge, he held large numbers of slaves on a number of his plantations, wealth that Marshall had not inherited but had built up during his lifetime, including during his membership of the Supreme Court.  The major, large slave-holder class were the super-rich of the United States and, in fact, were some of the richest men in the world of their time and their wealth was founded on enslaving Black People, both kidnapped and enslaved and those bred into slavery.  

We know from Madison's record of the original Constitutional Convention that protecting slavery AND OBTAINING PRIVILEGES FROM THE NEW GOVERNMENT FOR SLAVE HOLDERS, was one of the major topics of discussion and disagreement at the Convention.  We know from the previous records of the original organization of the country under the Articles of Confederation that the slave-holders had similar worries about the future of their economic wealth and insisted on them, as a group, being privileged under that earlier scheme of government, insisting on not counting slaves for purposes of taxation and obligations to the country at first, then insisting on counting them for purposes of giving slave-holders more representation in the new Congress, many of the same figures contradicting what they'd insisted on a few years before.  Stealing for the slave-holders the natural right to representation that belonged to those who they enslaved.  That is what the Roberts Court is attempting to reestablish through their demolition of the Voting Rights Act.  John Roberts is one of the major white supremacist "justices" in the history of that court, seeking to restore that original theft of representation for white supremacists through permitting states to suppress the votes of Black People, Native Americans, and others.  There's nothing clean or perfumed or respectable about him.  As we know from his lying during his confirmation hearing, he can lie and pose as a respectable man but his actions prove that to be a con game.   

I think Marshall, always using his position on the Court to enhance slave-power and, so, his own fortune, probably had something like what Taney did with the Marbury usurpation of power on behalf of the slave-power in mind.  He was enough of a thinker and lawyer and hypocrite to embed something like that in the law with that in mind.  He may not live to need to use it but his children and grandchildren, holding the children and grandchildren of those he enslaved would find it handy.  I can't believe he wouldn't have had something like that in mind as he went to the bother of usurping the powers he and his colleagues did over such an otherwise trivial issue.  For all Marshall knew Madison and Jefferson would have reacted as strongly against that as they should have and would have if the issue at hand had been more consequential for them.  Or, maybe, they didn't react to it because they, as well, saw the potential usefulness of it to their posterity holding their generation of those enslaved as the source of their wealth.  

One of the hardest facts about the slavery permitted in the original Constitution and the Jim Crow that succeeded it with Supreme Court approval is that none of it could be set up and enforced without both social and state violence being at the bottom of it.  No one would consent to be a slave without both the threat and use of violence against them.  Our Constitution still has the vestiges of what the slave-holders put there to protect their use of the state to enable their enslavement of People.  Now those of us not in direct danger of enslavement are discovering what was used against Black People is a danger to everyone.  That won't change until the Electoral College, the anti-democratic structure of the Senate and the unconstitutional powers invented for itself by the Supreme Court are obliterated.  

We have to get rid of it and cut the Court down to the same size that such Courts have in other, less imperiled democracies.