Restoration of Justice is in the hands of Decent America
We just have to demand an end to judicial “conservatism”
Decent Americans have aspirations. We hope to grow, become better, overcome our lower impulses.
One of our most cherished aspirations is to increase in justice—to conquer our selfish impulses and be fair to our fellow human beings.
This desire for improvement puts Decent America on the side of the angels. It also puts them on the side of the Constitution.
Decent Americans love justice
In the Preamble to the Constitution, the Framers said that they intended the document to “establish Justice.” Any true American should love justice simply on the ground of fidelity to the Constitution. But only decent Americans seem to have a grasp of what justice really is or what it requires of those who love it.
As Aristotle said some 2500 years ago, the justice of citizens is twofold. One part has to do with giving all citizens what they are due. This is called distributive justice. A second part has to do with correcting citizens who violate the first part by not giving all citizens what they are due by forcing them to make restitution or by punishing them or both. This is called retributive justice.
Decent Americans understand both parts of justice. And what is more, they understand that justice cannot be partial to their personal selfish desires. The aspiration to be just requires us to struggle with our lower, selfish impulses. The more we can conquer them, the fairer we can be.
“Conservatives” scorn justice
“Conservatives” don’t seem to understand justice or what it requires of us. Their allegiance is not to justice but to what they call “freedom”—which seems to mean thinking, saying, and doing what they want without hindrance and without consequence. To them, justice is is liberal talking point and a thing for chumps. The strong do what they want, while the weak try to stop them by drumming up sympathy with the notion of justice.
Nevertheless, “conservatives” recognize the practical value in the notion of justice. Since crying “Injustice!” sometimes works to prevent or punish people, it can be deployed as a tool to attain selfish ends. You just have to convince people that not getting your selfish desire is somehow unjust and—hey presto!—you instantly transform from oppressor to victim.
“Conservatives” have been working their justice scam for decades
This is precisely what “conservatism” has been up to for decades. It is the primary reason for the existence of the Federalist Society, a largely corrupt association of lawyers that bend their legal expertise toward gaining legal justification for unjust “conservative” ends.
The profound degeneracy of the Federalist Society has hardly been plumbed. On the surface, the group’s corruption is manifest: just look at arrogant “conservative” scammers like Leonard Leo, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and nearly all Trump’s legal mouthpieces—all of whom are Federalist Society members. In the depths, you will find the usual “conservative” impulses—insatiable desires for wealth and power fueled by unfathomable fears that will never be satisfied by wealth and power.
By corrupting legal reasoning, by certifying corrupt legal reasoners, and by using “conservative” legislators to seat corrupt legal reasoners as judges, the Federalist Society has infected the nation’s entire legal system. It is no longer enough for judges to demonstrate the justice or injustice of a case. Now, they must respond to a near infinitude of sophistical reasoning that paints injustice as justice or justice as injustice whenever it suits the outcome that “conservatives” want.
How do we know this? Because “conservative” lawyers and judges use made-up rules of reasoning like “originalism”—one of the stupidest, most irrational standards every given the color of reason. And because they use even their made-up rules inconsistently depending on the outcome they want to achieve.
The chaos in the justice system is all the result of Federalist Society destruction of judicial reasoning, just as the chaos in the political system is all the result of Republican destruction of legislative reasoning.
So when we get Texas “conservative” judges who feel empowered to remove well-researched and long-time drugs from the market suddenly, basing his “judgment” on stupid reasoning that merely covers up his religious opposition to abortion; when we get Supreme Court “justices” who think that affirmative action has to stop because they are tired of having to help disadvantaged people; when that same Supreme Court reverses fifty years of precedent with threadbare reasoning and platitudes, throwing a stable legal system into turmoil by pretending that they don’t want to ban abortion against the will of the majority when everyone can see that’s exactly what they want—when we get that sort of outrageously flagrant disrespect of justice we can be certain that the Federalist Society is doing its work.
How Decent America can restore American justice
As with so much that is broken in our country, the fix is simple. Decent America only has to assert itself. If we all just get up on election day and reject every Republican we see on our ballots, the country will change overnight.
If we do that, then we just demand that our new representatives restore justice to its rightful place in the American system of government. We demand that they change the laws to make justice reign again.
Reform the Supreme Court and have it overturn the overturning of Roe v. Wade and Affirmative Action. Have it overturn Citizens United, with its profoundly stupid “conservative” judgment that corporations are essentially the same as individuals. Have it repudiate once and for all the vicious “conservative” claim that legislatures (if they are “conservative”) cannot be checked by the courts.
These and hundreds of other “conservative” corruptions of the legal system worked by the Federalist Society must be expunged from our collective legal consciousness.
As must the “conservative” notion that arguing in court is all about twisting words, misusing logic, and deploying alternative reasoning like “originalism.” The laws and their interpreters must be returned to the one standard that makes justice possible—the standard of reason.
All this can be done. It’s just up to us to vote for new representatives and demand that they do what we want—return justice to its preeminent position in America.
When we do that, we will no longer have to stand by and watch fearful “conservatives” punch down at the disadvantaged with the support of the courts.
Because then our aspirations for ourselves will be transferred back to the institutions that upheld them for so long.
You are absolutely right. What the Supreme Court has been doing only has the FORM of law, but they are not real laws. Unjust laws are not laws. So we have to remove the corrupt judges and then reverse their rulings to return the justice America possess a few short years ago.
Since we have corrupt judges in the Supreme Court, what ever laws they make are illegal. Corrupt judges should be expelled as soon as possible. They are no longer makers of the law but law breakers.