I’m here to point out an irony, or perhaps it’s a twist of fate. The Supreme Court used to be an unexciting place, at least as viewed by the public. With many of the cases, you’d need a law degree to understand their significance. They vetted and pondered cases behind closed doors for months until one day, finally, an intern literally ran the decisions out the door, down the steps to the waiting press, proponents, and protestors. Once the decision was read in that public square, the justices closed the doors and were hardly heard from again for months, except by snippets of news stories.
Since then, things have changed. When is ‘then’? I’m sure a hundred court historians would come up with a hundred different inflection points for the court, but I believe that point was quite recent, involving not a case they rendered, but instead, a case they passed over. In 2021, the Supreme Court declined to hear any of the cases relating to charges of a tainted 2020 Presidential election. Internally, some justices believed they should have taken them up, but the majority ruled to not hear them. If you’re a legal scholar, you can wrangle over the merits of not taking the case, but I will forever believe the court, especially Justice Roberts, punted out of cowardice. Facing them were unprecedented times, overwhelming evidence of a tampered election due to extenuating measures surrounding Covid, and they feared. They did not want to be responsible for a meltdown of the electorate and the great unrest that would follow no matter what judgement they rendered. I can even somewhat understand the logic of the moment. Let this storm pass, it ‘always’ does. Roberts especially is extremely sensitive to the esteem of the court as something distant, feared, respected, far from the daily grind of the mobs in the street. Nevertheless, it was their responsibility and function to adjudicate disagreeing parties in the most egregious election in our history. The majority didn’t want it in their lap, so they washed their hands; ‘See to it yourselves’.
Fast forward to 2022, one year and several months after skirting the election trap. They have debated Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that would unravel Roe v. Wade. The case is all but finished and announced and a draft of a majority opinion by Alito was leaked. The leaker was surely from among themselves and their staff. All believe it was from the offices of a liberal judge, exactly who, yet to be officially revealed. Five conservative judges were doxed, their personal houses picketed. They’re under many death threats. Not only that, but most of the Democrat majority to include Biden and the majority leadership of Congress either passively or actively support the actions of the mobs. The Supreme Court Building is barricaded, and there is widespread rumors and intelligence of significant violence once the final court decision is released, as early as this week.
There are two ironies here. They will get in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization what they feared in taking an election case in 2021. What they feared found them anyway. The second irony is that this threat originated from within, from within their own highly trusted, erudite, cloistered institution; from among one of their own. There is a third contingent irony. If the rumors of violence pan out or if one or more of them are inflicted with harm, it will be far worse than a ‘January 6th – like event visited upon them, the only differences being, a different branch of government being attacked by the side that so self-righteously attempted to prosecute what was mostly a protest event. There is the potential for protests to turn into a full-blown insurrection against the Judicial Branch, by and from the progressive-left. I get the feeling this is playing out like a biblical drama.
For the justices on the Supreme Court, imagine your conservative colleagues being under a lifelong threat of assassination, knowing that a fellow justice’s staff member made that happen, possibly with the enabling of a Justice peer. That would be the fourth irony; did anyone see the US being blown up by treachery within the highest court in the land?