The Supreme Court is kicking off its next term and preparing “to trample even more of our rights,” but as one legal scholar argued for The Nation, “we, the people, are not powerless in the face of their power grab.”
Elie Mystal is a former litigator turned outspoken legal news analyst and liberal judicial reform advocate, who also works as a justice correspondent and columnist for The Nation. In his latest piece from Monday, Mystal lamented that “things weren’t supposed to play out like this way,” as a new Gallup poll found a record-low public approval for the court and a growing frustration among citizens toward its justices getting to “rule over the American people, more or less, without their consent,” for lifetime appointments.
“The people who wrote the Constitution wanted the court to be insulated from public pressure, to be sure, but they never intended those insulated judges to be imbued with this much political power,” he explained. “In our republic, the representatives are supposed to make the important legal and political decisions, while the unelected, unaccountable judges are charged with mediating disputes between the states. That’s why the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction over cases in which one state is suing another.”
He added later: “This term, the court will continue its dread work, despite the will of the American people. Human rights will be smashed. Popular laws will be vanquished. And the world the Supreme Court leaves to our children will become ever dirtier and more violent.”
Mystal further detailed the various cases before the court and the most likely rulings the conservative majority will hand down, few of which “will be popular.”
“Republicans would never be able to overturn popular laws like the National Voter Registration Act or Title IX at the ballot box,” Mystal argued. “People in Washington State voted to protect runaways, while people in Chicago voted to ban assault weapons. And the fossil-fuel industry counts among the least-popular mustache-twirling capitalists in our society. The fact that none of these Republican-aligned cases could win in front of the people is the reason they’re in front of the Supreme Court. The court is where Republicans go to do what the people reject.”
He added further: “But we are not powerless. While the political branches will never buck the Supreme Court on their own, we can demand it — and push and push until they rein in this rogue branch of government. There’s a lot that our elected leaders can do, much of it through simple legislation. They can change the number of justices on the Supreme Court. They can cut its funding. And, at the end of the day, they can strip its jurisdiction over laws passed by Congress. Indeed, all of these things can be done without the need of a constitutional amendment.”
Mystal concluded that “this Supreme Court can be stopped,” but also warned that “Congress will not take back power for the people unless the people recognize how much power they’ve lost.” Therefore, it falls to voters to demand in large numbers that Washington take action reform the court.