Welcome to the world of a partisan, biased Supreme Court

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-unthinkable-has-happened-welcome-to.html

The small university I attended, in its prudence and efficiency in the courses and majors that it offered to its students, offered courses that could be counted toward more than one major or minor. So as a result of that, as a history major and English minor headed toward earning a secondary level teaching certificate, I took a course called "American Constitutional History and Law," which counted toward my major, but which pre-law students could also count toward theirs. The small school had just one professor who taught upper division pre-law courses, and she was an outstanding expert in the field.

Yes, she was a female, which, at that time, was unusual in a small, denominationally affiliated university where 80% of the faculty in every discipline except education, was male. She was the only full-time professor who taught pre-law courses, the others being attorneys who were alumni, and were adjunct professors. But it wasn't her law school background, or experience as a practicing attorney that I thought made her the expert in constitutional law that she was. It was the fact that she was an immigrant, a Palestinian Christian refugee from the West Bank, who went through the process of studying the Constitution and learning about it in order to become an American citizen, which she did, during the middle of her teaching tenure.

It was her experience in becoming an American citizen that gave her a deep appreciation for the freedom that her citizenship gave her, and her love for this country that was so visible in her teaching, and made her such an effective instructor. She knew the Constitution, and the history of amendments and judicial rulings better than anyone I have ever met.

To the students in a small, religious-affiliated college in what was a very red state at the time, the thought that Presidents would appoint justices for partisan political influence was difficult to grasp. Presidents, regardless of partisan affiliation, were supposed to take care to preserve the separation of powers by appointing justices to the court on their merits and as an advancement of their achievement, not pluck them out of the federal judiciary because they had a more partisan reputation and might consider themselves obligated to the President who appointed them well over their qualifications. Past history, at that point, could easily be forgotten or ignored.

I cannot imagine what she would be saying in a Constitutional history and law class now, were she still teaching. Our discussions of what a partisan Supreme Court might do were all theoretical. But here we are, with a court that is no longer hiding its partisan favor, uniting as a gang of six to back a President who is openly abusing the powers of the office of the Presidency. In her rebuke of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's strong language in the minority opinions she has written, Justice Amy Coney Barrett more or less admitted that this court doesn't care about the Constitution, it cares about what Trump wants to do.

Winning the midterms, even getting control of the House back, would be a good thing, of course. But the problem is the Supreme Court standing behind the demagogue fascist Trump. Until the makeup of that court is returned to judges who have the integrity and character necessary to properly execute those duties, and these six imposters are impeached and removed, or forced to resign, we will never get our American Constitutional Democracy back.

[lees1975]

1. We need to turn some of the pressure from the protests and marches of people that just seem to be "gathering"

on some of these justices, and call them out, and let them feel some public pressure to help them along toward their resignation and retirement. A couple of them have become really testy when they get called out and exposed.