Trump, A Jury Of His Peers, And The Roberts Court
In an op-ed published Monday on Medium, Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer discusses last week’s conviction in New York of former President Donald Trump on all 34 felony counts he faced, and how the Supreme Court could “take a lesson” from the New York jury, judge, and D.A.’s office.
The Supreme Court’s current slow-walking of its decision in the Trump immunity case, Wertheimer writes, “fits the larger pattern of harm the Roberts Court has done to our democracy. Starting with the appointment of John Roberts as Chief Justice in 2005 and Justice Samuel Alito in 2006, the Supreme Court has played a seminal role in gravely damaging our political system and our democracy.”
Read the op-ed on Medium or below.
Medium | 6/3/2024
Trump, A Jury Of His Peers, And The Roberts Court
By: Fred Wertheimer, President, Democracy 21
Guilty as charged.
Last week in New York, a jury of former President Donald Trump’s peers pronounced him guilty of all 34 felony counts he faced.
Juries are sacrosanct to the American justice system.
Trump is now the only former President who is a convicted felon and the only President to be impeached twice.
Plus, he still has three more criminal trials pending against him – a total of 54 additional criminal charges.
Ignore Trump’s lies that the New York case was rigged, that Judge Juan Merchan was corrupt, that the case was a Biden conspiracy. These lies are par for the course whether it’s about an election he lost or a court case he lost. Trump lies and attacks when he loses.
The Manhattan D.A.’s office, Judge Merchan, and the jury did their jobs.
The Roberts Court could take a lesson.
Because in stark contrast, the Supreme Court has done anything but its job.
Controlled by a Republican-appointed majority, the Supreme Court has been thwarting Trump v. United States, the most serious of the criminal cases against Trump – criminal charges for his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The Supreme Court, after delaying a trial in the case for months finally heard oral argument nearly six weeks ago on Trump’s flimsy claim that as a former President he has absolute immunity for actions taken while President. The Court has yet to issue its decision.
The Court has shown it can act quickly in important cases. In March, for example, the Court issued a decision favorable to Trump, just 25 days after oral argument, in the Colorado presidential primary ballot case.
It is increasingly apparent that one or more Justices have been slow walking the immunity case to the detriment of the American people who are entitled to a trial before they vote in November and to the distinct advantage of Trump, whose goal has been to delay this case until after the election. Then, if he wins, Trump will order the Justice Department to shut it down.
(Despite the clear appearance of bias and conflicts, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have refused to recuse themselves from the case.)
The Court’s performance here fits the larger pattern of harm the Roberts Court has done to our democracy. Starting with the appointment of Roberts as Chief Justice in 2005 and Justice Alito in 2006, the Supreme Court has played a seminal role in gravely damaging our political system and our democracy.
The Roberts majority has created a corrupt campaign finance system, reopened the door to widespread voter discrimination and suppression, and crippled the ability to stop partisan and racial gerrymandering.
In short, the Roberts Court has carried out a systematic dismantling of our political system.
⮞ The Roberts Court Created A Corrupt Campaign Finance System
In 2010, the Roberts Court in Citizens United, declared unconstitutional the prohibition on corporate spending in federal elections. In reaching its 5-4 decision, the Court wiped out more than 100 years of national policy and decades of judicial precedent.
The Court’s decision created a new, corrupt campaign finance system, allowing Super PACs to spend huge, unlimited contributions and “dark money” groups to spend huge, unlimited, and undisclosed donations.
In 2014, in McCutcheon v. FEC, the Court’s 5-4 decision written by Chief Justice Roberts, doubled down, declaring unconstitutional a limit, enacted and upheld by the Supreme Court in the 1970s, on the total amount a single donor can give to all candidates and political committees.
This has resulted in wealthy donors giving huge individual contributions of as much as $800,000+ to support candidate joint fundraising committees.
With its decisions, the Roberts Court has unleashed a new era of political money corruption, empowering influence-seeking billionaires, millionaires, and corporations – through Super PACs and dark money nonprofits – to use their massive wealth to buy their way into elections and policy decisions.
If you wondered how former President Trump recently could brazenly ask oil executives to raise $1 billon for his campaign, in return for policy actions he would take if elected, look no further than these Supreme Court decisions and the corrupting political money they have unleashed.
⮞ The Roberts Court Reopened The Door To Voter Discrimination And Suppression
The Roberts Court majority has eviscerated voting rights protections and reopened the door to a wave of voter discrimination and suppression not seen since the days of Jim Crow.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided historic protections for minority voters. The Act was regularly reauthorized by Congress – the last time in 2006, by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 98-to-0 in the Senate and 390-to-33 in the House.
Then in 2013, the 5-4 decision in Shelby County v. Holder gutted the critical preclearance provisions of the Act. The opinion was written by Chief Justice Roberts.
Nearly 100 restrictive voting laws, so far, have been passed in the states since that decision reopened the voter discrimination floodgates, according to the Brennan Center. These new laws were spurred in large part by Trump’s nonstop lies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him by voter fraud.
⮞ The Roberts Court Gave A Thumbs Up To Racial And Partisan Discrimination
In 2019, Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion in Rucho v. Common Cause, the 5-4 decision that held that claims of partisan gerrymandering are political questions that cannot be decided in federal courts. In other words, the Court held that there are no federal judicial remedies for partisan gerrymandering, no matter how outrageous the gerrymandered voting map is.
This decision has licensed states to enact extreme partisan gerrymandered voter maps that protect the party in power and diminish the impact of voters.
On May 23, in a 6-3 decision in Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP, written by Justice Alito, the Court added further restrictions to challenging gerrymandering, concluding that racially gerrymandered maps cannot be challenged if they are also drawn to serve goals of partisan gerrymandering. Courts, they found, must presume that state legislatures are acting in “good faith” if they claim their maps are seeking partisan, not racial, ends.
These two decisions make it exceedingly difficult, if not potentially impossible, to challenge congressional voting maps on grounds of partisan or racial gerrymandering.
These and other Court decisions that disregard judicial precedent and attack our democracy have contributed to public opinion about the Court falling to near record lows. Some two-thirds of Americans support term limits for Justices.
The Court has done little to allay the concerns of those Americans who consider the Court to be too partisan in its decisions and question the integrity of some of its Justices.
The Supreme Court needs public confidence and credibility if it is to play its proper role in our constitutional system.
Today, it has neither.
