How Do We Preserve Our System of Separation of Power and Checks and Balances on Government?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is the need for judges to maintain neutrality when making judgments. The Supreme Court leaned left for many years, and the Left liked the court’s decisions. However, the Left is quite upset with the right-leaning justices who make their decisions on their interpretation of the Constitution instead of politics. As a result, the Left has targeted the Supreme Court to undermine its effectiveness. John G. Malcolm discussed the situation in his article in The Daily Signal. 

In recent years, the Supreme Court has been the target of a relentless and strategic campaign aimed at undermining its credibility and impartiality.

Left-wing publications such as ProPublica, Slate, and The Guardian have led an orchestrated assault against the high court’s Republican-appointed justices, and their message has been amplified by Senate Democrats.

Their motive? To cause the American people to question the legitimacy of some of the Supreme Court’s majority opinions that the Left does not like.

These publications are intimating, but not actually arguing, that the accused justices’ actions violated then-existing judicial ethics rules – they didn’t. Instead, the media outlets aim to generate skepticism about the justices’ ethics, integrity, and impartiality.

So far, these attacks on the high court’s conservative justices aren’t as dramatic as the demonstrations outside their homes – which have diminished but are still continuing – or as dangerous as the assassination attempt against one, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in early June 2022. But the assaults on the six conservative justices – and by extension, the legitimacy of the entire nine-member court – have been equally fierce.

Malcolm discussed several instances where Senate Democrats outright threatened the justices or Democrats discussed ways for the Left to take over the Supreme Court.

·         2019: “Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and five other Senate Democrats filed an amicus brief in a Second Amendment case arguing that the Supreme Court is “not well” and that if it didn’t rule the way the Democrats wanted, the court might have to be “restructured.”

·         A little later while an abortion case was being argued before the Supreme Court, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) “stood on the steps of the Supreme Court” and warned that “Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch had ‘released the whirlwind’ … and would ‘pay the price’ if they continued making ‘awful decisions.’”

·         Shortly thereafter, Democrats began discussions of “packing” the Supreme Court to add enough liberal justices to become the majority on the court. President Joe Biden declared that the Supreme Court was “out of whack” and “convened a commission to study this and other potential reforms to the court. Many on the Left were upset when the commission didn’t offer a full-throated endorsement of their court-packing proposal.”

·         “Democrats in Congress are seeking to impose a new code of conduct on the justices that – if enacted despite a lack of constitutional authority to do so – would lead to an unrelenting stream of ethics charges and recusal motions.” As usual, Left-wing media outlets are targeting conservative justices and ignoring several transgressions of liberal ones.

·         “Some liberal law professors have gone so far as to state that the best way to address their grievances is to urge Biden and other fellow travelers to simply ignore the Supreme Court.”

Malcolm noted that “nobody has credibly claimed that any actions taken by Republican-appointed justices violated any disclosure rules (which were recently amended) that existed at the time.” However, liberals are convinced that the “situations likely affected conservative justices’ impartiality.”

The liberals’ problem is that the opinions of the Supreme Court that “align with their policy preferences” are fewer. Therefore, liberals have chosen to question the legitimacy of the court and to smear the justices. The result is that the approval rating for the court in the latest Gallup poll stands “at 40% -- tied for its lowest rating since Gallup began conducting these polls in 2000 – and its disapproval rating is at 58%, an all-time high.”

Malcolm concluded his article by declaring that the one-sided attacks on Republican appointees to the Supreme Court, and the unending assaults on the legitimacy of the court itself, have to stop” if “our system of separation of powers and checks and balances” is to be preserved.