The Supremes gone rogue

Leah Litman, University of Michigan law prof and former Supreme Court clerk, doesn't mess around. In Lawless, she argues, persuasively and with piercing humor that "the Supreme Court runs on conservative grievance, fringe theories, and bad vibes." Any pretense of deep legal reasoning from the Roberts court's major decisions is just insubstantial smoke covering BS. 

It's a pleasure to get the straight story, even if it is appropriately terrifying.

... the Supreme Court is extremely powerful. It is also poorly understood. The combination makes the Court pretty dangerous. It's easier for the Court to get away with, say, letting aspiring insurrectionists off the hook if people aren't paying attention, or if people think they must have misunderstood what is happening because it couldn't possibly be that ridiculous. 

Except ... it is that ridiculous. ...

It's been a (bad) process getting here. News consumers will recognize some landmarks along the way. 

The country has changed over the last several decades, with more diverse demographics and more inclusive median political views. The changes trend against the Republican Party's view on feminism (or as some Republicans like to call it, the "childless cat ladies") race ("Oh my God, Karen, you can't just ask [African] people why they are white?"), democracy (which some Republicans think is overrated, and maybe unconstitutional), corporate power (which some Republicans think should be virtually unlimited), government itself (which some Republicans think shouldn't exist), and more. Republicans have come to believe the dwindling support for their increasingly fringe views wrongs them. ... 

Since the early 2000s (with roots older than that), the Supreme Court has translated conservative grievance and other bad vibes into bad law. ... It is a little too coincidental that at the very moment Republicans gained a supermajority on the Supreme Court in 2020, the Court suddenly realized that the Constitution required the country to adopt the Republican Party's platform on abortion, voting rights, industry regulation, campaign finance, and a bunch of other stuff, too.

Litman urges us not to confused by mystification around the high court. 

The justices are not pulling Jedi mind tricks that people simply do and cannot understand. It's not like these guys (and Amy) are among the Nine Greatest Legal Minds in the Country. Heck, some of them are just nepo babies [she means Neil Gorsuch, remember him?] . ... These are exactly the kind of people you might expect to be appointed under a rigged system that is controlled by some out-of-touch weirdos. The minority-ruling party that gave the justices their jobs is currently gripped by some kind of antidemocratic fever dream, unconcerned with such things as law, facts, and will of the American people. 

Okay -- this book is not just denunciation of the limited qualifications of the Republicans on the current court. Litman carefully dissects the Court's rulings in five vital spheres in which they are working on enshrining reactionary legal theories. These are the chapters: on women's freedom -- The Ken-Surrection of the Courts; on LGBT rights -- "You Can't Sit with Us!"; on voting rights -- Winter Is Coming; on enabling oligarchs -- There's Always Money in America; toward dismantling the state as we know it -- The American Psychos of the Supreme Court.

Litman is not optimistic, but she remains hopeful that if the people are able to understand that the Court has gone bonkers, we'll figure out how to fix it. We really don't want to be ruled by cranks in black robes.

Okay, that got bleak. In my defense, this is a nonfiction book about the Supreme Court, and the Court is broken and is going to take an awful lot to fix. ... The world is not going to get better because we want it to and big changes will obviously take time ... So let's get started.

Imagine yourself at the beginning of the end of one of the great legal dramas of our time, when the law professor says to Elle, "If you are going to let one stupid prick ruin your life, you're not the girl I thought you were." 

Only now she's saying, "If you're going to let one stupid Court ruin your democracy, you're not the girl (or boy, or nonbinary reader) I thought you were." 

... They've stolen a Court and they are practically daring anyone to challenge them. It's time to call their bluff. 

I found this book a surprisingly enjoyable romp through the wilds of Republican legal malfeasance. The details were not new to me; I follow this stuff. But I love Litman's attitude; we could all use more of it.

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You can follow a wealth of writing and writers who unpack legal developments for untutored citizens. Some of my current favorites include Jay Kuo, Chris Geidner at Law Dork, and Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse. We don't have to be mystified by law; we've got a right to demand that whatever law we live under should be "of the people, by the people, and for the people" in President Lincoln's words.