Thinking Citizen Blog — “Gaslighting” and “Smacking” — Two Perspectives On The Supreme Court Plus A Little History
Thinking Citizen Blog — Saturday is Justice, Freedom, Law, and Values Day
Today’s Topic — “Gaslighting” and “Smacking” — Two Perspectives on the Supreme Court plus a little history
Is the Supreme Court “gaslighting us all” as Jesse Wegman argues in the New York Times?
Or is Biden hell-bent on “smacking” the Supreme Court in a nefarious replay of FDR’s infamous “court packing” plan of 1937 (Wall Street Journal editorial)?
Is there a middle ground? Is some reform due? Should judges be life-tenured?
Today, highlights from the two arguments plus a little historical background on the six changes in the numbers of justices on the court since 1790 as well as on its changing religious, ethnic, and gender composition.
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
“THE SUPREME COURT IS GASLIGHTING US ALL” — Jesse Wegman, member of the New York Times editorial board
1. “At the close of one of the most consequential and least constitutional terms in the Supreme Court’s history, it’s hard to ignore one particularly offensive trend: the right-wing justices’ repeated and patronizing attempts to minimize the importance of their unprecedented decisions. There’s nothing to see here, they regularly seem to say; everyone who is upset at their decisions is being hysterical and should just calm down.”
2. “Behavior like this has a name: gaslighting, a form of psychological manipulation that involves making people doubt their own, accurate perception of reality. If the term has gotten a workout in recent years, that’s because a lot of people are engaging in it. The right-wing justices have become masters of the form, telling people again and again not to believe what they see with their own eyes.”
3. “Why all the gaslighting?” asks Wegman. It’s all part of a “long effort by right-wing activists and lawmakers to transform this court into the sword and the shield in their culture war.” The right-wing justices are “creating a real world dystopia” where “privileged, powerful people take on the mantle of victimhood, displacing genuine victims, whether pregnant women without treatment or homeless people without a bed.”
NB: “That may be the most insidious gaslight of all: trying to sell Americans the right-wing fantasy of how the world was, or should be again, in place of how it really is.”
“BIDEN’S SUPREME COURT COURT-SMACKING PLAN” — Wall Street Journal editorial
1. “President Biden has agreed to step aside, but not to go quietly. In remarks from the Oval Office on Wednesday, he said in his final months “I’m going to call for Supreme Court reform, because this is critical to our democracy.” What a last spasm by a lame duck, demanding a rewrite of the American founding that Kamala Harris will have to defend or disavow.”
2. “The specifics await Mr. Biden’s announcement, but the presidential brainstorm has leaked to the press. News reports say Mr. Biden may push for term limits on the Justices, an enforceable ethics code, and a constitutional amendment to override their recentn 6–3 ruling on presidential immunity. Much of this is unconstitutional, and all of it is radical.”
3. “It is doubtful that the separation of powers lets Congress impose “enforceable” ethics rules on the Justices. And truly laughable is the argument that a partisan “ethics” bill is a way to depoliticize the Court.”
NB: “It looked last week as if Mr. Biden would endorse a Supreme Court overhaul to appease the left and unite Democrats behind his re-election. Doing it after ending his campaign puts Ms. Harris on the spot. She can’t distance herself from these ideas without depressing progressives. She can’t embrace them without alarming other voters. Undermining the separation of power, the bedrock of American liberty, is quite a way to raise the stakes in November. Your move, Ms. Harris.”
HISTORICAL NOTE: THE NUMBER OF JUSTICES ON THE SUPREME COURT HAS CHANGED SIX TIMES SINCE 1790 — below John Marshall (1755–1835), the longest serving Chief Justice (34 years, 102 days) as well as the most impactful — he did after all invent the concept of “judicial review” in the case of Marbury v Madison (1803). The concept is not in Article III of the Constitution. Neither is there a minimum age for a justice (opening the way for a truly ambitious 22 year old Harvard grad)
1. 1790: 6 justices; 1801: reduced to 5. 1807: up to 7. 1837 up to 9. 1863: up to 10. 1867 back to 9.
2. There have been only 17 Chief Justices since 1790. There have been 104 Associate Justices. The average tenure of justices has been 16 years.
3. Originally, all Protestant white men, the first Catholic was the slave-owning Richard Taney (1836) most famous for his Dred Scott decision. The first Jew was Louis Brandeis (1816). The first black was Thurgood Marshall (1967). The first woman was Sandra Day O’Connor (1981). The first Hispanic was Sonia Sotomayor (2009).
NB: “Following the retirement of John Paul Stevens in June 2010, the court had an entirely non-Protestant composition for the first time in its history. Neil Gorsuch was the first member of a mainline Protestant denomination to sit on the court since Stevens’ retirement. Ketanji Brown Jackson is a non-denominational Protestant.”
Current composition: 6 Catholics, 2 Protestants, 1 Jew; five men, four women; 6 White, two Black, one Hispanic. Things have changed since 1790.
Opinion | The Supreme Court Is Gaslighting Us All
Opinion | Biden’s Supreme Court-Smacking Plan
Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 — Wikipedia
Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States — Wikipedia
Marbury v. Madison — Wikipedia
List of United States Supreme Court justices by time in office — Wikipedia
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
For the last four years of posts organized by theme:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
Four special attachments below:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
#4 Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to justice, freedom, the law or basic values.
Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to justice, freedom, the law, or basic values.
Or just some random justice-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make someone’s day. Or to cement in your mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply about something dear to your heart.
