President Joseph Biden announced proposals July 29 to gut the power of the U.S. Supreme Court and muzzle its justices in an attack on the constitutionally mandated role of the judiciary. Days later, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer deepened the Democrats’ attack.
These moves come alongside growing calls in the liberal press to scrap the Constitution altogether, along with its protections against government interference in political activity, including struggles of importance to the working class.
Democrats are furious at many of the court’s recent rulings, including the 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade. This decision properly returned the needed debate over abortion rights to the states and the people.
They were also furious with the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Biden’s use of an executive order to cancel student debt, a transparent move to muffle majority opposition in Congress. And they opposed this year’s court ruling curtailing broad powers that Democratic presidents have granted to unelected federal regulatory agencies. The ruling reasserted that courts no longer have to defer to “experts” running these bureaucracies.
Like their ruling on student debt, this decision is a blow to the tendency under capitalist rule in the U.S. toward greater concentration of government powers in the hands of the president.
Democrats have also railed at recent Supreme Court rulings defending the Constitution’s protection of the free exercise of religion, including the reversal of discriminatory restrictions state officials imposed on the size of religious services during COVID lockdowns, while such restrictions weren’t placed on casinos.
And they were incensed when the court ruled Donald Trump had a measure of immunity from prosecution in cases where actions he had taken were done in his official capacity as president. This was a blow to their seven-year drive to either impeach or use the courts to jail Trump and prevent him from running again.
The attacks pushed by Biden and Schumer would transform the Supreme Court from the apex of an independent judiciary into a body subordinate to Congress. This would breach the separation of powers the Constitution enumerates between the three branches of government — the legislature, the presidency and the Supreme Court.
Biden wants Congress to impose an 18-year term limit on Supreme Court justices. Ever since the adoption of the Constitution, all federal judges hold their seats for life. Despite numerous sharp conflicts between previous administrations and the Supreme Court, no president until now has ever sought to impose a term limit on the justices. The Constitution says they have a lifetime appointment.
If the Democrats had their way, the proposed term limits would push the three longest-serving justices off the Court — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. All three have backed rulings that Democrats fiercely oppose.
Assault on basic freedoms
For months the liberal media has targeted Clarence Thomas, charging him with accepting too many gifts and other moral improprieties. They demanded he step down from some cases, blaming him for his wife’s political activity.
Biden, Kamala Harris — who has replaced him on the Democrats’ ticket — and congressional Democrats are pushing to impose a so-called ethics code on the justices. And they’re pushing for a constitutional amendment that would overturn the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity.
In a striking denial of basic constitutional rights, Schumer announced a bill called the “No Kings Act.” It would bar any president convicted of a crime from being able to appeal the conviction up to the Supreme Court. They would be limited to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. Schumer hopes compliant judges there will make rulings more to Democrats’ liking, especially their attempts to imprison Trump.
These proposals are also aimed at promoting the Democrats’ main 2024 campaign plank — that Trump is a deadly threat to “democracy.” But they are the ones conducting an assault on constitutional freedoms.
In recent weeks a number of liberal commentators have called for out-and-out junking of the Constitution. Jennifer Szalai argues in the New York Times Aug. 31 that “what ails the country’s politics isn’t simply the president, or Congress, or the Supreme Court, but the founding document.” She says, “Trump owes his political ascent to the Constitution.”
“The Constitution is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” headlines an Aug. 19 Times article by Harvard and Yale professors Ryan Doerfler and Samuel Moyn. Congress “openly defying the Constitution” is the way forward, they say, to “insulate the law from judicial review,” obliterating any constitutional check on what the rulers can do.
The Constitution and its enumerated rights, protections and separation of powers were won in the course of revolutionary battles by the toiling population. After the victory of the North in the Second American Revolution abolished slavery, the 13th, 14th and 15th “Reconstruction” amendments furthered strengthened and extended these protections to all.
These freedoms are used whenever workers use unions and fight for our own class interests. Defending them is crucial on the road to working people overthrowing capitalist exploitation and oppression and taking political power into our own hands.