Dahlia Lithwick On The Awful Scotus Term (Al Franken podcast)

...And What It Portends

Interview: 

https://alfranken.com/listen/dahlia-lithwick-on-the-awful-scotus-term

How the recent SCOTUS session renewed questions about the Court's legitimacy (Terry Gross; Fresh Air podcast)

NY Times legal reporter Adam Liptak says the Court's liberal members have accused the conservative supermajority of engaging in politics and not applying established law to the questions before them.

Interview: 

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/06/1186185608/how-the-recent-scotus-session-renewed-questions-about-the-courts-legitimacy

How the SCOTUS 'Supermajority' is shaping policy on everything from abortion to guns ( Dave Davies; Fresh Air podcast)

Constitutional lawyer Michael Waldman says that there's an increasing distance between the American people and the Supreme Court. He points out that Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, but Republican presidents have appointed six of the nine justices now on the Supreme Court. 

"In a sense, the country is moving in one direction and, with this locked-in majority supermajority, the Court is moving fast in another direction," Waldman says.

Waldman is president of the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law. His new book, The Supermajority: How the Supreme Court Divided America, reflects on the transformational changes wrought by the conservative supermajority, which now dominates the U.S. Supreme Court.

Waldman argues that the conservatives justices, including three appointees of President Trump, have defied longstanding precedents and rendered far-reaching decisions on gun control, reproductive rights, environmental regulations and voting rights — with more to come. He says that the principle of "originalism" — whereby conservative justices purport to govern according to the intent of the country's founders — is fundamentally flawed.

"We can't really pretend that we can know what to do now, today, in 2023, by asking what the guys in powdered wigs in 1791 thought," Waldman says. "This was a time when women could not vote for much of that time, when Black people were enslaved and so forth. It was a very different time with very different values and visions of what kind of country we were going to be."
Interview: 

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/06/1180389289/supreme-court-supermajority-michael-waldman-abortion-guns

High court Justice Alito assured Kennedy on abortion rights: NY Times

"So I recognize there is a right to privacy. I'm a believer in precedents. I think on the Roe case that's about as far as I can go," Alito said to Kennedy, a staunch defender of abortion rights who died in 2009...

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/24/supreme-court-justice-samuel-alito-assured-kennedy-on-abortion-rights.html

GOP points to ‘unprecedented’ developments that've happened before

Former presidents have faced Justice Department investigations and vice presidents have given congressional testimony — despite recent GOP rhetoric...

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/gop-points-unprecedented-developments-ve-happened-rcna43692

The Supreme Court Is on a Doomed Crusade - The Atlantic

…Warbelow, of the Human Rights Campaign, said that by declaring its intention to reconsider earlier rulings on abortion, affirmative action, and perhaps other fronts such as public prayer, the GOP majority is inverting the Court's usual motivation for revisiting precedent. Historically when the Court has done so, she said, "it has been to rectify past wrongs in a way that creates greater rights for all Americans. But the cases that the Court is now considering … are not about expanding rights; they are about restricting rights [and] perpetuating a very narrow view of who should be able to operate fully within the world."…

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/02/supreme-court-conservative-rulings/622050/

Opinion | What Brett Kavanaugh Didn’t Mention when He Talked About Reversing Roe - POLITICO

Yes, the court has ignored precedent before, but never to take away a constitutional right...

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/12/14/brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court-reversals-524156

Opinion | If Trump pardons himself, Biden should un-pardon him - The Washington Post

The Constitution's text, its original meaning and historical precedent all point strongly against the validity of a self-pardon.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/18/if-trump-pardons-himself-biden-should-un-pardon-him/

Scott Lemieux: Trump and McConnell's Supreme Court plan justifies anything the Democrats do in 2021

The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about six weeks before Election Day has set into motion what will perhaps be the most severe of the many strains the election of Donald Trump has placed on American democracy; the Supreme Court as we know it is unlikely to survive the fallout....
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-mcconnell-s-supreme-court-plan-justifies-anything-democrats-do-ncna1240575

Letters to the Editor: Ignoring Donald Trump’s impeachable acts will set unfortunate precedent - Chicago Sun-Times

The next president to occupy the White House may view them as acceptable and unassailable. ....
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/11/18/20970815/letters-to-editor-ignoring-trumps-impeachable-acts-precedent