Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito attacked the media during recent remarks at the University of Notre Dame, only to be on the receiving end of an embarrassing fact-check by a journalist.
Alito insisted that the high court is not partisan even though the 6-3 conservative majority is hell-bent on reversing decades of precedent, including by allowing a draconian and unconstitutional anti-abortion law to take effect in Texas in what could be a move toward striking down Roe v. Wade.
It’s absolutely true that the high court skews right-wing, and it’s equally true that the conservative majority is engaged in abusing what’s known as the “shadow docket” to hand down stealth rulings in favor of the conservative agenda rather than fully review each case on the merits in broad daylight.
In response to Alito’s complaints, The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer put him in his place.
“Alito’s speech perfectly encapsulated the new imperious attitude of the Court’s right-wing majority, which wants to act politically without being seen as political, and expects the public to silently acquiesce to its every directive without scrutiny, criticism or protest,” Serwer wrote. “As if oblivious to the irony, Alito’s office set ground rules barring media outlets from transcribing or broadcasting in full the speech at the University of Notre Dame, in which he delivered his complaint.”
Apparently, even Republican Supreme Court Justices are hypocrites. Alito isn’t the only right-wing Justice to complain about how the court is now perceived by Americans either. Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett have also recently cried foul despite having no case whatsoever to justify their whining.
Serwer then explained the shadow docket to Alito.
“The term shadow docket was coined by a former (Chief Justice John) Roberts clerk six years ago; it is not an invention of Alito’s Lügenpresse,” Serwer wrote. “The negative connotations it has more recently assumed are entirely a product of the Court’s selective use of the mechanism to make sweeping decisions and deliver rapid victories to right-wing causes.”
The Supreme Court conservatives have used the shadow docket so much that the Senate is investigating the abuse.
“The Supreme Court is making greater use of emergency orders in that it is issuing them more frequently, in more significant and lasting ways, and with outcomes that favor the right,” Serwer concluded. “This is not a matter of opinion; it is statistical fact. It is also an argument raised by the other justices on the Court in their dissents to the Texas decision. Alito’s Trump-like broadside against the media, in other words, was also a means of mocking his own colleagues, while insisting that the Court is not partisan and that the justices are not political. He can do this, I would add, because the 6–3 conservative majority on the Court means he is unlikely to ever need their votes.”
The Supreme Court is now a threat to democracy as Donald Trump and the GOP continue their slow-moving coup. It not only needs to be reformed but the conservatives on the court should also be removed because they have disgraced the robes they wear.
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