Is Everything That’s Happened at the Supreme Court Actually Our Fault? A Brief Investigation
Plus, a look ahead to the fall, when the Supreme Court might be only the second-most urgent threat to the future of representative democracy.
On Monday, the Supreme Court wrapped its third full term since Balls & Strikes began publishing in September 2021. In the period since, the Court’s six-justice conservative supermajority has overturned Roe v. Wade, outlawed affirmative action, invented a right to carry guns in public, (further) hollowed out (what’s left of) voting rights, hamstrung efforts to fight the gun violence crisis, protected the rights of homophobic bigots to discriminate, established evangelical Christianity as a quasi-official national religion, tossed elected officials’ efforts to protect citizens from a deadly pandemic, scuttled the Biden administration’s student debt relief plan, subjected refugees and immigrants to an ever-growing list of xenophobic cruelties, blessed the proliferation of cartoon-villain public corruption, granted white-collar criminals’ fervent wishes for a more lenient justice system, and gutted the administrative state several times over, thus ensuring that no democratically accountable branch of government can do anything anymore without the express written consent of the nearest Trump-appointed, Newsmax-brained district court judge. In its final decision of the term, the Court immunized Donald Trump from prosecution for his myriad crimes (coup-related and otherwise), and in the process created a supercharged version of executive power that their preferred candidate, should he prevail in November, can spend the next four years abusing.
In retrospect, perhaps we should have delayed the site’s launch a little longer.
Over the next few months, Balls & Strikes will have a lot more to say about all the awful things the Supreme Court has done: this term, over the past generation, and during the course of the institution’s shameful 200-year existence. We will have more to say about all the awful things the Supreme Court will do in the years to come, too, if establishment Democratic politicians keep treating the justices as a collection of misguided good-government enthusiasts who can be persuaded to abandon their mission of repealing the 20th century by a sternly worded letter.
As you may be aware, there is also a presidential election scheduled for this fall, which means that for the first time in several years, the Supreme Court might not pose the most immediate threat to the future of democracy when the justices return to the bench in October. The winner could have the chance to appoint at least life-tenured two justices to the Court, which, given the track records of the two major-party candidates on the ballot, makes this the most important election since the one before it, and the one before that, and so on.
In the meantime, unless Democrats decide to take seriously Court reform proposals other than “hoping Clarence Thomas decides that civil rights are actually good,” things at the Supreme Court are going to get worse before they get better. Again, I am sorry I do not have a more optimistic takeaway; again, if you want to blame Balls & Strikes for all of this, I cannot deny the correlation here.
Enough for now. I hope you are able to enjoy a wonderful Fourth of July celebration. After this week, Donald Trump certainly will.
As always, you can find everything we publish at ballsandstrikes.org, or follow us on Twitter at @ballsstrikes, or get in touch by emailing contact@ballsandstrikes.org. Thanks for reading.
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Balls and Strikes is a good name for this column. When Roberts trotted out the analogy during his confirmation hearing, he reminded me of a frequently told story of three umpires. The umpires, a rookie umpire, an experienced umpire, and a veteran umpire were interviewed about their philosophies behind calling balls and strikes. The rookie umpire responded, “l call them as I see them.” The experienced umpire said, “l call them as they are.”
The moss-backed, veteran umpire responded, “They ain’t nothing ‘til I call them.”
I don’t recall anyone pushing Roberts on his analogy and his false modesty about just calling balls and strikes. It’s now clear, though, that he shares the views of the veteran umpire. Congressional action, executive decisions, statutory language, words of the Constitution ain’t nothing ‘til he calls ‘em.