I've read a few articles about this including the article from the Washington Monthly posted on RCP yesterday.
But one day that moment will come, and it may come suddenly: a wave election, a string of Senate vacancies, a scandal of new, earth-shattering magnitude, or a series of decisions as harmful as Dobbs. When that happens, reformers need to have a plan ready to go—a plan that will require broad public consensus about what problems need to be solved (Should we be restoring the Court’s legitimacy? Limiting its power? Or some combination of both?) and a detailed road map to achieve those goals through nitty-gritty policy. And it’s not as simple as drafting up a document and leaving it on the shelf. Being ready means spending years on movement building to bring together academics, policy wonks, and regular Americans, all waiting to grasp that perhaps fleeting and unforeseeable opportunity. Either that, or submit to being governed for another 30, 40, or 50 years by unelected partisans in robes.
The fallacy of this argument is the concept the concept that there is a broad public consensus that the USSC is any more illegitimate than what would replace them. While the USSC has lost quite a bit of prestige in recent years (mainly from partisan attacks and the Dobbs ruling), they still are seen as more legitimate than either the President of the United State and Congress (which is only highly trusted by about 7% of Americans according to Gallup).
So if we want to dismantle the USSC, are we going to replace them with the concept that the President and Congress can do whatever they please, when even less people trust them than they do the courts who keep them in check?
Our system of Government with the three co-equal branches has served this country well. Has it been perfect? Far from it. But is is better than pretty much any other system of Government out there? I would argue strongly that it is. Largely because of the checks and balances that our founding fathers put in place.
The reality here isn't that the USSC has massive control over everything. They really are the only branch that is completely at the mercy of what comes to them. Nine unelected people in robes do not "make law" as much as some would argue that they do. They rule in regards to existing laws or questions that come to them regarding potential laws. Now that doesn't mean that they do not from time to time use their power to twist the laws that they see. Roe v Wade and Hodges were in fact judicial fiats that basically created laws. But those were situations where the argument came to them and they made a ruling. They didn't wake up one day and tell everyone that they came to a decision about abortion or gay marriage. Unlike Congress or the Presidency, they cannot propose anything.
The irony is that the Hobbs decision basically took the court out of the equation and put the matter back into the hands of lawmakers. Isn't that what these people are calling for? Of course, most of these critics do not know what they are calling for. They spent so long running to a liberal court over and over and over, that they don't know how to react when rulings do not go their way. Now they are frustrated and figure that they need to eliminate or change what used to be their best friend.
So now, apparently, the court is the enemy of the people. They should be (and deserve to be) harassed. The left just needs to figure out how to bully them as they have tried to bully everything else over the past few years. Because as much as they want a "plan" to somehow overturn the constitution and either eliminate or pack the courts, the reality is that there will not be a "broad consensus" to ever do this. There will only be a consensus on the left to do this. The only way they really do this is by ramming something through on strictly partisan means.
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