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On The Supreme Court
So the Supreme Court has been igniting passions, has it? Of its Citizens United decision, people cried: "shameless hypocrisy," "nothing short of fraud..." "Truly frightening..." "a narrow elite is imposing itself through the legal system..."
There are mobilizings to amend the constitution, impeach "the Supreme Court 5," instruct the president on Justice Stevens' replacement. Senator Schumer, here in the Empire State, is working on a bill that would force business and nonprofit corporations to reveal their involvement in elections!
If Schumer and others are determined to confront the Supreme Court, maybe they are unearthing the sources of Citizens United and related constitutional infelicities, formulating research questions like: By what flimflam did the 1787 "Miracle in Philadelphia" convention deny the majority of humans in this new nation standing before the law? Why did the people who were people in the early 1800s let Supreme Court justices seize the authority to amend the Constitution?
But Schumer isn't very determined. He told the NY Times Company the other day: "What we're trying to do first is make sure everything we do is within the constitutional mandate set by the Court."
What's with such obeisance? Why allow humans in black robes to limit our aspirations, supply our words, command our deeds? It's not so hard to ask: So, what IS the United States Supreme Court? What has been the Court's role in valiant human struggles to nullify England's and the USA's defining of whole classes of people -- the majority, actually -- as unequal, inferior, invisible? How often has it invoked the Anglo-Saxon's unique reverence for law to instruct the rabble on progress and civilization?
When slaves, free Africans, Native peoples, women, indentured servants, immigrants, birth control and sexual orientation advocates appealed to the Constitution for remedy, how did our honorable justices craft the law of the land? When farmers, workers and whole communities built a mass movement to form a cooperative commonwealth instead of a corporate-industrial order, whose values, sayeth the Court, wielded the Constitution against whom?
When people opposing US government imperialism and wars vexed white, male, propertied elites privileged with constitutional head starts, who, ruled the Court, properly called upon the armed might of the nation?
It's not a pretty story.
If the constitutional law professor who is president were somebody else, he might jump into this teaching moment. His first "Uncolonizing Our Minds" Chat could go like this:
"We can avoid careless analysis. Here's something I found in an otherwise astute critique of Citizens United: ‘Congress passed reasonable regulations [on corporate spending in elections]. And over the decades the Courts have affirmed these regulations over and over, to keep the voice of actual citizens from being drowned out...'
"Alas, this does not pass the straight face test.
"Campaign finance laws regulating corporations (like laws legalizing corporate lobbying, like laws legalizing corporate domination in the workplace and corporate poisoning of the Earth), have been cheesy from birth. The ‘good precedent' campaign spending cases Citizens United modified -- such as Austin -- were no less whimsical than Citizens United...and incoherent to boot. Court opinions on corporations and the Constitution -- starting with the Dartmouth College case in 1819 -- have consistently affirmed the authority of a corporate few to do the real governing in these United States. So many of the Court's decisions in 1st and 14th amendments cases violated those amendments' clear intent and explicit language.
"Like, BEFORE Citizens United, our corporate class didn't drown out public debate? Didn't dictate the framing of issues and legislation? Didn't filter out candidates? BEFORE Citizens United, financial corporations were not transferring unimaginable wealth from the many to the few? BEFORE Citizens United, people could relatively easily stop US government wars and preparations for wars? End this government's manipulations of other peoples, flora, fauna, mountains, oceans, seeds, genes and governance?
"Majorities used to have constitutional authority to instruct their representatives to launch sane and just transitions in energy, health, agriculture, finance, manufacturing, media, the workplace? Majorities enjoyed constitutional authority to define business corporations as state actors? Render them subordinate to municipalities and states?
"Like, BEFORE Citizens United, the United States of America wasn't a minority-ruled corporate-imperial empire?
"I'm delighted that people have been reading Citizens United. For those shocked at its lack of logic, argument by assertion, manipulation of precedent and juridical legerdemain, I suggest you read a few score more opinions.
"I commend to you the venerated Chief Justice Marshall -- in my book, he's Mr. Argument-By-Assertion. Of course, he's in good company: Taney, Bradley, Waite, Brown, Field, White, Fuller, Brewer, Story, Swayne, Rehnquist and many more justices ably justified injustice. Holmes from his Brahmin perch deftly mocked appellants' working class origins and perspectives. Taft saw anarchists lurking behind every blade of grass. And check out Chief Justice Warren -- you might be surprised at the imperious well-settled law the Warren court chose not to trifle with.
