by Robert Saleem Holbrook

A couple of months ago while in my cell during a routine shakedown of the prison for a drill I indulged in a guilty pleasure and watched an old episode of “All in the Family” while waiting for the shakedown team to get around to searching my cell. During one of his infamous ignorant bigoted rants the lead character, Archie Bunker, in a nutshell delivered one of the most accurate observations of the U.S. Supreme Court: “What the Supreme Court says ain’t got nothing to do with the law.” I had to smile because to anyone who has observed and studied the history of the “highest court in the land” the observation is all too true. The U.S. Supreme Court has never been grounded in law and with the exception of a few “landmark” decisions has served as a “protector” of privilege and of the status quo and as opposed to the protector of the rights of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged citizens within Amerikan society.

The past thirty years has witnessed the Supreme Court doing more to empower government, law enforcement, and the foundations of a “police state” than in its previous 180 years of existence. No longer does the Supreme Court even maintain an appearance of imposing checks and balances on the power and reach of government into the people’s lives and homes. In fact, the last major Supreme Court decision that actually pushed government reach/intrusion out of the lives of people was the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion and after over 30 years of attacks by right wing conservatives that ruling is in danger of being overturned which will once again force countless women to have to resort to dangerous “back alley” abortion clinics. All of the key Supreme Court rulings from the 50’s and 60’s that extended constitutional protections to minorities are also in danger of being rolled back by a right wing Supreme Court and right wing activists determined to put minorities and women back in their place.

As it now stands the Supreme Court has empowered the government to read your mail, email, monitor and store your telephone conversations, spy on you, and your attorney, access your bank records, seize your home for business under eminent domain, detain you—indefinitely, seize and use evidence against you obtained without a warrant, conduct “no knock” raids on your home, arrest you the word of an informant, and perhaps in the future torture you because according to Supreme Court Justice Scalia, the right to “not be tortured” is not found in the U.S. Constitution so no one should expect the Supreme Court to start to check its decisions granting government and law enforcement unlimited powers against the citizenry of this country. The Supreme Court has also given a nod to the establishment of a “Soviet-style” National I.D. Act in its recent decisions upholding an Indiana State law requiring voters to show government issued I.D.’s at the voting booth in order to exercise their constitutional right to vote. What will inevitably be next? A National I.D. in order to travel between states reminiscent of the infamous “papers” required of citizens to travel in authoritarian countries? In today’s hysterical and irrational atmosphere surrounding “homeland security” would anyone be surprised or care for that matter?

Something that is often overlooked is that repressive government policy or judicial decisions often go hand and handwith an ill informed and frightened public opinion. The Supreme Court’s utter worthlessness is demonstrated in its preferred method employed to reach a decision of national importance. Instead of the Justices reaching a “principled” decision based on law and most importantly justice, the so-called Justices consult an “ambiguious” national consensus to formulate their decisions. This standard is not a contemporary development and in fact this “national consensus” standard has been used to justify the exclusion of Blacks from the rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution in its Dred Scott decision, uphold a ban on Chinese immigration at the turn of the 20th century and the internment and displacement of tens of thousands of citizens of Japanese ancestry into concentration kamps during World War 2. In the overwhelming majority of the cases where the Supreme Court was needed to stake out a principled decision when minorities’ rights were threatened, revoked or under siege the Supreme Court has come up short and dismal when needed to check the tyranny of the majority.

True to its role as “protectors of privilege” the Supreme Court has never gone “against the current” or “tempered injustice” but rather like a hobo has stuck its wet thumb to the air to determine in which direction the political wind was blowing and made its decisions accordingly. University of Penn Professor Marie Gottschalk in her book “The Prison and the Gallows: The History of Mass Incarceration in America” calls this approach to decision-making a “Roman Coliseum view” of how to make public policy. This approach is based on fear and the Supreme Court’s decisions gutting citizens’ constitutional rights were “enabled” by the climate of fear the government has manufactured around its so-called “war on drugs” and “war on terror” campaigns. All the extra police powers granted by the Supreme Courts owe their origins to these two campaigns that have done more damage to the rights of the people in this country than any terrorist action or drug cartel.

So instead of consulting an “enlightened” public opinion to shape national policy and key constitutional issues, the Supreme Court is consulting a “frightened” public opinion that has been conditioned to believe a “gang member” or “arab/muslim/terrorist/illegal immigrant is climbing through their back window. Prior to this generated fear of the terrorist, gang member and illegal immigrant, it was fear of minorities, fear of communism, fear of immigrants (a constant fear), etc. Fear more than anything else, fear of the “other,” has determined the national character of this nation and with the amount of police powers the Supreme Court has granted to the government even former dictators such as Pinochet, Milosevic and Mubutu would have been envious and impressed.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court has come to represent a political hack squad with Justices Scalia and Alito looking more and more like they’d be at home back in time goose-stepping in Mussolini’s fascist brigades and Justice Clarence Thomas more eager than ever to continue playing Scalia’s and the extreme rights “mute” lapdog it is time to abolish that court and the trappings of majesty that somehow continues to surround it.

With its continued standard of consulting a frightened public opinion to formulate its legal decisions it is more worthless than ever. As a matter of fact, I suggest we demolish its “august” chamber, install telephone banks and hold national telethon a/a “American Idol” style to determine key constitutional issues in Amerikan society. We could even put the old Justices of the court to work answering the phone lines and perhaps for the first time in their judicial careers they will actually be answering to the people.