Every new term on the Supreme Court brings new indictments against its progressive wing.
Last week, the Supreme Court released its final set of decisions before going on summer recess, including its long-awaited ruling in the case Trump v. United States.
In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that while the president is immune from prosecution for acts related to his primary duties and enjoys presumed immunity for other acts in his official capacity, he may be prosecuted for acts he does in his personal capacity.
The ruling shielded former President Donald Trump from some (but not all) of the federal charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, but more importantly, it prevented a spiral of politically motivated prosecutions that could have paralyzed the executive branch and the United States of America.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, with her characteristic lack of understanding, delivered a hysterical dissent.
“Order Navy SEAL Unit 6 to assassinate a political opponent? With impunity. Plot a military coup to stay in power? With impunity. Take a bribe in exchange for amnesty? With impunity. With impunity, with impunity, with impunity,” she wrote.
“The message from the majority today is that we will allow the president to break the law, to use the privilege of his office for personal gain, and to abuse his public power,” Sotomayor continued.
There is the straw man argument, and the haystack that Justice Sotomayor is trying to convince the American people is the majority opinion.
Even one MSNBC legal analyst rejected Sotomayor’s far-fetched hyperbole, arguing there was “nothing” to back up her most outrageous accusations.
But Sotomayor’s fierce dissent is just the tip of the iceberg.
Her widespread outrage — and one echoed by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — is all the more perplexing given the trio’s sweeping, frightening view of executive branch power, as seen in two dissents issued by the progressive justices last month.
In Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarques, the Court held that when the Securities and Exchange Commission, an executive branch within the executive branch, seeks civil penalties against a defendant, the defendant has a right to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution.
The SEC may not be able to bring lawsuits against defendants in its own internal courts, as it has done in many cases over the years, because doing so would violate core constitutional rights and raise separation of powers concerns.
The majority explained that the executive branch cannot be permitted to act as judge, jury, and executioner.
Sotomayor and other liberals dissented, charging that the majority “imposes artificial constraints on what modern, adaptive governance should look like.”
If modern, adaptive governance means giving up the protections outlined in the Bill of Rights, ancient, inflexible governance is preferable.
The Supreme Court’s fundamentalist wing delivered another victory for the American people and the constitutional order in Roper Bright v. Raimondo.
For many years, a judicial doctrine known as “Chevron deference” has led American courts to delegate the role of protecting the rights of Americans to the executive branch.
This has always been absurd, granting the executive branch unwarranted powers and allowing it to escape judicial oversight.
For example, the National Marine Fisheries Service’s regulations that prompted the Roper-Bright case required commercial fishermen to pay $710 for the pleasure of being monitored, but they were based on a 1976 law that did not explicitly give the service the authority to do so.
Once again, fundamentalists did the right thing by overturning the Chevron principle and restraining the executive branch.
And once again, liberals gnashed their teeth.
Deference to Chevron, Justice Kagan lamented, “is part of the warp and woof of modern government, supporting regulatory efforts of all kinds: keeping our air and water clean, our food and medicines safe, and financial markets fair.”
Is Chevron also responsible for the sunshine and rainbows?
Is it the very axis around which the Earth rotates?
It is odd that liberals should simultaneously be so indignant about the Supreme Court’s reaffirmation of the president’s core power – that he holds all executive power – and so indignant about the Court’s defense of the other two branches of government from executive ambition.
In fact, the only explanation for their backward logic is political.
Progressives’ policies for the country remain deeply unpopular and nearly impossible to pass through the legislature.
Instead of trying to appease or sway public opinion, their solution is to use executive branch overdrive to implement regulations one at a time.
This is a lawless and cunning strategy that can only be defended by using euphemisms such as “modern adaptive governance” and an implausible claim to attributing all that is good and right to a lawless administrative state.
And Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson have abandoned allegiance to the Constitution to defend it.
Isaac Scholl is a staff writer at Mediaite.
