Summary
Historian Timothy Snyder warns that the U.S. Supreme Court’s reliance on originalism and its detachment from “factuality” risk undermining its legitimacy, especially in a politically charged environment.
Speaking on the Amicus podcast, Snyder argues that the justices’ insular worldview may lead to decisions that disregard public sentiment and the rule of law, potentially provoking backlash against the Court.
He also critiques the Court’s approach to free speech, which he says prioritizes corporate rights over individual freedoms, distorting the First Amendment by equating corporate influence and dark money with free speech, rather than protecting the voices of ordinary citizens.
Without understanding the particulars of US legal matters, it seems to me that it is pretty obvious that the US judiciary is deeply corrupt. Maybe not in a day to day manner, but in a broader “subservient to oligarchs” sense.
In my country, we also have supreme court members getting bribed by oligarchs and judiciary groupings that act to protect their interests while working as a for hire team for the highest bidding oligarchs (similar to the American “Federalist Society”). Sure, in the US the whole process is done with a bigger focus on PR; lot’s of pomp and word salad about “interpretation of the constitution”, but I personally did not find that in any way convincing when I lived in the US. Seemed like a ruse for plausible deniability and keeping the plebs from asking too many uncomfortable questions.
The bigger question, that I was discussing with my American friend, is why the main US opposition party (that claims to oppose of excesses of the far right) does not take a serious approach to corruption in the judiciary. Specifically we were discussing the supreme court succession late in Trump’s 1st term. There is almost a surrealist, comedic quality to the whole thing. It is unlikely a political force can get anywhere with such a myopic approach.
There is an issue in that Democrats don’t want to undermine faith in the government. That is the Republican position and to say the government is corrupt to the point of non functioning is to play into right wing talking points.
So it’s a very fine line to reform it without making people lose faith.
I would argue faith in the government is based on delivery of results and the ability to show a measure of courage. And I get the impression the “undermine faith in government” piece has already been implemented as a very effective polemic by the US far right for decades. If the government is corrupt, you need to openly say it and show how you’re going to change this and make it better (and why people should vote for you).
The situation with the supreme court judge succession is a joke. A sign of complete ineptitude and laziness. It would be better if the judge was bribed to time the succession for the benefit of the far right; you would at least have a cause, effect, solution cadence.
One other issue that I personally noticed is the lack of willingness to speak openly about issues among the US centre right/moderates. To my knowledge, only Bernie Sanders and some other junior politicians are willing to openly use the term oligarch. Why is it like that? Elon Musk is an American oligarch. Tim Cook is an American oligarch. Why all the hush-hush and meekness?
With respect to the article, why wasn’t there a public condemnation of the judge? Something along the lines of:
“Ginsburg will go down in a history as a self-absorbed, ivory tower snob that supported and enabled oligarchic plutocracy and the rise of authoritarianism.”
It is considered poor tone to speak ill of the dead, but then again, Ginsburg is not among us and she won’t care. Her relatives won’t be happy, but they will manage.
I am not saying I have all the answers or that my approach is compatible with broad American sensibilities (I lived there, so I recognize how controversial the above-mentioned quote would be), but it’s not like the centre-right’s strategy has had any real success since maybe Obama’s first term more than a decade ago.
My feeling on this is that once an American politician gets established, they have won a few elections back to back, they start to gain influence and power. This then changes their view of their job. While it may have been to make changes to a system for the betterment of the citizenry early on, the increase in power and influence weirdly changes them and they become scared of losing their job.
With this change from “I’m here for my country” to “I’m here to have power and influence” they become more weak and more of a sycophant to those that have the money. If they start to rock the boat, speak out against the oligarchs, then there is a chance they will lose their seat of power and influence.
That’s true everywhere though. No one is expecting anyone to be some a superhuman. But there is a time and place for everything. Or otherwise you’re going to keep losing and there could potentially be disastrous outcomes (de facto loss of democracy is not off the table IMO, it is common for authoritarians who come to power by democratic means to solidify their rule in their second term - you don’t even need Trump to go for a 3rd term as long as the system remains).
From my perspective (and I could be wrong), the democratic party has not had the initiative in almost quarter of a century. Last time was Obama, but he turned out to be a shallow oligarch shill. I lived in the US during Bush/Obama. If they wanted to they could have passed normal comprehensive government healthcare coverage. The US healthcare sector is deeply corrupt [*], they could have used that to their advantage by publicly pressuring individuals who were undermining this goal in a explicit. Or what about the fact that not a single finance executive went to jail during the Great Recession?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s easy to lecture people (our country has it’s own deep rooted issues), but inflection points don’t just happen without any action.
And I will speculate that Trump’s second term will be a good opportunity to hit this inflection point.
Reasonable people should absolutely not have “faith” in these costumed fossils.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion