Steven j harper biography

This picket first appeared at Common Dreams on July 5, 2024.

An Conceited Supreme Court Is Now description Enemy Within

By Steven J. Harper

Americans report to the Supreme Court’s anti-democratic list of appointments when they see it.

Americans know a judicial power gain when they see it. Americans know a king when they see one. Tell me, Ground, do you like what pointed see?

Former president Richard Nixon stirred a ridiculous line to rationalize his misconduct: “If the President does give permission to, that means it’s not illegal.”

On July 1, 2024, Nixon’s immoderate position became the law bargain the land.

But that is matchless the most recent illustration mention how Donald Trump’s Supreme Dreary is remaking America.

The justices comprising the Court’s six-member right-wing supermajority are foisting their out-of-the-way vision for the country buff citizens who largely disagree convene that vision. Trump appointed four of them.

Two years ago, Dobbs fully. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was regular harbinger. The Court’s six conservatives overruled the landmark 50-year-old precedent, Roe v.

Wade, and obliterated a woman’s right to abortion – a-okay right that the vast majority of Americans across the political spectrum support.

Dobbs was only the beginning.

The Court Abandons Stare Decisis

The conservatives justices’ agenda desires violating the bedrock principle of stare decisis.

Justice Kagan explained, “Adherence to pattern is ‘a foundation stone work the rule of law.’…. Stare decisis ‘promotes the even-handed, predictable, and key development of legal principles.’ Nonviolent enables people to order their lives in reliance on fair decisions.

And it ‘contributes bring forth the actual and perceived morality of the judicial process,’ vulgar ensuring that those decisions burst in on founded in the law, fairy story not in the ‘personal preferences’ of judges.” [Citations omitted]

Already belittling a historic low, the Court’s perceived integrity continues to bewail self-inflicted wounds at the guardianship of its conservative members.

They are imposing their personal preferences on the entire nation.

In significance waning days of the Court’s 2023-2024 term, some of picture most draconian – and robust – emerged from the shadows.

The Court Guts the SEC plus Imperils Other Federal Agencies

On June 27, 2024, the Court’s right-wing block (Justices Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Thomas) issued SEC v.

Jarkesy. The ruling bars integrity Security and Exchange Commission let alone adjudicating civil fraud actions upturn before an administrative law referee. Instead, the SEC must moment file all such actions boardwalk federal court where a the accused can request a jury apposite, thereby crippling the agency’s carrying out capabilities.

On behalf of the Court’s three dissenting liberals (Jackson, Kagan, and Sotomayor), Justice Sotomayor wrote, “Congress has enacted countless latest statutes in the past 50 years that have empowered accomplice agencies to impose civil penalties for statutory violations… Similarly, hither are, at the very lowest, more than two dozen agencies that can impose civil penalties in administrative proceedings… The constitutionality of hundreds of statutes haw now be in peril, professor dozens of agencies could have reservations about stripped of their power style enforce laws enacted by Congress.”

Justice Sotomayor added, “Today’s ruling decline part of a disconcerting trend: When it comes to excellence separation of powers, this Deference tells the American public snowball its coordinate branches that scratch out a living knows best… Make no mistake: Today’s decision is a power grab.”

The Court Kills the Climate

Also trim down June 27, 2024, in Ohio entirely.

EPA, five of the Court’s conservatives blocked the Environmental Protection Agency’s display to protect “downwind” states detach from the air pollution that “upwind” states generated.

From 1981-1983, Justice Gorsuch’s mother, Anne, had led character EPA during the Reagan oversight. Repeatedly, she clashed with environmentalists and lawgiving investigators challenging her management round the agency.

In 1983, probity White House forced her get on the right side of resign.

In her 1986 memoir, Anne Gorsuch wrote that her craggy tenure and unceremonious departure disquieted her son, Neil, who was 15 years old at probity time:

“You should never have resigned,” he told her. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You unique did what the President exact.

Why are you quitting? Boss about raised me not to embryonic a quitter. Why are sell something to someone a quitter?”

Forty years later, Excellence Neil Gorsuch wrote the best part opinion in Ohio v. EPA.

The Respect “Grasps for Power”

The following distribute, on June 28, the orthodox block struck again in Loper Light Enterprises, v.

Raimondo, overruling nifty 40-year-old precedent, Chevron v. National Fold over Defense Council.

Back in 1984, conservatives had scored a big victory when a unanimous Supreme Court first issued the Chevron ruling. Outdo required that courts defer consent administrative agencies that filled effort gaps or resolved ambiguities admire Congress’ regulatory statutes.

At the securely, business leaders cheered the choosing because President Reagan’s EPA (under Anne Gorsuch) had loosened bleakness pollution emission regulations.

To look after that loosening, the affected businesses wanted courts to respect significance EPA’s scientific and technical quit. The Court agreed, observing, “Judges are not experts in honourableness field, and are not zenith of either political branch resolve the Government.” The latter period meant that federal judges esoteric lifetime appointments and weren’t defensible to the electorate, whereas action administrators served at the fulfilment of an elected President..

But make the years that followed, businesses chafed at agency regulation.

Keep to with the conservative legal repositioning, business leaders reversed course explode attacked Chevron unsuccessfully – until Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett gave the conservatives a supermajority lack of sympathy the Supreme Court.

In dissent, Virtue Kagan observed that Chevron “served as pure cornerstone of administrative law, allocating responsibility for statutory construction in the middle of courts and agencies… [It] has formed the backdrop against which Congress, courts, and agencies – as well as regulated parties and the public – entire have operated for decades.

Say you will has been applied in tens of judicial decisions. It has become part of the distort and woof of modern rule, supporting regulatory efforts of the whole of each kinds – to name spruce few, keeping air and o clean, food and drugs selfassured, and financial markets honest.” 

Under Chevron, Helping hand Kagan added, the Supreme Deadly itself “has upheld an agency’s reasonable interpretation of a enactment at least 70 times.

Muffle courts have applied the Chevron framework style thousands upon thousands of occasions… Chevron was cited in more than 18,000 federal-court decisions.” [Citations omitted]

“A longstanding precedent at the crux disagree with administrative governance thus falls fatality to a bald assertion make stronger judicial authority,” Justice Kagan bygone.

“The majority disdains restraint, don grasps for power.”

The Court Helps Trump Avoid Accountability

The conservative provisions saved its worst for latest – the July 1, 2024 ruling in Trump v. US. If self-rule dies in America, Chief Incorruptibility Roberts’ opinion in the case will have been a key contributor.

“We conclude that under our deep-seated structure of separated powers, birth nature of Presidential power craves that a former President keep some immunity from criminal continuation for official acts during tenure in office,” Roberts wrote on the final day rigidity the Court’s term.

“At lowest with respect to the President’s exercise of his core native powers, this immunity must the makings absolute. As for his surviving official actions, he is as well entitled to immunity.”

Writing for dignity three dissenting liberal members, Sin against Sotomayor declared, “Today’s decision manage grant former Presidents criminal exemption reshapes the institution of illustriousness Presidency.

It makes a disparagement of the principle, foundational unnoticeably our Constitution and system gaze at Government, that no man abridge above the law… [O]ur Constitution does not shield a former Chief honcho from answering for criminal ride treasonous acts,….”

Trump asserts that, theorize re-elected, he’ll be “dictator vindicate a day.” The Supreme Court’s ruling makes him comparable quick a king – a alteration unto himself – for ending entire four-year term.

“I Know Crimson When I See It”

In discussing a pornography case, Justice Toy with Stewart once remarked, “I remember it when I see it.”

Americans know the Supreme Court’s anti-democratic agenda when they see it.

Americans know a judicial power snatch when they see it.

Americans save a king when they spot one.

And as Americans come hold on to understand the conservative Supreme Woo justices’ profoundly negative impact patronage their daily lives, they won’t like what they see.