Alternate titles for this post could be SCOTUS Shell Game or SCOTUS Plays Three-Card Monte. At his confirmation hearing in 2005, Chief Justice Roberts claimed that judges were umpires calling balls and strikes, not ballplayers. If that was ever true, it no longer is.
We live in the McConnell-Trump-Leonard Leo court packing era in which SCOTUS opinions are blatantly political. The Court has always been a semi-political body, but with the exception of the 2000 election case, Bush v. Gore, they tried to camouflage the politics behind their rulings. Appearances no longer matter as the right-wing majority of the Court acts like a wing of the Republican party. Even worse, Justices Alito and Thomas might as well wear MAGA caps to the courtroom. They’re that in the bag for the Convicted Insult Comedian.
As of this writing, we’re still waiting for this term’s most important ruling: the Trump absolute immunity claim. If it’s released today, I’ll wear a MAGA hat and promenade down Bourbon Street in a fur coat. It’s way too hot for that and I don’t do fur but SCOTUS isn’t going to release an opinion smacking down the Kaiser of Chaos on debate day. How political is that?
Yesterday, an opinion punting on an Idaho abortion case appeared on the Court’s web site. Then it disappeared. The Court’s flack described it as a mistake. It reeks of politics: abortion is an issue cutting against Republicans in the wake of the dastardly Dobbs decision.
SCOTUS has played hide the ball on the abortion pill case and the Rahimi gun/domestic abuse case. Both opinions look more moderate than they actually are. The Rahimi ruling purports to dial back the excesses of Corrupt Clarence’s Bruen opinion but it’s so complicated with so many concurring opinions as to render it insignificant as a precedent.
One of the worst opinions of the current term is the Snyder case in which Justice Bro DBA Brett Kavanaugh distinguishes between bribes before a political action is taken and gratuities accepted by a politician after the fact. Bribes bad, gratuities good. I am not making this up: Justice Bro did.
In the Snyder case, Justice Jackson wrote a scathing dissent for the ages. It’s money quote time:
“Officials who use their public positions for private gain threaten the integrity of our most important institutions. Greed makes governments—at every level—less responsive, less efficient, and less trustworthy from the perspective of the communities they serve.
<SNIP>
Snyder’s absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s Court could love.”
The entire opinion sounds like a shot across the corrupt bow of Justices Thomas and Alito. In fact, the extent of Thomas’ corruption makes Mr. Snyder look like a piker: he only accepted $18K in “gratuities” whereas Corrupt Clarence’s total is north of $3 million smackers. How corrupt is that?
The Snyder case can be boiled down to this phrase stolen from Ira Gershwin: You say bribe, Justice Bro says gratuity. Let’s call the whole thing off.
That concludes today’s Corrupt Court Countdown.
The last word goes to Europe, the band, not the continent: