Is the SC hostile enough yet?
I'm going to cross post from the Biden thread here since it seems more applicable here.
I wonder if there's some level of agreement in the SCOTUS that the current balance of power and existing checks is not stable
A lot of government stability has been historically based around a gentleman's agreement between the branches and their members. As long as everyone understood where they were and played nice, nobody actually had to play hardball - and absent a few friction points here and there it worked very well.
What we're seeing now is the Court recognizing that the 'soft' parallel system built from brandy and handshakes at the country club or mutual schooling at the Ivies has completely collapsed due to an aggressive statist ideology (Radical Post-Modern Marxism). More startlingly than seeing that in the Executive or Legislative branches, where there was always a bit of struggle, is that SCOTUS is seeing it in the lower courts.
Reading the most recent Bruen opinion was slightly shocking if you're familiar with the way the SCOTUS writes, the language used was extremely and uncharacteristically strong. Thomas and Alito especially seem furious with the Appeal Circuits, and I think they've realized that the other branches have poisoned the courts and disrespected them personally as Justices and the Constitution/rule of law.
From the SCOTUS perspective, the old way is over, and the Radicals killed it. The sleeping giant has awoke, to make a WW2 reference, and it seems that the Justices are ready to exercise their power fully and discard the old wishy-washy half measures of Roberts and previous Courts. They'll do it gladly, as from their view they were dragged into a conflict that was escalated by the other side.
A hostile SCOTUS means a SCOTUS who will almost always rule against the current Admin basically out of pure spite. This means anything the admin wants is DOA. The only option then is to try to pack the court which is resisted and hated by both the people and the majority of congress.
For us non Americans, would be interested in hearing more on this. Intent? Where will this go? Potential implications?
Aside from just ruling against Biden et al at every chance, the Court has several options that would have more fundamental and far reaching consequences. First, you have to understand that Roe was not unique, or an outlier. There are many decisions in the last 50 or 60 years of jurisprudence that are simultaneously weak and foundational to the modern administrative state and Radical organizations.
For example, Chevron (1984), allows Congress to 'defer authority' to an executive agency with the force of law. This is how unelected Deep State bureaucrats in the FDA, EPA, or ATF decide on a whim that possession of a shoelace is a felony or your local factory has to spend 10 million for raccoon filters or go out of business. Ever since it was decided it's been on shaky ground, but nobody wanted to rock the boat - but now that the gloves are off, the current SCOTUS might not give a flying fuck. Overturning Chevron would, in a stroke, cripple the current administrative state because, just like with Roe, everyone in the Executive and Legislative assumed they'd just get away with it forever.
Here's another example, NY Times vs Sullivan, which held pretty high standards for defamation lawsuits, basically giving media carte blanche to lie and smear whoever they choose. Thomas in particular would like to overturn that, and likely at the same stroke remove the improperly granted shield of 230 from social media. Can you imagine a post-Sullivan world where newspapers could be sued for constant hate propaganda? It would cripple the social-media complex that makes up a majority of the Radicals soft power.
Those are just two big actions the court could take that would hit the administration immediately and forcefully, but it's only the tip of the iceberg. How would you like affirmative action declared unconstitutional? They could make it a twofer and nix all diversity initiatives while they're at it too! You want to force hard borders by declaring anything except imprisonment or return for border jumpers? Easy. They could even find that illegal anchor babies aren't 'subject to the jurisdictions under the 14th and therefore not citizens. (The irony of Thomas authoring a Blood and Soil opinion would kill me.)
There is no bottom to the ways that SCOTUS could throw massive wrenches into every activity of the other branches at fundamental, far reaching levels. They just never had the motivation to do so - until now.
) they'll pocket this unintended win and move on to less contentious talking points at the federal level, but they might not be able to.
