Thom Tillis’s laughable complaints about politicized courts

17 December 2024

Thom Tillis (By United States Senate Photography - United States Senate, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38695252)

America’s courts and the judges who sit on them have always been inextricably linked to the world of politics. Indeed, the idea that lawyers who are either appointed by politicians or who run for office themselves wouldn’t be political animals to some degree and often render judgments that reflect their own personal values and philosophies, is rather silly.

It’s no surprise, for instance, that American courts consistently rendered opinions favorable to white men and white male supremacy throughout most of their first two centuries since they were, of course, comprised almost exclusively of white men.

What’s more, up until recent decades, the line between politicians and judges (as well as judicial ideological lines) were often blurrier than they are today.

Prior to the late 20th Century, it was considered perfectly acceptable for politicians to serve as federal judges. One chief justice – William Howard Taft, who served from 1921 to 1930, was a former president. Chief Justice Earl Warren was the former Republican governor of California. Chief Justice Fred Vinson was a former congressman and Treasury Secretary who was known to play poker with President Harry Truman while serving as chief. It’s only been in recent decades that it’s become a de facto requirement for Supreme Court nominees that they be sitting judges on other courts.

And as recently as the 1990’s, it wasn’t considered especially noteworthy that Justice David Souter – a moderate on many issues – had been appointed by President George H.W. Bush.

All that said, the politicization of the courts has grown much more intense in recent decades, thanks in large part to a concerted, well-funded, and highly successful effort pursued by the political right. As author David Daley documents in painful detail in his recent book “Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 5-Year Plot to Control American Elections,” and explained in a recent interview with NC Newsline, the federal judiciary has undergone a dramatic ideological transformation in recent decades that has, in turn, helped transform our national political landscape.

All of which makes the recent complaints by Republicans about the decisions of a small handful of federal judges appointed by Democratic presidents to rethink their plans to retire or take “senior status” in light of Donald Trump’s recent election (and their desire to avoid having Trump name their successors), rather laughable.

As NC Newsline’s Brandon Kingdollar has reported, the list of judges having second thoughts in recent weeks and rescinding plans to take their leave from full-time work includes U.S. District Court Judges Max Cogburn of North Carolina and Algenon Marbley of Ohio and, perhaps most notably, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James Wynn.

Wynn, a North Carolinian and former member of the North Carolina Supreme Court who was appointed to the Richmond-based Fourth Circuit by President Obama, wrote President Biden last Friday to explain that he was withdrawing his plan to take senior status. The letter came just a few days after North Carolina’s Republican U.S. senators, Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, blocked the nomination of the gifted attorney that Biden had nominated to replace Wynn – North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park.

That action, in turn, led Tillis to issue a blistering and preposterous condemnation, in which he accused Wynn of being among a group of judges who “are nothing more than politicians in robes.”

That would be the same Thom Tillis who has made flip-flopping his position from semi-principled consensus seeker to craven lapdog on any number of issues in response to complaints from Trump minions – most notably, on immigration policy – a signature component of his political repertoire.

And it would also be the same Thom Tillis who happily and hypocritically abetted previous Republican efforts to a) block without legitimate reason President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the high court for almost an entire year in 2016, and b) race through the nomination of Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett in just a few weeks in late 2020.

And it would be the same Thom Tillis who presided as North Carolina House Speaker over the enactment of legislation that unleashed partisan judge buying in our state by ending public financing for judicial campaigns and who’s fellow Republicans soon thereafter repealed a state law that had made judicial races nonpartisan.

And it would be the same Thom Tillis who has never so much as raised a peep of concern about the blatant conflicts of interest that continue to plague the North Carolina Supreme Court, where Justice Phil Berger, Jr. — the son of the legislature’s most powerful politician, Sen. Phil Berger, Sr. — continues to render judgments of his daddy’s handiwork.

Of course, none of this blatant hypocrisy is terribly surprising. As countless once supposedly serious pols – from Mitch McConnell to Lindsey Graham to JD Vance – have repeatedly demonstrated, when you’re on team Trump or willing to be one of its enablers, honesty, consistency and any concern for genuine governance always play second fiddle to winning at all costs and appeasing the Republican Dear Leader.

One just wishes that Tillis could at least spare us the embarrassing faux outrage as he follows his marching orders.

NC Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. NC Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Rob Schofield for questions: info@ncnewsline.com.

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