In just the last term, the Roberts court has rewritten the #14thAmendment to keep Donald #Trump on the presidential ballot as well as radically expanded presidential #power in direct contravention of the history, text & structure of the #Constitution.
We have, in other words, a #corrupt & #lawless court that, led by its #conservative majority, has put itself above the constitutional system as the exclusive arbiter of constitutional meaning.
The #Constitution means whatever the #JohnRoberts court says it means, even when that meaning conflicts w/the basic principles of American #democracy.
It is against this backdrop of institutional #dysfunction & #judicial arrogance that President #Biden, fresh from his decision to leave the campaign trail in favor of his vice president, introduced his three-point package of #SupremeCourt reforms.
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exemplified in its decision to overturn the constitutional right to #abortion on the basis of a vague & inconsistent standard of “text, history & tradition.”
& there is the hubris of ChiefJustice #JohnRoberts, who, the #legal scholar EricJSegall writes, has “led the court to coerce both state & federal govts to abide by his personal preferences, whether or not positive legal sources supported those decisions & at times even when prior #law …clearly did not justify the chief’s opinions & votes.”
It is a testament to #JohnRoberts’s skill as a #politician that he is often viewed as a modest & moderate #judicial institutionalist when, in fact, he has used his position on the court to spearhead a remarkable campaign of #judicial activism. In cases like #ShelbyCountyVHolder in 2013 & the more recent #WestVirginiaVEPA, Roberts all but deployed novel constitutional doctrines (“equal state sovereignty” & the “major questions doctrine”) to achieve his preferred results.