This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
The proof is in the pudding, as they say. In this case, the pudding was very distinctly mixed up by Donald Trump with a nice little hand from Mitch McConnell. Thanks to them, the "justice" system in this country has been remarkably politicized. Thanks to them, the Supremes are no longer the legal equivalent of a popular singing group, but symbols of an ever more divisive system. As TomDispatch regular Karen Greenberg, author of Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump, makes clear today, it's one that seems capable of holding only pregnant women "responsible" for anything. (Certainly, the same shouldn't be true for presidents, especially not The Donald!)
Thanks to a leaked draft opinion written by extreme Supreme Samuel Alito, we now know that, in a case likely to be announced soon, that court's nearly half-century-old Roe v. Wade decision is almost certain to be overruled. In short, America's ultimate court is at the edge of the sort of decision not seen since perhaps the Dred Scott case of 1857, a stepping stone to this country's civil war. The route to such supreme injustice hasn't been a short one. As Greenberg points out, in this century ever more Americans with clout, starting with George W. Bush and crew, were held ever less responsible for their ever more criminal acts. Sadly, while presidents have gone free, so many women in states in which abortion will no longer be legal are likely to find themselves again, as a half-century ago, in back alleys looking for ways not to have babies they can't afford or support or deal with. (In some states, including Mississippi, whose abortion case is now before the Supreme Court, it won't even matter if your pregnancy results from rape or incest.)
Add a post-2022 Republican Congress to the present Supreme Court and then a Trumpist victory in the 2024 elections and this country could be left with the ultimate nightmare, a political system made in hell. Perhaps that will somehow be avoided, but don't count on it.
In the meantime, let Greenberg tell you about a justice system that, even before the Alito opinion became public, was headed for the nearest drain. Tom
The Empire's New Clothes
The Veneer of Accountability Is Wearing Thin in Twenty-First-Century America
If you watched TV in the 1960s and 1970s as I did, you would undoubtedly have come away with the idea that this country's courts, law enforcement agencies, and the laws they aimed to honor added up to a system in which justice was always served.
In those years, for instance, Perry Mason was a much-loved staple from coast to coast. In each episode, Perry, that intrepid, tall, dark, kindly genius of a defense attorney, would face off against Hamilton Burger, a small-boned, pointy faced, sanctimonious prosecutor and justice would always be served. He had what seemed then to be an all-American knack for uncovering exactly the right evidence of misdeeds that would lead justice directly to the doorstep of the true perpetrator of any crime and bring him or her to account. The takeaway caught the mood of the time: the courts and the legal system were powerful platforms for serving justice, sorting out right from wrong, punishing the criminals, and exonerating the innocent.
A few years later, Colombo would portray a police investigator whose reputation resided in his ability to sift through misleading facts and intentional subterfuge, unearth reliable evidence as well as the true culprits in any crime, and without fail bring them to justice.
Those two shows caught the essence of how most Americans then felt about the justice system in this country. We trusted it. Today, it's not just that you can't find such shows on TV anymore, it's that trust in the legal system, fictional or otherwise, is rapidly fading, succumbing to the dangerous poison of this partisan moment and an ever more partisan Supreme Court. As Americans watch from the sidelines, the courts and the legal system continue to visibly fumble in the dark for legitimacy of any sort.
Yes, pundits and experts (like the rest of us) tend to focus on disastrous individual cases that interest them like the one in which those who plotted to kidnap and kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer managed to escape conviction or, say, the acquittal of the youthful Kyle Rittenhouse who used an assault rifle to kill two men at a Black Lives Matter protest. But here's the truth of our moment: the larger picture of American (in)justice has become far more damning than any case could be. Ultimately, after all, the issue isn't the outcome of any specific case, but trust (or increasingly, the lack of it) in the system that's supposed to administer, adjudicate, and legitimate the law in America.
Despite the recent scandal over the Supreme Court's coming decision to overrule Roe v. Wade, nowhere is this clearer than in the cases surrounding the January 6th Capitol riot.
The January 6th Investigation
It's hard to describe the Justice Department's handling of the insurrection on January 6, 2021, as anything other than appalling. Nearly a year and a half later, despite more than 800 indictments of individuals involved in the assault on the Capitol, no charges have yet been filed against either former President Donald Trump or any of his close allies who helped plan, fund, and execute the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Instead, Attorney General Merrick Garland appears to have thrown up his hands in defeat, as if to suggest that the controversy around holding Trump and his associates accountable has simply been more than he can handle.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
