Category: The Supreme Court

Conservative Hypocrisy Over ‘Packing the Supreme Court’

Republicans and other conservatives were seized by conniption fits when

AP Photo. J. Scott Applewhite

President Biden formed a commission to investigate the possibility of expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court.

Quite predictably, the committee has recommended that the court should not be expanded. So what else is new in D.C.?

What that committee, Republicans, other erstwhile conservatives, and establishment Democrats all fail to recognize, at least in public, is that the Supreme Court has already been successfully “packed” by Senator Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.

Millions of dollars of “dark money” has been invested in placing new justices on the bench that will predictably rule in favor of big-money, corporate interests.

The fact that some of these justices may also lean in an anti-abortion direction is a serendipitous coincidence for “pro-life” evangelicals who are generally so monomaniacally focused on their anti-abortion agenda that they give little thought to other issues at stake.

The Daily Poster has an important article entitled “How Dark Money Captured the Supreme Court” describing a recent report issued by three senior members of the Senate.

The report explains the pivotal role played by anonymous, big-money donors in the selection of the Supreme Court justices appointed by Donald Trump and the Republican members of the Senate.

Justice may still be blind — though that is debatable — but her sensitive nose can detect the sickening-sweet smell of money a mile away. And her hand is always held out for another corrupting contribution.

Here is the article. I strongly encourage you to follow the links and read the additional material you find there:

As Congress nears a deal on Biden’s Build Back Better reconciliation bill, a separate battle is quietly playing out within the Democratic Party over how to handle the extremism and minoritarian rule of the Supreme Court.

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sens. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., published a report on the way that dark money and corporations have captured the Supreme Court.

The report lays out how an extensive network of right-wing groups — including the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and organizations in the Koch network — have worked to appoint judges who undermine voting rights and favor corporate interests.

What is perhaps most remarkable about the report is that three senators, including the Senate majority leader, are raising serious questions about the legitimacy of an institution that many Democrats are unwilling to confront.

For example, just two weeks earlier, the commission that Biden set up to examine court reform published draft materials of their own report. Those materials expressed skepticism about adding justices to the court, suggesting that it would be seen as a partisan move and undermine public trust in the court.

“Some commissioners believe that there is a real risk that the willingness of Congress to expand the size of the U.S. Supreme Court could further weaken national and international norms against tampering with independent judiciaries,” said the draft document on court expansion, even going so far as to suggest that court-packing may be evidence of “democratic backsliding.”

But, as the three senators’ new report on “court capture” argues, the country’s highest court is already being manipulated.

Whitehouse separately wrote a law review article last week about the influence of dark money and dark money groups’ use of amicus briefs to influence the court.

“The effects of this litigation strategy on our democracy are frightening: the courts are becoming an arena for enacting policies by judicial decree that are too unpopular to pass through democratically elected legislatures,” he wrote. “These coordinated efforts warp the judiciary toward anonymous, ultrawealthy donor interests, all without the public ever learning about the role of dark-money interests in shaping the law.”

Anti-Abortion, “Pro-Life” Justices Rule in Favor of US Corporations Using Child Slavery

This what happens when single issue voters applaud the appointment of anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court while ignoring, or remaining oblivious to, the fact that these same justices are strongly biased toward pro-corporate, anti-worker policies.

The Supreme Court this week ruled 8-1 in favor of corporate giants Nestle and Cargill who were being sued by former child laborers accusing the two  companies of trafficking in child slavery in the west
African nations of the Ivory Coast and Ghana.

According to the corporations’ defense attorney, the corporations “could not be sued for complicity in child trafficking because they are corporations, not individuals.”

How convenient.

Those of us old enough to remember the Citizen United decision in 2010 will recall that, in that case, the Supreme Court ruled in exactly the opposite direction, declaring that corporations are people and therefore able to contribute massive amounts of dark money to US political campaigns.

Many people warned in advance that the current slate of conservative, pro-

Neal Katyal, defense attorney for Nestle and Cargill corporations, testifies on behalf of now-Justice Neil Gorsuch, pro-corporate lawyer who ruled against the plaintives in a child slavery case. Tasos Katopodis Getty Images

corporate Supreme Court justices would have a disastrous effect on workers’ rights in this country.

The Supreme Court’s exoneration of two US corporations who knowingly profit immeasurably from the exploitation of child slavery in west Africa is entirely predictable. 

Congratulations to all those evangelical activists who lobbied vociferously for the appointment of “pro-life” justices to the US Supreme Court!  You got what you wanted. The desperately poor, exploited, enslave children of the third-world thank you.

