Dispensing Justice, Conservatively

THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT is, by design, a legal institution, not a political one. its stated constitutional purpose is to dispense equal justice under law. However, it rapidly became politicized. Thomas Jefferson tried to remove a justice because said justice did not agree with Jefferson's agenda. To that end, Jefferson even invited Vice President Aaron Burr to the White House for dinner, a few sort days after Burr had killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Throughout the nineteenth century, the justices were conspicuous by their disdain for slaves, and factory workers. The court, like the American political system and much of American culture, has tended to favor the wealth ruling class. Except, that is, for a few brief shining years in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, when justices appointed by Eisenhower, including Chief justice Earl Warren, lead a predominately liberal leaning court, a court which upheld civil rights, limitations of police conduct, and protections for workers. That all ended with the ascension of Richard Nixon to the presidency, when the conservative community began the process it continues to this day, of making sure that all appointees to the high court are of a conservative persuasion. for the past fifty years, the court has been conservative, and its decisions have favored the elite corporate wealthy, not the rest of us. Now,money is free speech, rather than mere amplification of speech, and corporations are free to purchase the presidency, as they are currently in the habit of doing. so crucial has it become to install conservative ideologues on the bench that even as we speak, two sexual predators sit on the supreme Court, undeterred, with the gull support of Christian conservadumb. fortunately, one of them never speaks. The only qualification for appointment should be, obviously, a demonstrated ability to analyze court cases and to render dispassionate wise, fair decisions. Instead, to gain a seat, one need only be sufficiently right wing, thanks to shallow ideologues such as Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, and the right wing mob which has seized control of the judiciary and the country. The universe runs in cycles. We may hope and pray that the current one, of right wing fascist dominance of the system, will, like all disease, eventually burn out, and be relegated to another chapter of regrettable history, a crowded field.