Former President Donald Trump has been found liable by a jury for sexual abuse and defamation against E. Jean Carroll. FOX News settled with Dominion Voting Systems to avoid going to trial.
Add this to the 60 cases lost by the Trump team in their attempt to overturn the presidential election.
Even in the case concerning Donald Trump illegally holding classified documents where U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon sided with Trump, she was overruled by the United States Court of Appeals.
As the nation is politically and socially polarized, it should be quite apparent how important the nation’s courts are. Despite the Trump onslaught on the American political system, the courts have served more times than not in preventing the nation from being corrupted.
Those of the American electorate who still operate with a semblance of rational thinking, should have first and foremost the understanding about the importance of the courts. Think of why the conservative billionaire class in particular have constantly supported Senator Mitch McConnell in his goal of making the courts as conservative as possible.
When one thinks about how the Supreme Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which has emboldened GOP state houses to make it harder for certain groups of voters to vote, overturned Roe V. Wade, or how a Federal judge in Texas struck down President Biden’s student relief plan, the recent revelations of Justice Clarence Thomas receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in various forms from billionaire Harlan Crow, have made many voters skeptics of the judicial philosophy which led to those decisions.
Nonetheless, it is the judicial system that stands between maintaining hard won freedoms or losing them to extreme right wing judges who have become judicial activists despite protestations by conservatives who have professed opposition to judicial activism.
The electoral system is the process by which judges are selected and those who want the nation to remain a democratic republic must act on that premise. While voters especially younger voters may not want President Biden to run again, the next election will be a binary choice. Those who seek a third party choice will make the election of right wing candidates who seek to curtail rights (except the right to own a weapon that makes mass murder easier) a probability.
At the heart of the 2024 presidential election will be who gets to nominate the firewall against extremism. Who will protect stare decisis? Justice Clarence Thomas has already said the court needs to revisit the decision on marriage equality. With the overturning of Roe V. Wade, it is not far fetched to believe that the Connecticut vs. Griswold decision could be revisited, which the Roman Catholic Church might be happy about.
The courts don’t always get it right. Think of how a Federal judge from Texas struck down President Biden’s student debt relief plan or how another Texas Federal judge appointed by Trump suspended the availability of mifepristone, not to mention Chief Justice Roger Taney’s infamous Dred Scott decision. Nonetheless, that part of the American governance system is critical especially these days when facts seem to be a non-essential component for certain segments of the population. Critical to the judicial process is who gets to nominate judges as well as who controls the senate which must vote on the nominations.
At the top of the Democrat agenda for 2024 should be the question, who do you want to preside over your rights? Who do you want to preside over the constitutionality of laws that are passed to extend rights not to curtail them?
America in its effort to become a more perfect union has always been in a struggle to expand the Declaration of Independence notion of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It has time after time continued to prove correct, albeit at times with great contention, Theodore Parker’s, quote-that “the arc of the moral universes is long but it bends towards justice”
It has been the courts that have upheld the expansion of rights. Conservatives working through its various stakeholders such as the Federalist Society, understand the importance of the court in the implementation of its agenda. While Justice Sonia Sotomayer had a public housing project in the Bronx named after her, people like Harlan Crow provided luxury jet trips to exotic places, paid for tuition and bought property from Justice Thomas.
It is the court system that protected America from a coup. People on the side of democracy must support an agenda that emphasizes the importance of judicial nominees that will defend the system of governance and hard earned rights.
While today’s verdict against Trump was of a civil nature, it should provide an insight particularly to Democrats that the judicial branch of government is just as important as the congress and executive.
The threats against American democracy is not over and the nation needs to ensure that the judicial system is not remade in the image of right wing extremists