But That Is Nowhere Near Enough Or Even Adequate
IN MY POSTS OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS, in which I attacked the Supreme Court's self-created, entirely non-textual and so non-"originalist" Marbury power, in which it gets to abolish duly adopted federal laws I noted how, starting with the Dred Scott decision, continuing in the Waite and Fuller Courts' abolition of the original anti-lynching law, the original post-Civil War Voting Rights and Civil Rights laws, their imposition of Jim Crow, theirs and the Fuller and just about all subsequent Courts twisting, turning, clipping and padding of the Civil War Amendments, especially the 14th Amendment, I noted how the Roberts Court is recapitulating the acts of those corrupt 19th and early 20th century Courts in gutting the second Voting Rights and Civil Rights laws and, in a series of some of the most corrupt rulings in that most corrupt of the three branches (look honestly at its history!) they have even overturned the most basic aspects of the Constitutional structure of the government.
I don't favor Democrats merely appointing a court that will merely overturn the Trump v USA decision, or Dobbs or any of the other atrocities that the Courts have done BECAUSE ALONG WITH DULY ADOPTED FEDERAL LAWS AND FULLY ADOPTED AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION, THE SUPREME COURT HAS NO PROBLEM OVERTURNING SUPPOSEDLY DEFINITIVE AND RELIABLE RULINGS MADE BY PREVIOUS COURTS. Even some they assured the Senate they considered "settled law." Dobbs overturning Roe and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act which previous courts repeatedly upheld AND CONGRESS REAUTHORIZED AFTER THE SUPREME COURT CONFIRMED ITS "CONSTITUTIONALITY" shows that relying on the Court to act with any integrity at all is entirely inadequate to protect us from its propensities to destroy any progress towards equality or democracy or even the most intimate of bodily autonomy whether a Woman's ownership and determination of her own body or, GIVEN THAT THE OVERTURNING OF THAT ORIGINAL ANTI-LYNCHING LAW IS PART OF THE COURT'S HISTORY, even the guarantee that, especially Black People and other People of Color have a right to not be murdered by a mob. I wouldn't trust the Roberts Court to uphold the second anti-lynching law, the one that finally passed after 200 attempts in the Congress (the Senate being the impediment to that, but that's for another time) and finally signed into law by Joe Biden.
You cannot depend on the Supreme Court to do anything like that because of its history of overturning laws, previous court rulings and even duly adopted parts of the Constitution, itself. The final destruction of the Marbury power and other Supreme Court innovations and creations cannot depend on the most honest of theoretical Supreme Courts doing that IT WILL HAVE TO BE AN ACTION OF THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT DOING IT BECAUSE NOTHING ELSE WILL BE RELIABLE IN MAKING SURE THE COURT DOESN'T OVERTURN THAT.
Since I posted the letter by Jefferson in which, in reaction to the Marbury decision he said his construction of the Constitution put the authority to interpret it in all three branches and not merely in the Supreme Court, which, I have to say, it is hard to predict how that would work. One thing is clear after the Roberts Court, clearly, the history of the out of control Supreme Court shows that if we're going to have those "balanced powers" there has to be a real and effective stop to the Supreme Court having that sole power. It might work imperfectly but it would have to work pretty badly to be worse than the status quo of letting Supreme Courts do what they've been doing.
Most of the current corruption of our politics, the debasement of public office in all three branches have been a result of Supreme Court decisions, whether the grotesquely and obviously corrupt such as Citizens United and Buckley v Valeo or the less obviously but quite corrupt rulings such as Sullivan or the one that set off the epic corruption of the Trump II regime, Trump v USA. The fact that all of that corruption flows from what were supposedly "civil liberties" rulings - rulings that obviously favored large, rich corporations in ever instance, rulings I think were a distortion of even the irresponsibly vague and badly written "Bill of Rights." But it flows from the Supreme Court usurping those powers.
Pass all the laws you want, try to give it as blatantly explicit and clear a legislative record as possible, one designed to prevent what the Courts have done in lying about those to the fullest extent possible but the Roberts Court proves that without them being stripped of those powers which they have exercised their corruption under, they'll just continue on as they have been since Roger Taney and his colleagues who wrote the Dred Scott decision, the first significant use of the Marbury power,* have done. The only alternative to that would be to staff the Court only with those who have rejected the Marbury power and I would bet that there is no such species among the lawyers and judges who have been brought up in the corrupt lore of their profession.
The fact that the Marbury power was the creation of a mere four members of the Supreme Court is surely significant in impeaching its validity. If the Roberts Court can overturn literally all of the opinions of the "justices" who upheld the Voting Rights Act and the Roe decision and who knows how many others in other matters they have ruled on, it's a little thing to overturn those four "justices" from 1803, especially when the nearly uniformly corrupt use of the power they gave themselves is taken as its true record under use.
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