The Supreme Court and Justice In Balance

I was really surprised when I first learned about Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, not only because I was only eleven when he retired, but because someone as progressive as Justice Marshall and the progressive act of appointing a black man to the court had happened before I was even born, while during my life our government had actually lurched to the political right, which being young I thought to have always been the case, thinking that once progress had been achieved it that should typically persist, which with the subsequent appointment of the bigot Clarance Thomas it demonstrably had not. When as a young man the court decided Lawrence Vs Texas in 2003 in which the majority opinion dignified gay men for the first time in our country’s and the court’s history I was overcome with the awe of realizing my life in the United States going forward might not be so fraught with danger as it had heretofore been. Of course, the backlash by bigoted institutions and people like the Mormon Church in persecuting gays and lesbians further (and transgender people as they still do today) with the passage of Proposition 8 in California and other heinous reactionary laws which have since been defeated was a rough transition, but the sea change in legal protections was an enormous and surprising relief.

There has been much conflict in the recent decade over control of the Supreme Court, especially since the GOP has exaggerated their efforts to plant justices in the court whom they feel serve their own interests, even acting in an unprecedented manner and shirking their constitutional duty to confirm a justice during the Obama administration, when they refused for almost an entire year to consider any nominees put forth by Obama, then hilariously pretended we all didn’t see their blatant hypocrisy in rushing to nominate and confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a manner completely disrespectful to the death and burial of Justice Ginsberg in its haste, dishonesty, and desperation.

There are real concerns about the composition of the court, considering the behavior of the GOP in pushing their aggressive court packing over the last few administrations, especially since the historical miscarriage of justice is often accomplished by similar politicization of courts throughout the world and history, installing administers of justice who are compromised and undemocratically aligned with the interests of autocrats and ideologues. The blatantly stated goal of right wing politicians to overturn Roe Vs Wade in opposition of established law and the rights and beliefs of their opposition makes many on the left extremely suspicious of the motivations and competence of GOP nominees to any court, undermining political legitimacy of the dispensation of justice which, contrary to the position of Originalists does not come from the Constitution, but from the People’s support of the Constitution.

But if anyone on the left thinks that we are not also entirely guilty of performing the same politicization of the court, they are completely delusional. The valued adage, two wrongs do not make a right seems to be especially lost in political discourse and action at the moment, and its meaning completely misunderstood. If you as a person feel entirely convinced of the rightness of your beliefs and convictions, doing something to act on those convictions which is in fact wrong is the act of violating this ideal. For instance, in the FBI during the Trump administration it was discovered that one or two agents who rightly despised Trump and his racism and bigotry altered evidence in warrants in order to obtain court orders to investigate people in his orbit whom they knew were corrupt and compromised. In committing this act of professional malfeasance they also broke the law, but felt justified in doing so because of their convictions. When it was found out what they had done it contaminated all the investigations surrounding Trump and provided ammunition for him and his supporters to vilify the FBI and resist oversight and compliance with the law. Two wrongs do not make a right. Likewise, many or most of the very few instances of voter fraud actually discovered during the 2020 Presidential election were actually committed by right-wing voters convinced that the left was doing the same, thinking they had to violate the law to counteract what they believed was other people violating the law, and many of those people are now facing jail time for their crimes.

Ideologues on both the left and right believe that personal convictions justify dishonesty and opportunism, fearing for our own political futures we become so mired in our own neuroses and convictions that we actually lose our powers of reason and become the very agents of the political conflict and discord we ostensibly wish to be done with. Several of the Justices of the Court hilariously went on a recent rant complaining about the politicization of the court as if they weren’t personally complicit in the unethical behavior and politicization of the court which put them there, nor their association with institutions and movements which have plain and aggressive ideological convictions and agendas. At best it’s disingenuous, but really just completely dishonest.

Sometimes it helps to have conservatives on the court. When a conservative court makes a ruling in our favor, such as they did for the recent Bostock Vs Clayton County which affirmed that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protects LGBTQI+ persons from being fired for their sexual or gender identity and expression carried so much weight that NOBODY is even talking about it anymore even though it was an enormous victory for the LGBTQI+ community which will have positive and progressive effects on our quality of life for many, many decades to come. It wasn’t even a close ruling, being 6-3, joined by both conservatives Roberts and Gorsuch, the latter of whom being the conservative replacement candidate and reason for the GOP stonewalling Obama’s nominee.

Abortion rights have also been in jeopardy for a very long time, but neither Obama, Clinton, Pelosi, or Biden took any steps to codify abortion rights into law, because if they did there would be nothing to juice up their base and get out the votes. The failure of these rights and privileges are not just the fault of the right, but of the establishment and prominence of the cynical Us vs Them politics of the boomer generation. Biden has been in power longer than I have been alive, and never has he done anything to secure abortion care. Both sides are lying to you. But only the right is taking action.

Sometimes there is actually a more rationed and lawful interpretation of the constitution from conservative justices. Specifically are some recent interventions such as during COVID restrictions in which some states specifically prohibited religious gatherings while not prohibiting others that were secular. While I despise religion, the freedom of religious expression is also the reason that I can live my life unmolested by religious zealots, and the political justification of prohibiting religious gatherings for the sake of stopping COVID is the same side of a coin that could be used to later persecute my rights to live unpersecuted as a gay man. Many times liberal justices like Kagan cannot see how their more compassionate and idealistic opinions can actually lay the groundwork for heinous actors because of the restrictions that undisciplined liberalism can inadvertently remove. Another example is the disastrous Affordable Care Act, which has been nothing of the sort, and single handedly responsible for the transferring of total Democratic control of the Federal Government at the outset of the Obama Administration to that of Republicans at Trump. The ACA drove insurance premiums through the roof, especially in working class America, and erased much of the political progress we had made previously because of the burden of government on the lives of every day, middle-class and poor citizens. The Supreme court has carved up the ACA but allowed most of it to remain, with the supposedly liberal Obama Administration and the Conservative Roberts court agreeing mostly, which should actually tell you more about the ACA than you would care to admit, yet preserving rule of law over ideology in the process.

Let’s also talk about the irony of Amy Coney Barrett being on the court while also positioning herself as an anti-feminist. The rights of Women have progressed so far that a Catholic mother of seven who officially kept her maiden name can have a demanding job as an academic, lawyer, and supreme court justice serving on the top court of the country while also claiming it doesn’t further feminism, even though it is the entire point of feminism. Her very presence on the court and as a working law and academic professional is by its very nature feminism and progressivism, even if she is an abortion foe, however her allies or adversaries like to characterize it, and the only reason we don’t see her as such is because of how much progress we have actually made and how ideological divides distort accurate conception of reality. Confronted also by the consequences of the incongruity of her participation in unethical confirmation shenanigans and engaging in a political circus, Justice Barrett will be forced to answer for the political damage she did to the court, which will have more long lasting ramifications for our rights than the subversion of precedent. Justice Barrett may in fact be an impediment to abortion rights in the US, but this is not because she is a member of the court, it is because we who desire abortion rights have not done a good job working for those rights, become complacent and willfully ignorant to the threat, neglected the wellbeing of others in need in our country, and propped up politicians who do nothing but tell you what you want to hear.

Government should not have the kind of power to interfere in personal lives the way that outlawing abortion engineers. That failure is not the fault of Justice Barrett or the other conservative members of the court but our own failure to make our societies just and equitable, and that of current liberal political leadership who purposefully stoke abortion conflicts to stay in power every bit as much as the right.

Thankfully President Biden will now be able to appoint a competent, black, female justice to the court to also help represent a segment of the population just as Justice Barrett’s confirmation has done, and thus further buoy the legitimacy of the institution through its support by the People. Balance, not political affiliation, is the true way to achieve progress in our society. It must be achieved through consensus and cooperation. When we do the opposite and try to control and dominate and stoke geopolitical conflict our rights and safety we will always lose, no matter how much we feel justified by our convictions, because two wrongs do not, in fact, make a right.

Racism still plays a significant role in American politics, as we are seeing with some ridiculous defacto conservative resistance to the potential nomination of a black, female justice, and racism in our politics has major consequences for our society as a whole, even and especially for those who perpetuate it. But the political reality is also not as divisive as it appears. Much political turmoil is also promoted and sustained by alcoholics and addicts on both sides of the political divide, and alcoholism and addiction can be treated with a few simple steps as outlined in my alcoholism and addiction recovery guide.