"Read what the Court actually wrote in response to constitutional claims by slaves, women, workers, free speech and human rights petitioners across two centuries and into this 21st. Don't miss the cases adjudicating Native people's struggles in every generation, or those addressing people's efforts to make peace with our planet
"I realize that some advise caution about opening up dangerous floodgates. But as far as I'm concerned, people yearning to be free and self-governing are the floodwaters. We've been kept in check by grand myths and relentless agitprop about the nation's founding, Anglo-American legal traditions, our Constitution, the rule of law. But those gates are made of fairy tales. They exist only in our minds. There's no time like our time to start tearing them down.
"Then if we ever DO finally turn ourselves into free people, maybe we'll know better than to let our sovereign governing authority be snatched from our hands by a few people in black robes..."
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11 Comments so far
Show AllRE: We've been kept in check by grand myths and relentless agitprop about the nation's founding, Anglo-American legal traditions, our Constitution, the rule of law. But those gates are made of fairy tales.
Richard Grossman is awesome! For all those who want to "bring America back" to some more idyllic past, IT NEVER EXISTED!!! The Constitution was designed to protect the privileges of the wealthy against the claims for justice of the majority, period. The Bill of Rights was an afterthought to calm the "rabble" with nice but ineffective words. And, those "fairy tales" are perpetuated today by "progressives" like Thom Hartmann.
Bush v. Gore showed that the Supreme Court isn't even about law, it's about ownership and politics. How could a conservative court that always upheld state rights deny the right of the sovereign state of Florida to conduct it's own election? What a bunch of hypocrites.
I think Grossman is on exactly the right track in putting Citizens United in the proper context that it hardly opened a "floodgate" of campaign expenditures that were already drowning our electoral process in, for example, the almost a billion dollars that was spent on Obama's presidential campaign. We were NEVER protected from that flood nor, I would argue, should we ever have relied upon such "protection" but that like other "temptations" that we avoid because they are bad for us, political candidates should take responsibility on themselves to avoid democracy-destroying campaign funding practices. The obvious response is that such discipline would be a recipe for electoral failure, as those who practice campaign frugality would be overwhelmed by those with vast funds. For a pair of articles that argue, to the contrary, that low budget campaigning is a SMART way of campaigning, with the ability to convert an opponent's campaign funding into a liability in terms of votes, see the Apres Citizens, Le Deluge? essays at:
http://sunstateactivist.org/ssablog/?p=439
http://sunstateactivist.org/ssablog/?p=455
"the Anglo-Saxon's unique reverence for law"
ROTFLMAO!
Where was this reverence when Andrew Jackson ignored the Supreme Court and ordered the removal of the Cherokees, via what was later called the Trail of Tears? Or when Britain maintained the starvation blockade of Germany for several months after the Versailles Diktat was signed? Or when various U.S. Presidents engineered wars not approved by Congress? Or when they blithely dispense with the Geneva Conventions, inventing classes of prisoners, and areas of jurisdiction, for that purpose?
The Anglo-Saxon oligarchy has no reverence for law. What it does have is a delight in lawyering. And while it pursues its Talmudic passion, it makes plain by its behaviour that law is for little people.
Although argued on blog sites more times than I can remember, I will do so again, to probably the same resounding lack of response--except for once when engendering a spirited exchange with another responder. Congress in conjunction with the President should pass a Second Judiciary Act stripping the Supreme Court of appellate jurisdiction. Substitution should be a new Supreme Court of Appeals, or some such nomenclature, which is EXPLICITLY denied the authority of judicial review. This principle having been introduced by John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, when decision was the Supreme Court did not have jurisdiction, judicial review is dicta. Effectively the principle was asserted in an act of a "shooting-off-of-the-mouth" by the Court, which has no precedential status. Engaging in such a reordering of the U.S. government, a modicum of democracy will be reintroduced into a political system sadly evolved far away from anything resembling democracy.
philandrel said 'Engaging in such a reordering of the U.S. government, a modicum of democracy will be reintroduced into a political system sadly evolved far away from anything resembling democracy."
