[Note from Steve: This post continues a series of posts, bipartisan in spirit, that analyze the mistakes the “Founding Fathers” made in writing the Constitution, that revered “law of the land.” Why are these errors so meaningful now? Because America’s fascists have discovered them and are using them to destroy American democracy!]
It’s not surprising that America’s legal system (we don’t have a justice system!) has only a thirty percent (yes, that’s 30%, folks!) approval rating now. That’s comparable to autocratic countries like Myanmar, Venezuela, and others. (We should but can’t include Russia. Russians have to approve of everything their fascist dictator Putin wants!) This is an overall rating that includes the fascist SCOTUS and all lower courts in the land. Not surprisingly, American fascists have attacked and will continue to attack the court system. That’s SOP for their attempts to ensure their hold on power. (Donald Jackass Trump had a willing accomplice in Moscow Mitch McConnell to achieve the fascist takeover of the courts, but old Mitch is beginning to see the error of his ways. Too little, too late, old man! Get the hell out of our lives!)
To be fair, the Constitution, that venerable document created by our Founding Fathers, doesn’t say all that much about SCOTUS…or the federal court system, for that matter, so Dems and the FPA (the “Fascist Party of America,” what used to be the Good Ole Piranhas or Republican Party, because they haven’t been the party of Lincoln since the 1960s) have both used and abused them. Separation of powers? No way! The US president appoints federal judges, including SCOTUS judges, and they’re appointed for life. The US Congress has the power to organize and fund the judiciary. And again, states’ rights rears its ugly head, because the legal system in the states is mostly independent from the federal system. This is spelled out in Article III of the US Constitution.
I think the Founding Fathers got exhausted, so what they said about courts and the country’s legal systems was mostly just an afterthought, a checking of the box full of weak generalities and lacking in specifics. They certainly weren’t pushing the separation of powers that much, so a lot of the legal system’s organization comes down to tradition. That should make reforms easy; it hasn’t. Not at all, no way!
The US legal system has become so warped in practice now that the current fascist-dominated SCOTUS reminds me more of that fascist Argentine junta in the seventies that ran that South American country (supported mostly illegally by our CIA, by the way), “disappeared” many Argentines who dared to buck that junta, and did lasting damage to that beautiful country, producing nothing much positive unless you consider that a pope managed to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of that chaos. Ending Roe v. Wade and giving Donald Jackass Trump, America’s new dictator, absolute immunity has contributed to Americans’ negative perceptions about the legal system. In other words, that thirty percent number means that a lot of Americans are thinking similarly: Our court system sucks!
Of course, that approval rating applies to the entire federal legal system where the American president has the power to appoint all future judges and the Senate to approve them (usually a rubber stamp if the president’s party controls the Senate). That’s how we got that incompetent idiot of a judge who ran the documents trial against Narcissus le Grand in Florida. (Even other federal judges have said that Cannon is incompetent. Obviously our Il Duce reincarnated doesn’t care about that as long as she puckers up and kisses his butt, but we already knew that with everyone of his new picks, all butt-kissers, who will continue the tradition she started.)
Some minimal reforms might help a lot to make the American legal system more democratic. First, why not elect federal judges, one per a couple of federal districts in staggered elections? We should elect SCOTUS judges as well, maybe via the same presidential ballot every four years. We also need both term and age limits for all federal judges to ensure that there’s at least a remote chance that the old farts might keep up with the pace of modern events and technology and won’t waste time thinking about what the damn Founding Fathers erroneously thought. (The latter is mostly used as a justification for fascist decisions, of course.) Neither the executive nor legislative branches should have anything to do with the judicial, and the DoJ should always be independent of both the executive and legislative branches as well. These moves toward an independent federal legal system would go a long way to improve separation of power and the checks and balances we expect but don’t often get, leading to the current distrust of the court system.
I can’t end this part of my study of the Founding Fathers’ critical errors without mentioning a lack of ethics rules for SCOTUS. Its fascist judges—actually all nine of them, fascist or not!—have a free rein to act exactly like the members of that Argentine junta, and they abuse and exploit that freedom. Particular ethics violations sometimes make the news, but the guilty judges can just thumb their noses at public opinion…and do so all the time! Did they care about women and men who were protesting outside their hallowed chambers when they took away women’s rights to reproductive freedom? Did they care that they turned the US president into a virtual king, something even slave owner George Washington abhorred. This and many more fascist actions and decisions made by SCOTUS judges should be covered by ethics rules, not for just a few free party trips paid for by rich bastards!
The consequences of this lack of ethics rules contribute to the destruction of our democracy. They allow Thomas to party around and receive favors and his wife to support far-right causes old pervert Clarence also supports. It allows the worst fascist, that arse Alito, to ask the favor from Narcissus le Grand to give an aide a job in the new Trump administration…if that truly was what the call was about. Could it just be another Trumpian quid pro quo as he tried to get the sentencing in New York state’s “Hush Money” trial cancelled. Thanks to Chief Justice Roberts voting against his fascist colleagues—Roberts manages to sometimes not appear to be a complete fascist—Donald Jackass Trump will become the only convicted felon in US history who was inaugurated as president. (Not the only ignominious “first” for the jackass, of course, but he managed to dodge a conviction for fomenting a coup, for example, thanks to SCOTUS’s overall gift of impunity.) In summary: no ethics rules means the fascist SCOTUS judges can compete with Il Duce for being the worst criminals and liars who are trying to kill American democracy.
With their failure to consider details, the Founding Fathers shirked on their duty to create a fair and just legal system. So ultimately they bear the responsibility for what has occurred: F^%$ the Founding Fathers! America’s fascists are using the legal system they proposed to mount their attacks on American democracy. In other words, we’re so screwed! And the Founding Fathers started the screwing, bless their aristocratic and colonial black souls! (Oh right, many, including “patriots” Jefferson and Washington, were slave owners! We can’t call them black, can we?)