Oblique facade 3%2C US Supreme Court.
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This month as we go to the polls to vote for people to represent us at all levels of governance it is deeply important to remember that these midterm elections are monumentally significant in an unprecedented way, with the possible exception of the Nazi scare in the 1930s and 40s. Results of all elections have consequences, but this time they will serve as a precursor to the most consequential election in our lifetimes in 2024.
As I've said to students who were voting for the first time, "You aren't just voting for a president, you are voting for the courts and the judicial system. Who do you want interpreting the law and doling out justice?" It's a question I now ask everyone when discussing politics, because our Constitution and democracy are seriously at stake.
We stand at the edge of a delicate precipice in this moment. It's a precipice that seems to entice roughly a third of Americans as they race to the edge with violent enthusiasm, arms raised in a
Q-anon salute to their cult leader, tagged by one Republican "the orange Jesus." That leader bears a striking resemblance to dictators the world over, past and present. This election is a call to deny him and his enablers and acolytes the power to curtail or end our Constitutional rights.
In some ways autumn, with its encroaching darkness and chill, feels like a metaphor for the future. If we aren't careful, we will fall into a deep and dangerous chasm from which there will be no recovery or return.
The courts play an enormously important role in securing our future. As legal scholar and analyst Dalhia Lithwick has noted, "All we have protecting us is laws, and the courts that interpret and enforce those laws." Right now the courts, from SCOTUS down, look shockingly political, unqualified, and threatening.
One has only to consider the Supreme Court and the federal courts to be frightened. Recently Chief Justice John Roberts found it necessary to suggest the court is maintaining its legitimacy. But that's hard to swallow in view of Roe v. Wade being overturned after 50 years of what Trump-seated judges declared was settled law during their confirmation hearings in an extraordinary display of perjury. It's hard to swallow in the face of expanded gun rights, the deifying of religious liberty in the name of Christianity over fundamental equality, and a SCOTUS spouse actively engaged in bringing down the government.
Elena Kagan Official SCOTUS Portrait %282013%29.
(Image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org), Author: Steve Petteway, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States) Details Source DMCA
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