'Recklessness' of SCOTUS conservatives may result in 'collapse' of Court: ex-prosecutor

22 June 2024

According to a former federal prosecutor, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is afflicted by a combination of partisanship and corruption that could tank the entire institution if left unchecked.

In a recent op-ed for the Daily Beast, Shan Wu — who served as counsel to former Attorney General Janet Reno — wrote that members of the conservative majority on the Court are effectively functioning as "fractures" risking the credibility of the nation's highest judicial body. He emphasized that SCOTUS conservatives' brazenly partisan behavior "encourages" flagrant violations of precedent, like Louisiana Republican Governor Jeff Landry signing a bill into law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

"Such a law likely would not even have been contemplated but for the court shouting out its conservative majority’s willingness to take on radical causes," Wu wrote.

To further bolster his argument, Wu referenced progressive activist Lauren Windsor's secret recording of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito at a public event. The conservative jurist was caught on tape openly confiding to Windsor that he was working to return America to a place of "godliness," and admitted that he was hoping to see conservatives "win" the culture war.

"Alito’s views may come as no surprise, but we should be surprised and shocked at how comfortable he is at stating them out loud in public," Wu wrote. "This was not a surreptitious recording made in a private moment. It was a sitting Justice speaking to the public at a public event, asserting his view that the ideological differences in cases he listens to cannot be subject to compromise."

"Glaringly absent is any reference to the law, the 'calling balls and strikes' metaphor that is so often used about what the justices are supposed to be doing," he added. "Rather, he sounds like a zealot who believes that only one side of these cases has God on their side. It’s impossible to imagine that Alito’s view could allow him to apply the law dispassionately."

The former DOJ official didn't just hone in on far-right justices like Alito and Clarence Thomas, whom he sharply criticized for having an "embittered old-man ideology" that even fellow conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett distanced herself from in a recent decision. He also grouped in Chief Justice John Roberts, arguing he was being "painfully naïve" about his colleagues' behavior.

"[Roberts] minimized the polarization that the nation is experiencing. He cites other times in history, like the Vietnam War era or the Civil War, that were also tumultuous, his message being 'nothing to look at here' and this too shall pass," Wu wrote. "[M]uch of the tumult in the country and the court is not due to some world event like a war or even a great movement like the Civil Rights movement. No, the tumult is due to the court itself."

"It comes from the recklessness of the conservative majority in overturning precedents like a woman’s right to abortion that had stood for a half-century," he continued. "It comes from the court refusing to acknowledge the glaring conflicts of interest presented by justices accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, in gifts and benefits from benefactors with cases before them. It comes from Alito believing his wife can fly flags that are symbols of the extreme right at his homes, and it comes from Roberts refusing to testify about ethics before Congress under the baseless rationale that it would violate the separation of powers structure of the Constitution."

Wu concluded his essay by warning that the emergence of two conservative blocs on the Court — one that includes Justices Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Thomas, and the other being Justices Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice Roberts — "even jurisprudential analysis seems in disarray."

"Here’s the thing about fractures. They can start with just a tiny crack, but once the structural integrity is compromised, the whole thing collapses," Wu wrote.

Click here to read Wu's op-ed in its entirety (subscription required).

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