Politics: How Political is the Supreme Court?

Before I get to the more official introduction to this post, I might as well mention something that I have done in the past and will continue to do for a while and how it will affect this blog. You see, I had been doing an alternation of two things when I did political posts. One would be just some random, miscellaneous thing and the other would about the upcoming, 2018 election. I decided that the potpourri section will now be replaced by one on the Supreme Court for quite a while. I will let you know when it changes.

Why am I bringing this all up? Well, this post is dedicated to the Supreme Court and how it can often be political in some ways. While one would one the Supreme Court to be above politics, this is often impossible in the cases that come before it. Another reason it could be important is because of the political ideology of the court and what leanings the justices have.

Some of this will be saved for potential other posts. What I am mostly wondering for this post is just how political the Supreme Court is or if it isn’t that way at all. By now, you have to know that, yes, the Supreme Court is often political in many ways. But just how much is it that way? And is there a fix that could actually happen?

In the recent term of the Supreme Court right before Anthony Kennedy (may he rest in peace because he is dead to me) left the court, nearly every decision that I know of was a five to four decision with the Republican’t justices going one way and the Democrats on the right side. That is how I see it, at least. Terrible travel ban? It stays. Horrible voter suppression? It’s now legal. Let’s just hope that Ohio isn’t important in elections. Oh, wait… Arbitration is also here to stay now, even though it is a terrible idea. We are also stuck with anti-union laws now as well. Here are links to these cases:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._Hawaii (travel ban)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus_v._AFSCME (anti-union case)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Husted_v._Randolph_Institute (voter suppression case)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Systems_Corp._v._Lewis (arbitration)

While the liberals are upset about five cases in recent terms, I don’t care about the abortion one due to being pro-life. Many people think that the exact opposite of these terrible decisions would have happened until a liberal majority court.

Important things that happened because of the Supreme Court deciding on politic cases was the very important concept known as judicial review. Thanks to that, we can have various laws declared as unconstitutional. It is an important thing to be a part of the world today.

Sometimes, the justices can deal with political things in a good way. In United States versus Nixon, a unanimous court limited what otherwise executive privilege could go happen otherwise. Without it, there would be more issues with the law nowadays than there could otherwise be.

Of course, there are often huge problems that can be caused by a political bias in a court. The most heinous example of this is the case Bush versus Gore. That was quite possible the most biased (though not the worst) decision in the Supreme Court’s history. They had no business deciding the results of a presidential election. They never should have heard the case, although I do not know how the issue could have been resolved without it.

Something that I should be glad about when I did my brief research for this post is that there were some 5-4 decisions this year that weren’t spilt on ideological lines. Some justices of both parties were on both sides of the vote. The difference between them and the ones I shared links to is that these cases may not have as much bearing on the future as other cases do.

I’m really concerned about the future of the court. With the only moderate gone, we don’t know just how few anomalies we’ll see such as the decision to keep the Affordable Care Act around. There could already be a case on the way that could undo the protection that people like me who have pre-existing conditions have right now. I’ll never understand why someone wouldn’t want to let those people have insurance.

In an ideal world, all nine of the justices would truly be above politics and we wouldn’t have to worry about certain issues with different cases. But the point is that the Supreme Court can be very political and this isn’t likely to change anytime soon. In fact, it is only likely to get worse.