Democrats are stepping up attacks on members of the U.S. Supreme Court after it issued a series of rulings that set back attempts by Democrats to use courts to imprison Donald Trump, knock him out of the 2024 race and prevent tens of millions from voting for the candidate of their choice.
President Joseph Biden says he is preparing proposals to change the court in ways that would bring it under the control of Democratic Party legislators. The proposals include term limits for the nine justices, who currently serve lifetime appointments, making it easier for Democrats to replace any judge who stands in their way. And Biden wants to impose an “ethics code” on the justices to be enforced by the legislative branch of government.
These measures would deal blows to the Constitution’s separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.
Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced July 10 she was filing impeachment charges against Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, claiming their rulings are “threatening American democracy.” Her charges, like Biden’s proposals, aren’t likely to get through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
Both moves come after the Supreme Court ruled in March that state courts don’t have the power to throw presidential candidates off the federal ballot. The high court ruling ended moves to exclude Trump in several states.
In June the court ruled that Trump has immunity from prosecution for his official acts as president, setting back one of the cases cooked up against him by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. As a result of that ruling, Judge Juan Merchan delayed sentencing Trump in a separate case, his frame-up conviction on charges of falsifying business records in New York.
Biden condemned the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity, stating, “No one, no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States.” But in fact, the court’s decision upheld the Constitution’s protection of powers granted to the president. The immunity ruling aims to prevent political opponents orchestrating prosecutions for acts carried out by the president that are part of his duties. It didn’t give Trump or any other president blanket immunity.
The high court also threw out an obstruction charge against a Jan. 6 defendant, Joseph Fischer, under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the same law Trump is charged with violating in other cases being prosecuted by Smith. The act is an anti-business-fraud statute that has nothing to do with the actions Fischer or Trump are accused of. This ruling further enraged liberals.
The Democrats’ legal attacks on their political opponent — and the Republicans’ threat of retribution — weaken constitutional freedoms won and used by working people over centuries. The Constitution offers protection from interference by the government, its political police and its multitude of agencies against rights to free speech, political activity, the right to bear arms and freedom of worship. It codifies the right to a trial by a jury of your peers.
The capitalist class often moves to restrict these freedoms, especially when working-class struggles are on the rise or when the U.S. rulers are preparing to go to war. Workers and the oppressed seek ways to defend and extend these freedoms.
Court weakens agencies’ powers
Liberals were furious when the Supreme Court June 28 overturned its 1984 Chevron ruling that required judges defer to government regulators to interpret ambiguous laws, even if judges disagreed with what these officials said. The massive proliferation of regulatory agencies in recent decades — part and parcel of the capitalist rulers’ state machinery — has given unelected agency bosses more powers to administer the lives of working people. They rule for the benefit of the politicians in the White House who appointed them.
“Chevron prevents the Judiciary from serving as a constitutional check on the Executive,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas in a concurring opinion, and “permits the Executive Branch to exercise powers not given to it.”
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan defended Chevron. Statutes are left vague because government regulators know better than the courts how to interpret them, she wrote, because “agencies have expertise.”
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Kimberley Strassel noted that liberal lawmakers “purposely leave statutes extremely vague because they know that most of the regulators in Washington, D.C., believe in bigger, tougher rules. And while they might not be able to pass them through Congress, if they just leave holes in the legislation, those bureaucrats will … come up with the most expansive role possible.”
The fight to defend constitutional freedoms is a key issue in the class struggle today.