I realize that Madison took upon the court powers that weren't enumerated in the Constitution. I understand the desire for democracy. There are some really bad decisions, but I do have a few concerns if the court were stripped of its powers:
Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
Furman v Georgia
Gideon v. Wainwright
Hamdan v. Rumsfield
Lawrence v. Texas
Miranda v. Arizona
NY Times v. Sullivan
NY Times Co. v. US
Reynolds v. Sims
Roe v. Wade
Shelley v. Kraemer
The USA would be (have been) an uglier place to live in without those cases. No doubt there are a few more that helped the people gain protections from the elected government at either the state or federal level. What is your solution to these kinds of issues that were not resolved by the legislatures, in fact were sometimes created by them?
I told the Obama campaign a year before the elections
that I sure would liked to have been a fly on
the wall during one of his lectures on constitutional law.
It isn't to unbelievable that some financial corpocrat
saw Obama graduate from Harvard and started grooming him
tobeheir political hack. "Here Barrack, go do some highly
visable community work in Chicago, that will get you the
progressive vote, then we wil get you a job teaching
constitutional law at your alma , that should get you the
libertarian vote, write some memoirs, make them about
audacity. You will become a U.S. Senator at a young age,
from there , guess what.!!!!! Just remember this...
DON'T get caught cheating on your wife, that will ruin our
gig.
Ah, the fine art of governance!
Saying what I do not mean,
Promising what I will not do,
Convincing you to defend me for it,
because you have
"the Anglo-Saxon's unique reverence for law".
Thank you, sucker nation.
appoint a president to the US by a single supreme court member vote and ignore half a million vote plurality; wire tap american citizens, secretly, without obtaining court orders;go to wars without declaring wars;torture american poeple by methods that violate the US constitution and UN charters; appoint an electoral college to over turn popular americans vots and invalidate his winning; kidnap citizens from the streets and send them by (renditions ) across the globe into secret blackhole gulags to be tortured. and we call this democracy. and go to invade countries which did no harm to the US under the disguise of exporting to them this very same democracy, our democracy. well we invaded iraq and hanged its leaders with doing hardly any of these things. so when the good citizens of this great country bring their culprits to justice?
So now what? The Tea Party lit up Tax day April 15th. Do they get the last word? Have they been struggling for HUNDREDS OF YEARS, trying to get their government to do what they would like? They are just having a small taste of what it's like. What it's like to have
The Supreme Court make you property: Dred Scott V. Sanford
The Supreme Court deny you education: Plessy V. Fergusson
The Supreme Court take away your land and rights: Cherokee Nation V. Georgia
The Supreme Court interferes in your sex life: Bowers V. Hardwick
The Supreme Court taking Public broadband and giving it to corporations: FCC v. Fox (?)
The Supreme Court deciding that Corporations can participate in elections: Citizen's United v. F.E.C.
The Supreme Court deciding when a woman's body is her own: Roe V. Wade
The Supreme Court directly infringing on your privacy rights by supporting the Patriot Act
With Prop 8 passing, and Don't Ask Don't Tell not getting repealed. With the Supreme Court denying millions of votes to be counted and over riding States Rights: BUSH V. GORE 2000
And lastly the furor of states filing petition to take back the latest health care law...
I think we ought to come out IN VERY LARGE NUMBERS with an EMERGENCY MARCH on International Labor Day and tell the country if we couldn't get the REcount, you're not getting the REpeal!!
and then put the Supreme Court on a term limit like 20 years.
Help Me spread the word and let's show Fox and Friends how it's done!
AGENDA
1)Discuss the 2000 vote
a)Disenfranchising of the African American votes especially in Florida
b)violation of the law by the Supreme Court decision
c)Subsequent Court decisions: Prop 8, D.A.D.T., FCC vs (FOX NEWS) Citizens United vs. FEC, failure to sign on to the KYOTO accord.
2Discuss the law we really wanted HR676/ Single Payer/ IMPROVED Medicare for All
a)No Corporations “Because the PEOPLE say so, Insurance Companies gotta GO!”
b)Workers built the wealth of this world and enjoy none of the wealth. Living Wages/Unions
c)Support organizations that do not take Corporate support like LINK TV , the GREEN party, Citizens for Legitimate Government and CREDO etc.
We want: Full Employment, Non- Profit health service, End to All forms of Discrimination, for the RICH to pay their taxes -ending loop holes. For our ECONOMY to be based on the GREEN revolution-Zero pollution- Zero waste. For Campaign contributions to be restricted to individuals ONLY- with a yearly max.
Wanted: Speakers who want to address the Public on any of these subjects! MAY DAY! MAY DAY!
and then come back May 31, and again Juneteenth and again July 4th. Getting larger each time!!!!