By Joan McCarter
Daily Kos Staff
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch appeared on Fox News Sunday to issue a vague threat against ethics reform of the court. “I just say: Be careful,” he warned in the interview.
He didn’t name precisely whom he’s warning because, as he says in the interview, “I’m not going to get into what is now a political issue during a presidential election year. I don’t think that would be helpful.” As if he weren’t discussing all this on FOX NEWS. As if the Donald Trump-packed Supreme Court majority hasn’t made itself a political issue with its extreme decisions, one of which effectively declared the president to be a king.
Forcing Supreme Court justices to abide by an ethics code and limiting their terms in office, Gorsuch claimed, would threaten judicial independence.
“The independent judiciary … means that when you’re unpopular, you can get a fair hearing under the law and under the Constitution,” Gorsuch said. “If you’re in the majority, you don’t need judges and juries to hear you and protect your rights—you’re popular. It’s there for the moments when the spotlight’s on you—when the government’s coming after you. And don’t you want a ferociously independent judge and a jury of your peers to make those decisions?”
That’s a nice little fiction he’s trying to create, considering that he and his right-wing colleagues gave powerful corporations a big gift this session by stripping the federal government’s ability to regulate industry to protect the people’s health and safety. If there’s one thing this court has not done in the past four years, it’s looking out for the rights of the average Joe—and especially not the average Jane, whose rights the court has gutted.
It’s also a farce to try to claim that this makeup of the Supreme Court is a “ferociously independent.” The extremists in the majority are not independent; they are little more than a wholly owned subsidiary of conservative activist Leonard Leo’s dark money machine.
Whom Gorsuch was telling to “be careful” isn’t explicit. It could be a hypothetical Congress and president who may dare to make the Supreme Court abide by the rules imposed on the rest of the federal judiciary. Or it could be the voters who might elect such a Congress and president.
Or it could be closer to home. It could be a warning to the one person who has the power right now to rein in these rogue justices: Chief Justice John Roberts. Either way, Gorsuch just took the fight against a corrupt and politicized court up a notch.
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