Monday, June 1, 2020

Senate Democrats’ Mindless ‘Report’ on the Judiciary

The report's executive summary states that Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans have "Prioritized packing the judiciary with far-right extremists" and are "Packing our courts with politicians in robes." If they really were concerned about judges acting as "Politicians in robes," Senate Democrats would insist that judges restrain themselves to a neutral mode of construction that is constrained by the written text and its original public meaning.

The report then objects to the supposedly "Undemocratic" instincts of the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court and the Republican appointees in the judiciary writ broad. Here, too, Schumer and the other senators cannot seem to make up their minds about the substance of their objection to conservative jurisprudence.

In Citizens United, the Supreme Court invalidated a bipartisan campaign finance law based on a constitutional "Right" to corporate political speech - a right found nowhere in the Constitution's text.

Simultaneously, the report accuses Republican appointees of undermining the democratic process by inventing "a constitutional 'right' to corporate political speech" supposedly "Found nowhere in the Constitution's text"; undermining the right to an abortion, which is not found in the Constitution's text, but is still worthy of protection; and undermining the authority of unelected "Scientists, economists, and other experts" by handing lawmaking power back to a democratically accountable legislature.

Accuse the Republican majority of fostering "a divide that undermines long-term confidence in the Court as an institution, though the Roberts Five don't seem to mind." If such divides undermine "Long-term confidence in the Court," perhaps one of the four liberal judges could join the conservative majority for the sake of our institutions.

Their parting indictment of "The Republican majority" is its purported view that "The individual right to own a gun is more important than the right of Americans to be safe from gun violence; a religious employer's right to 'religious liberty' deserves more protection than an employee's right to access statutorily mandated contraceptive care." This might be a compelling argument if "Statutorily mandated contraceptive care" were a constitutional "Right" and the free exercise of religion were not - but, alas, the opposite is true, regardless of three Democratic senators' use of scare quotes in a half-baked "Report" on the judiciary.

The drafters of this report mock the supposed inconsistency of originalist judges, but the senators themselves offer no coherent, substantive critique of originalist jurisprudence beyond callow and reflexive partisanship.

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