The Supreme Court is supposed to be a neutral arbiter that interprets the law as it sees fit. As Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in a Supreme Court opinion over 200 years ago: Marbury v. Madison (1803): “It Emphasis It is the jurisdiction and duty of the Department of Justice to say what the law is.”
After nearly a century of liberal politicking by the courts, the left now wants to take back judicial power by any means necessary. (Related article: Jackie Doyer: We must fight to ensure only citizens can vote in American elections)
In July, the Biden-Harris administration Plan They seek legal reform to overturn the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity, impose term limits on Supreme Court justices and impose an external ethics code on the Supreme Court. According to Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign responded to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse's bill by suggesting their nominee's views were consistent with Whitehouse's proposal to completely restructure the Supreme Court, allow new appointments every two years and assign justices primarily to less important cases.
The Supreme Court's infamous 1973 Roe v. Wade With this decision, the majority overturned 50 state laws, creating a “right to abortion.” Roe took the issue of abortion out of the hands of state representatives.
The left then denounced the 2022 Supreme Court's political activism. Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Overturned Roe v. Wade, returning the power to regulate abortion to the states and the American people.
In Roe, the Court transformed the pro-abortion position into federal law. In Dobbs, the Court could have done the same with the anti-abortion position, but did not, despite the fact that the constitutional arguments for the right to life were compelling while the constitutional arguments for the right to abortion were fabricated.
In July of this year, the court overturned the 1984 ruling. Chevron vs. NRDCIn Chevron, the Supreme Court instructed federal courts to delegate their constitutional responsibility for interpreting the law to an unelected, unaccountable administrative bureaucracy. When the Supreme Court reversed in Chevron, Roper Bright vs. RaimondoThe left accused the government of increasing its powers, when in reality all it was doing was taking back basic constitutional functions from unelected bureaucrats.
Similarly, as Professor Josh Blackman of the South Texas College of Law in Houston explained, the courts could have easily overturned the FDA approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, but did not. As Advancing American Freedom has repeatedly argued in its amicus briefs, the FDA's approval of the abortion drug and its subsequent elimination of protections for prescribing it were unlawful and showed a complete disregard for the health and safety of women and fetuses. But the courts found that doctors who challenged the drug could not sue because they had not shown harm.
Fiscal Year 2022 The law, which has eliminated affirmative action, saw only six of the dozens of cases decided by a partisan 6-3 vote. Pew Research We are approaching our lowest point in the last 30 years, but this is the result not of the partisanship of the Supreme Court but of dishonest campaigning by the left.
Don't be fooled when the left calls for “court reform” to “depoliticize” the courts. What they want is an unchecked second legislature, again under their control.
The AAF has filed 17 briefs urging the Court to overturn the Chevron decision, as well as 13 anti-abortion briefs, and recently filed the first of what will likely be many briefs supporting a challenge to the SEC's violation of privacy through its unlawful surveillance of ordinary Americans.
We want the federal government to be constrained both by the powers given to it in the Constitution and by the structures it creates.
We want to see revitalized states empowered to protect the rights of their people.
We want the courts to check the power of the three branches of the federal government and apply the law as written — nothing more, nothing less.
Mark: What is Legal Counsel for Advancing American Freedom?
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