In a broader sense … today’s ruling is of a piece with this Court’s recent tendencies. “[R]ight when the Judiciary should be hunkering down to do all it can to preserve the law’s constraints,” the Court opts instead to make vindicating the rule of law and preventing manifestly injurious Government action as difficult as possible. This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.
This is from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent in National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association: a 5-4 decision staying an appellate court ruling to restore NIH funding withheld by the Trump administration.
The judgment regarding the corruptly partisan Republican justices comprising the Supreme Court’s majority is hardly confined to this case. This majority, discarding the Constitution (along with the rule of law, separation of powers, history, precedents, and any semblance of judicial restraint) has supercharged the authoritarian rampage of Trump’s second term.
The MAGA Republican Party dominates all three branches of the federal government. Without that total domination, our democratic institutions would not be so highly vulnerable now. And note well: John Roberts, though dissenting in this instance, has paved the way for the wannabe strongman in the White House going back more than a decade — that is, even before Donald Trump rode down the golden escalator.
Thank you, Justice Jackson, for clearly and plainly expressing the depth of this court’s lawless corruption.