The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais took 36 pages to explain why Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is about combating intentional racial discrimination and not allowing racial gerrymandering. However, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries summed it up in one word: “illegal.”
Jeffries did not speak about the case, but about the court. The man who would become the next speaker of the House of Representatives if Democrats regain power in November has joined other radicals in denying the legitimacy of the nation’s highest court.
To be clear, the Supreme Court did not strike down Section 2, but said that neither the law nor the Constitution allows lawmakers to manipulate district lines to ensure that candidates of a particular race will be elected. It was not written to give an advantage to any race, but to prevent a state from disadvantaging voters based on their race. The law prevents any state from deliberately drawing districts “to give minority voters fewer opportunities because of their race.”
This is an issue on which people in good faith may disagree. Many judges have long opposed racial criteria in areas ranging from college admissions to voting districts. Chief Justice John Roberts put it bluntly in 2006: “It’s a nasty thing, this divides us by race.” Like others, Roberts abhors racial discrimination, but stated in another case that “the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
SUPREME COURT RULES ON IMPORTANT VOTING RIGHTS DECIDE AS REPUBLICANS AND Democrats Wage redistributive war
You won’t find such a distinction in much of the press, where pundits declared the death of equal voting laws in America. Richard Hasen, a law professor at UCLA, omits any nuance and simply published a Slate column titled: “The Slaying of the Voting Rights Act by the Coward Alito.”
For years, liberal law professors have trashed conservative judges, including Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, calling them “partisan hacks.”
Now you have the next possible president of the United States declaring the Supreme Court illegal because he disagrees with the interpretation of the law.
However, the name-calling has turned into a movement to strike down the court or the Constitution, or both. Chemerinsky recently wrote a book, “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”
MEDIA CONSUMPTION ABOUT THE HIGH COURT’S VOTING RIGHTS ACT DECISION IS IN COLLISION WITH REALITY
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., joined Jeffries in calling for change at the Supreme Court following the decision, saying, “We’re going to have to try to transform the way the Supreme Court itself is gerrymandered and filled with MAGA appointees.”
There was, of course, no such movement during the decades of a liberal majority that set aside a series of long-standing issues. Only when a stable conservative majority emerged did law professors declare the court illegitimate or dangerous, with many calling for the court to be given an immediate liberal majority once Democrats regain power.
I discuss some of these voices in my book as the “new Jacobins”Anger and the Republic”, figures that reflect the radical concepts and tools used in France before what became known as the Terror.
Law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale have called on the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.” Last December, they published a column: “It’s time to accept that the U.S. Supreme Court is illegitimate and must be replaced.”
Judges say they will redraw Louisiana’s congressional map themselves if lawmakers can’t do so
They insist that citizens must rid themselves of this meddlesome court: “reshape institutions like the U.S. Supreme Court so that in the future, Americans will not have to suffer decades of oligarchy-facilitating rule that parodies the democracy they were promised.”
Many Democrats realize that the public is quite attached to both the Constitution and its core institutions. That’s why several Democratic politicians and pundits have vowed to storm the court once they return to power. Some have suggested that if they want to change the political system and retain power, they will have to do so with the help of an obedient court.
Democratic strategist James Carville said matter-of-factly: “They’re going to recommend that the number of Supreme Court justices go from nine to 13. That’s going to happen, folks.”
He recently added: “Don’t deal with it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it.”
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To do that, you must first delegitimize the court. You have to attack both the individual judges and the institution itself. It takes real anger to get the people to tear apart the core institution of a republic on its 250th anniversary.
Now you have the next possible president of the United States declaring the Supreme Court illegal because he disagrees with the interpretation of the law.
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What these numbers fail to mention is that the majority of Supreme Court opinions are unanimous or nearly unanimous. Relatively speaking, few cases break along strict ideological 6-3 lines. Last week, President Donald Trump even denounced the conservative justices as disloyal and weak for once again ruling against his administration.
It is not the voting results nor the underlying interpretations that motivate this campaign of delegitimization. It’s power. Former Attorney General Eric Holder explained this most clearly recently when he implemented the packing plan after Democrats regained power: “[We’re] talking about acquiring and using power, if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.”
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