A Blog Posting by Emelyn Lybarger & Ben Price of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, from December 11, 2016.
President-elect Trump promises to appoint a hard-right conservative to the U.S. Supreme Court, dashing Progressive hopes for a liberal court in the foreseeable future. And he may well be appointing at least one other Justice.
Progressives are panic-stricken. Conservatives are euphoric. But, regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, one thing is certain: The repercussions of the supreme court overturning decisions such as Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges will be palpable, affecting millions of lives.
How did one body of our government obtain so much power?
The dictionary says “supreme” means “the highest in rank or authority; paramount; sovereign; chief.” But in a democracy, it’s the people themselves or their elected representatives who have the highest authority to make law with the expectation that they will be obeyed and enforced. And yet the president’s appointees have power to overturn those laws. It’s the equivalent of monarchical power placed in the hands of a small band of unelected people in robes.
Was that the intent of the American revolutionaries? Are the court’s monarchical powers the kind referred to in the Declaration of Independence when it speaks of “Governments … deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed?” And if not, then how did we end up with a branch of government so utterly unrepresentative of the people and so completely unanswerable to them? …
To read the entire Blog, click HERE.