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Top Comments: Reversing Democracy Edition [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-07-04

Last week, I wrote about how the structure of our government is supposed to put the judiciary at the lowest rung of the ladder. Yet here we are a week later and 5 illegal SCOTUS appointees and one very aggrieved asshole appointee have decided to continue to march the US back to 1860 unabated. Even with the two sops to upholding the Constitution and duly passed federal laws in the Alabama redistricting case and Moore v Harper, Roberts and his henchmen continue to defy their Constitutional authority and rule by fiat to implement their injustices upon the people. Let’s take a look at each of the three decisions that came out this week to see which era of our history they are transporting us.

In the Student Loan Forgiveness case, the unConstituational majority is harejning back to the Lochner era where the Supreme Court regularly struck down all sorts of laws and executive actions to benefit workers by claiming businesses has a “right to contract” that was an affront to any charitable reading of the Founders intent of government. In fact, Jefferson proposed to Madison that he should put into his Bill of Rights the right of the people to be free from monopoly power and excessive business overreach. The Lochner era gets it genesis in headnote written by the court reporter in Santa Clara Co v Southern Pacific Railroad where corporate personhood makes its first appearance in American jurisprudence. (See here). This reporter, who was a former railroad lawyer, inserted this headnote which went against the opinion written by Chief Justice Waite who made no mention of corporate personhood in his opinion.

In 303 Creative, the Court once again expands the definition of the Free Speech clause of the 1st Amendment to move the country back to the era of Plessy where separate but equal is now an acceptable doctrine.

Finally in the Harvard and UNC cases overturning affirmative action, the Court completely upends the entire debate that led to the creation of the Reconstruction Amendments and specifically the first section of the 14th Amendment. It is clear from the debates what the purpose of this section, as written, was. The Radical Republicans of the era wanted to elevate the former enslaved population to an equal standing in society. Even though the moderate Republicans were not enthuisastic about it, they soon came to realize as the former Confederate states, with the exception of Tennessee, refused reform themselves and end white supremacy, it was going to be up to Congress to make enshrine these rights into the Constitution since then-President Johnson was both covertly and overtly working to help the former Confederacy defy Congressional action. With their ruling last week, the current illegal majority of SCOTUS may have finally helped secured aims the Confederacy has been trying accomplish for over 150 years.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/4/2179317/-Top-Comments-Reversing-Democracy-Edition

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