krebscycle

The most respected and influential conservative Appeals Court Judge wrote this about the Voting Rights Act decision of the Supreme Court

Shelby County v. Holder, decided Tuesday, struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act [..] as violating the “fundamental principle of equal sovereignty” of the states. This is a principle of constitutional law of which I had never heard—for the excellent reason that [..] there is no such principle.

The major effect of this ruling will be to make it easier for Republican state and local governments to deprive African-American and Hispanic citizens of their right to vote. A Republican majority on the Supreme Court, without a shred of Constitutional justification,  overrules Congress to make it easier for Republican officials to prevent black and hispanic voters from voting them out of office.  The US Constitution, by the way, does not give the Supreme Court the right to strike down Federal laws. The Court claimed the power early on much to the displeasure of people like Thomas Jefferson. Before the post-Nixon Republicans became a majority, with a few exceptions, the Court was careful to claim the authority only for the most clear cut cases. But now the Republican majority in the Supreme Court is giving itself the authority to overrule Congress to benefit the Republican Party and it cannot cite any Constitutional basis for its decision.

This type of power grab is not completely unprecedented. The Supreme Court tried to protect slavery before the Civil War, the Supreme Court  protected Southern Lynch Law in the 1870s,  and the Supreme Court attempted to destroy the New Deal in the early 1930s. However, never in US history has the Supreme Court been so nakedly involved in helping one political party to win elections as the Roberts Court has been. The combination of the Citizens United decision and the Voting Rights decision is a sustained effort to overturn the wishes of the majority of citizens and to protect the power of the Republican Party. And we can go back and add the decision to install GW Bush as President even though Al Gore had won the election – a decision that led to Roberts and Alito being placed on the Court.

When people talk about the “rule of law” in the United States, I don’t know what they mean. We have the rule of power.  When the Court has a right wing majority and it believes it can get away with it, it will make up laws in its favor. President Lincoln ignored the Court, brought black soldiers into the Union Army, provided passports to black sailors (even though the Court had specifically ruled that only white people could be citizens), and freed the slaves without any support from the Judiciary or much legal basis. The fundamental legal arguments for the Emancipation Proclamation were the bayonets of the Union Army.  President Roosevelt intimidated the Court by threatening to increase the number of Justices to get new ones who would support the New Deal. If there had not been a massive an violent labor union insurrection against corporations and a huge Congressional majority for the Roosevelt Democrats, the Supreme Court would have continued to find the New Deal unconstitutional.    When people demand that we “respect the decisions of the Court”, they are demanding we abandon justice and democracy to allow rule by lawless Courts.