A Supreme Courtwatcher was alarmed after a series of decisions handed down by the High Court shredded a long-standing myth about the body.
Mark Joseph Stern, a senior writer at Slate, argued in a new articlethat four decisions the Supreme Court handed down on Tuesday were a “blunt reminder that the GOPappointeesremain in total control of the court” because each of the cases was decided by a 6-3 majority. Stern also argued that the opinions show the Court’s claims that it does not always rule along ideological lines is “dubious at best.”
“What’s alarming about these decisions is not just the outcomes, but the fact that the supermajority went as far as it possibly could in each of them,” Stern wrote. “Again and again, it reached out for expansive holdings that did maximum damage to precedent, congressional authority, and civil liberties.”
For instance, Stern pointed out that the Supreme Court overturned a precedent allowing people to sue corporations for human rights abuses. The court also gutted laws that allowed individuals to seek damages when their religious liberty was violated, Stern noted.
He added that the opinions showed that there is no conservative justice on the court willing to act as a check on their colleagues.
“There was, it seems, no member of the supposedly ‘moderate conservative’ bloc that sought to tap the brakes, to exercise caution before radically reshaping the law,” Stern wrote. “All six went full steam ahead in tearing down the guardrails constructed by their more moderate Republican-appointed predecessors. The problem is not merely that the court regularly divides 6–3; it’s that among those six, nobody seems inclined to serve as a check on the others’ most sweeping ambitions. With no more swing justices, the supermajority has no one left to pull it back from the brink.”
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