During President Barack Obama's first State of the Union Address last Wednesday, the president made critical remarks about the Supreme Court's recent decision to overturn 100 years of case law and grant near-unlimited campaign spending privileges to corporations. The remarks prompted conservative Justice Samuel Alito to shake his head in disgust and say something that sounded like "That's simply not true."
That brief exchange both the president's remarks and Alito's response has been lambasted by ideologues of all stripes as a shocking and inappropriate breach of decorum that threatens the very legitimacy of the Court itself. The ridiculousness of that notion is topped only by the absurdity of the idea that it's based on namely, that the Supreme Court stands removed from politics as the ultimate objective arbiter, silently protecting our Constitution through the centuries. Not only is the Supreme Court a political institution, just like the other two branches of government, but, ultimately that is a good thing for our democracy.
In its history, the Supreme Court has never been an objective body, evidenced both in the identity of the justices themselves, as well as the process used to select them. The all-time roster of justices is littered with ex-senators, ex-governors, ex-attorney generals and even an ex-president (William Howard Taft). The more recent practice of elevating federal judges to fill the court only came about after President Dwight Eisenhower failed to do his homework on Earl Warren himself a three-term governor and got burned when Warren turned out not to be a rank and file conservative. Even the new-age justices, like Chief Justice John Roberts, who worked in the Reagan Administration, have political ties. Furthermore, if there were really no political charge to the Court, why does every Senate confirmation hearing turn into all out political warfare?
The idea then that these talented, opinionated appointees with prior political ties in their early lives could come to the Supreme Court and instantly check all of their biases at the door is as ludicrous as it is illogical but their political slant is not necessarily a bad thing. The Supreme Court must interpret the Constitution's stance on complex present-day questions that the founders could not have possibly predicted, often in the complete absence of any specific textual reference to the issue. Because of the Constitution's vagueness, they often go more by past judicial and legislative precedent than anything else.
Sometimes past rulings or laws become outdated or illogical in a modern context, and the sluggishness and gridlock of the legislature prevent the issues from being updated with due haste. In these cases, when the Court makes rulings reversing precedent or establishing new ones based on murky constitutional logic, they effectively deliver Congress a swift kick in the pants to get moving on passing needed legislation. Nothing gets Congress more rankled than a Supreme Court ruling that shows them up. This constantly shifting review of our legal traditions and social assumptions only serves to better our nation by making our laws more responsive to modern concerns.
However, the only way the Court can make a decision that contravenes past precedent is by basing that decision off of the internal biases that inform their opinions and shape their worldview. This is an inherently political thought process, and there's nothing wrong with that. For as much squawking as is done by devoted partisans over Supreme Court decisions, both sides benefit equally from the politicization of the Court. Conservatives just scored a major victory on campaign finance law that will let corporations flood elections with monetary backing on behalf of their beloved Congressional Republican lackeys just as liberals long ago won big on the Roe v. Wade decision that created a vital and important set of freedoms essentially out of thin air. The Constitution says nothing about either abortion or campaign finance, yet both questions needed to be decided by a final arbiter through a political calculation, and they were.
Ultimately, the political nature of the Supreme Court is great for our democracy. If the Court were truly unbiased, and only ruled on the constitutionality of laws rather than their content, then the Court would not be an equal partner in our government and would not serve as a good check for the other branches. It's perfectly fine for President Obama to take shots at the Court, just as it was fine for Justice Alito to fire back. They're both part of the same game.