Below is an excerpt from the article by Julia Conley at Common Dreams, “‘Dangerous Precedent’: US High Court Sides With Corporate Giants Nestle and Cargill in Child Slavery Case.” I encourage you to follow up the numerous links included in the article:

A lawyer for six men who alleged they were victims of human trafficking said the corporations “should be held accountable for abetting a system of child slavery.”
Human rights advocates Thursday denounced a Supreme Court decision in favor of the U.S. corporate giants Nestlé USA and Cargill, which were sued more than a decade ago by six men who say the two companies were complicit in child trafficking and profited when the men were enslaved on cocoa farms as children.
The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against the plaintiffs, saying they had not proven the companies’ activities in the U.S. were sufficiently tied to the alleged child trafficking. The companies had argued that they could not be sued in the U.S. for activities that took place in West Africa. . . 
. . . The plaintiffs, who are from Mali and say they are survivors of child trafficking and slavery in Côte d’Ivoire, filed their lawsuit under the Alien Tort Statute, an 18th century law which allows federal courts to hear civil actions filed by foreigners regarding offenses “committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.”
In recent years the Court has limited when the law can be invoked in court, arguing it cannot be used to file a lawsuit when the offense was committed “almost entirely abroad,” according to the New York Times.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that Nestlé and Cargill have total control over the production of cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire, where child labor is widespread and where the men said they were forced to work long hours and to sleep in locked shacks at night. 
The U.S. Department of Labor recently reported that the use of child labor on family farms in cocoa-growing areas of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana increased from 31 percent to 45 percent between 2008 and 2019.
The corporations “should be held accountable for abetting a system of child slavery,” said Paul Hoffman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
Read the entire article here.

There is More Than One Way to Pack a Court

President Biden recently formed a commission that will look into the mechanics of restructuring the US Supreme Court by increasing the number of justices from 9 to 13.

The Republican media campaign is now in overdrive warning about the apocalyptic terrors that will be unleashed if Democrats are allowed “to pack” the Supreme Court. (Watch the Religious Right lament here.)

The hypocrisy is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

Republican legislators have their own troubled history with court-packing at the state level. Neither should we forget the manipulative powerplays undertaken by Republican Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley in seating their own conservative choices.

Their Republican skull-duggery included denying Merrick Garland, President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, from receiving the Senate confirmation hearing that dominees deserve.

At the time, McConnell insisted that it was improper to appoint a new justice “so close to a presidential election” (recall, the Trump/Clinton election was weeks away).

However, McConnell’s appeal to principle proved to be nothing more than cynical, partisan gamesmanship as he then rushed to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett only weeks before the election of president Biden.

And this is only the tip of a very tawdry, partisan, judicial iceberg. (There is a laundry list of similar shenanigans in the appointments of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, as well. But those sad stories are for another post.)

More to the point for the purposes of this post is the important warning

October 13, 2020, Washington, District of Columbia, USA: United States Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat of Rhode Island) makes a presentation during his questioning of President Donald Trump‚Äôs Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett during the second day of her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing Tuesday, October 13, 2020 (Credit Image: © Greg Nash – Pool Via Cnp/CNP via ZUMA Wire)

repeatedly raised by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse over the anti-democratic flood of “dark money” now shaping the Supreme Court.

“Dark money” consists of untraceable, and therefore anonymous, financial contributions typically made to a political action committee and “front groups.” The promise of anonymity allows wealthy, big-money donors to move the court in the directions they want without the public realizing what is happening.

Although conservatives contribute the lion’s share of this money, it’s a bipartisan affair. Dark money pours in from both Republican and Democratic donors, lobbyists, billionaires, CEOs, and corporations.

Of course, big money, corporate money, generally gets what it wants.  And what dark money wants are Supreme Court justices and case decisions that promote their interests, leaving the little guy to hold the bag.

I urge you to take a few  minutes to watch Senator Whitehouse’s presentations where he explains the findings of own his investigations into the overwhelming influence of dark money on the Supreme Court.

Folks, the Supreme Court has already been packed. In fact, its been stacked — stacked against us, the people. Yet, you will never hear conservative politicians, Republicans, Pat Robertson or others of his ilk condemn this undermining of American democracy.

The current conservative outcry against Biden and his commission is just one more example of how easy it is for the wealthiest 1% and corporate power in this country to manipulate the public — especially conservatives.

Below is Senator Whitehouse’s explanation about the influence of dark money on the Supreme Court. His most pertinent remarks begin at the 8:40 mark: