6 Reforms We Need to Restore Trust in the Supreme Court

[00:00:00]Do you remember these comments by Justice Alo?

[00:00:02]>> I had the honor this term of writing I think the only Supreme Court decision in the history of that institution that has been lambasted by a whole string of foreign leaders who felt perfectly fine commenting on American law. One of these was uh former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but he paid the price.

[00:00:31]>> That was Alo appearing before a religious liberty conference in Rome where he is mocking critics of his decision, his opinion in the Dobs case which overturned Roie Wade, overturned a woman's right to choose. So there he was, happy to mock Boris Johnson, happy to engage in a partisan conversation with this audience to the audience's evident delight. Now, in the run-up to that decision, the Supreme Court had already lost a lot of its public support. In the wake of that decision, even more Americans thought the Supreme Court was simply becoming a partisan institution. And indeed, that is what Justice Alo is. It's what other justices on the Supreme Court have become. And sadly, the Supreme Court is now just another partisan body. It didn't always used to be that way. Uh the breakdown of the Supreme Court now, six conservatives, three progressives. You see in case after case after case, the results of the cases very tragically predictable because most of these justices vote the party of the president that appointed them and their partisan convictions. But it didn't used to be that way. Supreme Court opinions were often unpredictable. Presidents were often infuriated by the people they put on the court because they had hopes for different kind of results in Supreme Court cases. But justices in the past, not always, but frequently really tried to put the understanding of the law and constitution first and a partisan or some kind of social conservative agenda maybe secondary or last. Those days are tragically gone. We saw this most visibly in the terrible immunity decision that Chief Justice Roberts put his name on, giving a president immunity from liability for practically anything.

[00:02:29]Uh there's a small carveout for purely personal conduct of a president, but it is so small as to be almost inapplicable since a president is president 24 hours a day. But no term maybe since the present term have we seen such a partisan court in operation. Let me go through just a few of the court decisions in this session and then what can be done about this runaway nakedly partisan right-wing Supreme Court. What kind of reforms are possible and necessary? First, there is Trump v.

[00:03:06]Barbara. That was the decision challenging President Trump's executive order that would take citizenship away from people who were born in this country. That is who were born to foreign nationals but were born in America. That has been longstanding aspect of our constitution. It is written into the constitution. But it was challenged by this executive order by the president. Well, the Supreme Court struck down that executive order.

[00:03:33]Now, you might think, okay, well, finally they're standing up to the president. But you have to put this in context. This was such an extreme decision in violation of the clear language of the Constitution that what ended up being so amazing about this case, indeed frightening about the case, wasn't the holding, but how narrow it was. Three of the justices dissented.

[00:03:57]Three of the conservatives believed you can overturn the Constitution with an executive order. Another judge decided that well, he would support the judgment, but not because he was required to by the Constitution, but because he believed the executive order contravened a federal statute, which means in this justice's view that if you change the statute, you can do away with birthright citizenship. That means almost half for the justices believe you can do away with this clear language in the constitution. That is how radical this court is. Let's look at some of the other cases. Trump vlaughter. This involved the president's decision to fire one of the federal trade commissioners even though the statute says they cannot be fired by the president without cause. And there was no cause here, at least no legitimate cause. So the Supreme Court in this case overturned about 90 years of precedent to give Donald Trump the power to fire commissioners willy-nilly. This means yet another power of Congress taken away from the Congress. The presidency even more powerful once again than before.

[00:05:08]This is the Supreme Court basically adopting what had been a fringe theory of a unitary executive, an all powerful executive in which the congressional branch actually the article one, the first one in the constitution has very limited power compared to the president.

[00:05:26]Now in a related case, Trump v. Cook, the Supreme Court said that the president could not simply fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board. So why did the Supreme Court decide that with respect to any number of commissions and boards to give the president a free hand to violate the statute uh and fire whoever he wanted and empower the president but make an exception in the case of the Federal Reserve? Well, this is a running theme through the Supreme Court opinions and that is this >> money.

[00:06:00]>> Follow the money and the money runs through the Federal Reserve. If there's one thing more important to these justices than their party or Donald Trump, it's the money. It's the Federalist Society money backers that put them on the court to begin with. And because the Fed is so important to the economy, they decided, no, that's where the money is. So, we're actually going to uphold precedent there. We're going to shred it with all the other commissions, but when it comes to the money, we're going to protect the money.

[00:06:32]And you will see that as a throughine in just about everything the Supreme Court does. It is there for big corporations.

[00:06:39]It is there for big supporters. It is there for the money. In learning resources versus Trump, the Supreme Court struck down some of the president's use of emergency powers to impose tariffs on other countries. Now, here the Constitution gives Congress the power to impose tariffs and levies, not the president. But the president sought to use some emergency power to impose these crippling tariffs on other countries that have so damaged the American economy. So why did they stand up to Trump here? Well, again, because this is where the money is. The tariffs were hurting a lot of the big corporations and moneyed interests behind their appointment and behind the Federalist Society. So here once again they were willing to depart from the president and go with the money in Gnome versus Vasquez Perdomo. The Supreme Court again with the president again with the conservative agenda. This time doing away with a lower court injunction which prevented racial profiling and these indiscriminate immigration sweeps and arrests. This was the Supreme Court empowering the president to violate the law and constitution when it comes to mass arrests or arrests without basis rest basically on the basis of racial profiling. Then you have a whole string of cases like Louisiana versus Cala in which the Supreme Court essentially gutted section two of the Voting Rights Act, freeing up state legislatures to use race to gerrymander districts to eliminate particularly black and brown representatives from House seats in much of the country, from state legislative seats as well. But predominantly the goal here of the Republican party and the goal of the partisans on the Supreme Court was to allow a Republican gerrymander. This is the Supreme Court's way of helping Republicans stay in the majority of fulfilling a long fantasy of essentially doing away with voting rights and allowing discrimination if it helps Republican control of the Congress, which in turn helps the money interest in the country. In NRSC versus FEC, the Supreme Court again went with their partisan and moneyed interests.

