Factz

The Supreme Court May No Longer Be Compatible with Democracy

We now live in a world that is “post Roe v. Wade.” For many, that’s a good thing. They see abortion as murder and cheer any chance to restrict women from accessing safe abortions.

For a larger portion of the population, it’s a worrying descent into considerations of privacy between doctor and patient, and a woman’s right to access appropriate healthcare. With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court fired a shot across the bow of democracy and the country is having to scramble to find a new normal.

Back when he retired in 1991, Thurgood Marshall warned that the court was becoming a vehicle of the day’s politics, writing in his final dissenting opinion, “Power, not reason, is the new currency of this Court’s decisionmaking.” So 30 years ago, Marshall saw it coming—and we still let it happen.

As the body of the Supreme Court changes and majorities ebb and flow between conservative and liberal, the path of the country shifts as well. We are lost. But over the past 30 years, it’s clear that path has shifted to one where political favors can sway opinion and vindictive Justices are allowed to act with impunity. Consider that Clarence Thomas once said that he was going to devote his career to making “liberals’ lives miserable.” Old Thomas is such a paragon of integrity. Yet there he sits, deciding the country’s future as though we don’t all know exactly how he feels about his place on the court.

Now that more than 50 years of healthcare rights have been upended, Americans can consider that other freedoms they took for granted are now a thing of the past. Gay marriage, anyone? The right to interracial marriage? It’s all on the table in a post-RvW world. Justice Sonia Sotomayor back in June called the new majority a, “restless and newly constituted Court” and constitutional scholars have been ringing alarm bells for months that we’re beyond the pale. But there are few recourses for disarming justices—they’re meant to be equal to and outside of the executive and legislative branches.

That means democracy rests squarely on the shoulders of a group of people who are showing clearly that they value political prudence and party-line politics over defending democracy and individual rights. A dangerous precedent.



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