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The corrupt shadow docket

This from Adam Serwer in the Atlantic newsletter is right on:

A new draconian abortion law, which encourages Texans to spy on their neighbors for evidence of forbidden behavior, went into effect Wednesday. Texas Republicans have trumpeted the importance of personal responsibility and individual liberty when fighting coronavirus-mitigation efforts in a state where several thousand Texans died just last month. But when it comes to abortion, the same Republicans have eagerly invoked the power of the state in one of the most personal decisions someone can make, while seeking to bribe state residents to act as informants against anyone who would exercise their constitutional right to end their pregnancy and anyone who might help them do so.  

I wanted to call attention this week not only to the dubious nature of the Supreme Court majority’s reasoning in allowing the Texas law to go into effect, flouting decades of precedent, but to the venue for this immensely consequential decision. Over the past few years, the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” the decisions it makes outside its regular procedure, has become a means for Republican officials to get the results they want as fast as possible. Through the Court’s shadow docket, Donald Trump was able to keep many of his most cruel and controversial policies in place as they were challenged in court. The Biden administration has had much worse luck on the shadow docket, which is no surprise given the Court’s ideological composition.

As the past few months have revealed, Trump’s departure from the White House did not by itself deliver the United States from many of the crises facing the country—the pandemic, the halting economic recovery, or the growing danger to representative democracy. Americans are still fighting over what kind of nation they want to live in. Whether it’s the growing boldness of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the underlying political dynamics driving Texas’s response to the coronavirus, or the battle over voting rights, these conflicts are ongoing …

Indeed. Trump brought all of this into stark relief but the polarization (caused by right wing media IMO) has been growing for a quarter century or more and it continues apace with social media.

Serwer’s full article is here. And yes, the Supreme Court is as thoroughly corrupt as all the other right wing institutions. What did we expect would happen when such a corrupt ideology took over the majority?

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