[00:08:56]This case involves the National Republican Senate Campaign Committee, NRSC, and its desire to be able to spend in coordination with candidates. And this is significant because big dark money donors can give tons of money to the Republican committees now. And those committees can coordinate everything with the candidates. So it basically tries to mitigate the disadvantage Republicans have not having many small dollar contributors and maximize the advantage they have with these billionaire and corporate donors. So now you're going to see a whole new flood of unrestricted money going to these partisan organizations particularly to the Republican party to help Republican candidates to help hold the majority to help the conservative and moneyed agenda. a sweeping decision following on other decisions of this court like Citizens United which have eviscerated campaign finance laws. So that money again can perpetuate more money can perpetuate the tremendous problem we have with this country on income inequality and again courtesy of the US Supreme Court. So what can be done about all this? Well, there are, I think, three very significant reforms and then I'll tell you about three additional reforms that I support that would have a big impact on changing the Supreme Court and I think restoring some measure of confidence to that body. The first is to put a term limit on the court. This is, I think, the most important and most significant reform. And a lot of the proposals, which I support, would allow justices to serve for 18 years. And then they could either rotate off the Supreme Court onto a different federal court or essentially take senior status on the court and only take certain cases. Every president would then be able in their first and third year to appoint a new justice to the court. It would end a lot of the incentive for the institution destroying conduct of the Mitch McConnell's and withholding even a vote from Merrick Garland because he said it was too close to the election and then jamming down another nominee Amy Coney Barrett when the election was taking place and people were literally voting for Joe Biden. So it would end a lot of that gamesmanship.

[00:11:18]But here's the thing. While this would be constitutional because you would still have life tenure on the court. You wouldn't necessarily have it on a particular court, but the constitution didn't set up the court system yet. So, you have a hard time claiming that it gave you a right to be on a particular court. But here's the rub. The rub is it would be this Supreme Court that would decide its constitutionality. And so, that means you need another important reform even before you go to term limits. And that is you need to expand the Supreme Court. I would expand it to 13 justices. You need to unstack and unpack the court which Republicans have successfully stacked and packed by withholding Democratic presidents from appointing justices while jamming them through during Republican presidencies.

[00:12:07]So expanding the court, very important reform. Terminal limits on the court also super important reform. And third of the most significant reforms is an enforcable code of ethics for the court.

[00:12:19]So you don't have justices like Thomas and Alo and others. Scalia in his time taking these lavish gifts and these lavish trips from big moneyed interests with interests before the US Supreme Court. Now there are other reforms too that are less sweeping and maybe more achievable in the near term that I've also supported. Indeed, I've introduced as legislation. The first is the judicial integrity act. It's very simple. It would apply the federal conflict of interest laws that apply to all other federal employees to the Supreme Court and other federal judges.

[00:12:58]There's no reason they should live by some different standard. What is a conflict of interest, what is a criminal conflict of interest for other federal employees should be a criminal conflict of interest for Supreme Court justices or other federal judges as well. A second bill I recently introduced is the justice is blind act that would require Supreme Court justices to put their financial holdings into a blind trust so that they don't know the impact of their decisions on their holdings. This should be true not just for justices, it should be true for members of Congress as well.

[00:13:33]I want to see a ban on stock trading. Uh we don't need members of Congress and we don't need Supreme Court justices to have even that appearance of impropriety. So the justices blind act would force justices to put those resources into blind trusts. And finally I introduced the judicial foyer expansion act. This would expand FOYA, the Freedom of Information Act, to judicial proceedings, so we know when there are private disciplinary proceedings involving judges or justices. This would allow the public to find out information about judicial investigations and judicial sanctions and judicial complaints, judicial proceedings, what's happening behind the scenes in the Supreme Court. It obviously doesn't go into deliberations, doesn't go into the writing of opinions, but it would require freedom of access of the public to these vital records so that they cannot hide behind court secrecy when it comes to misconduct on the Supreme Court of the United States.

[00:14:36]So, what are the chances for these reforms or others to pass? very difficult in this very partisan Congress in which Republicans are merely rubber stamps for whatever the president wants.

[00:14:48]But it's important, I think, for Democrats to introduce these bills to tell the country what we stand for, what we're willing to do when we flip majorities in the Congress and when we take back the White House. And these six reforms are necessary to restore public confidence in the judiciary. Yes. but also to make sure that we can restore once again a woman's reproductive freedom, that we can crack down on the enormous and corrupting influence of big money in our politics, that we can have common sense gun safety legislation, and that so much of what the country wants to see take place is not prohibited by a rapidly partisan Supreme Court. And so that the court moves forward with the country and not forces the country in a perilous backward direction.

[00:15:41]>> Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding.

[00:15:47]And soon, your honor, with banners flying and with drums beating, we'll be marching backward, BACKWARD THROUGH THE GLORIOUS AGES OF THAT 16th century. WHEN BIGOTS BURNED THE MAN WHO dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind.

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