I have long criticized the increasing public appearances of Supreme Court justices who appear to be maintaining a type of popular base of supporters on the left and the right. It is the age of the celebrity justice. Scalia and Sotomayor were in the news this week attracting headlines with commentary on cases or political issues. However, it was the comment of Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. yesterday that was the most striking. Alito dismissed new polls showing that the Court was at a near record low in respect and approval at some 43 percent. Alito said that it did not bother him at all, which (judging from his past conduct) should not come as much of a surprise.
Clearly the Court should not be striving for popularity. Indeed, lifetime tenure is designed to insulate members of the Court from such popular demands or expectations. However, justices (including Alito) are increasingly seen pandering to outside groups from their ideological camps. Indeed, Alito was widely criticized for attending a conservative fundraiser. Moreover Alito was unrepentant in his unprofessional appearance at a State of the Union address. Then there is the open arrogance shown by some of his colleagues in their public events. That type of conduct clearly undetermined the respect for the Court and should not be dismissed by any member.
I have previously criticized Chief Justice Roberts for repeatedly failing to take the difficult step of chastising the conduct of his colleagues. Indeed, Roberts seemed to support Alito in openly disagreeing with President Obama at the State of the Union.
When asked about the near record disrespect for the Court at the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches and the Palm Beach County Bar Association, he simply replied
“It’s fine if we are not all that popular. There is a reason why the Constitution gives federal judges life tenure. We are supposed to do our jobs without worrying whether our decisions are pleasing to anybody.”
Yes, but their job also should include judicial ethics. Lower court judges routinely refuse to speak at ideological events or discuss issues that are or will be before their courts (and here). The Justices not only violate this core principle of ethics but they insist that they are above the rule of judicial conduct governing other federal judges. Indeed, when they leave the court and sit on lower courts, former justices seem to have a hard time adhering to ethical rules.
As noted in an earlier column, the increasing high-visibility appearances of justices is in stark contrast to their use of the Ginsburg rule to avoid discussing issues at their confirmation hearings. Indeed, Justice Thomas refuses to speak even in oral arguments but regularly appears before conservative groups to throw red meat to his base just as Justice Ginsburg herself has done with liberal groups.
There is a good reason why the Supreme Court is unpopular and it is not entirely due to their rulings. The justices themselves are undermining the integrity and respect for the Court. It is not surprising to see members dismiss the view of the public given their dismissive attitude toward principles of judicial ethics.
In my District Court the Judge refers to the Court as his court and does not permit anything that he does not approve of. He also was heard speaking to an accused “as far as you are concerned, I am GOD”. Tell me how this Judge was able to sit the Bench for 20 years and is still sitting Bench in other counties.
Alito’s wife’s crying didn’t fool me, now we all cry at the disgrace this man has brought to the court.
You wonder why they act as legislators in giving interviews, why the nomination proceedings are political ?
The philosophical forbears on the Court opened Pandora’s Box in the mid-twentieth century by making themselves the great seers on the mountaintop.
Step by step they incorporated the Bill of Rights, consolidating federal power, and making themselves the final arbiters of what is “equal” instead of the elected representatives of the people. What is appropriately on a “rational basis”? They decide. You cheer when a Windsor is handed down and moan when it is a Bush v Gore or a McDonald V Chicago but they all have the same root and those of you who know the law know the root.
Yet you continue to support the decisions based on “purpose” and “consequences” (Breyer the current leader of the troop) and then pretend to wonder why they act as legislators.
They have made themselves the proverbial Solomon (with your continued help) and at some point they will succeed not in sparing the baby but in finally cutting the republic in half.
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t I read a while back that the justices don’t want TV cameras in the court because it might impair the public’s respect for the court?
What Justice Holmes said awhile back. The idea that facts don’t even matter to the Supreme Court is what concerns me. When Justice Scalia is repeating conservative talking points in open court, something is wrong.
It figures that Alito would come down here to yak to Palm Beach rich guys. This town is full of Yorkies. That is the problem with the Supreme Court. Six of Nine are from Jersey or New York and all speak “turdy turd and a turd” (their pronunciation of 33rd street and 3rd avenue), all but one are from Harvard or Yale. None have ever once represented a criminal defendant in a jury trial. Few have ever tried any jury trial. The method to this lame madness is go to Harvard and/or Yale, speak turdy turd and a turd, clerk for some judge, become an assistant attorney general and then get appointed to the DC Court of Appeals. No others need apply.
Actual popularity isn’t some high-school drama. It’s the basis of the faith we put into our public institutions, all of which have failed to one degree or another.
Including the SCOTUS.
The state of the SC is one huge reason the Dems must retain the WH in 2016.
The United States Supreme Court
A Supreme FU to you twelve Nazi’s, for without your denial to allow complaints be to filed against public officers of state supreme courts in Florida and New York, someone had time to attempt to murder my family, so make that a FU times 4, one for the wife and kids. FU for your supreme failure to take heed that crimes have been committed on a massive scale against our country, including Treason and Fraud on The US Patent Office and you all closed your eyes, allowing the criminals almost to murder my wife, my children and me. Yes, that was a bomb planted in my car with intent according to the fire investigator, Rick Lee.
FU further for your failure to notice that the Petition I filed Pro Se for lack of an honest attorney to join me, made your dumb arses well aware that the country was under siege and that crime was being committed against the country, not just against the inventors and shareholders of Iviewit. Finally, FU for your failure to do what the Constitution mandates you to do and instead just closing your eyes and opening your pocketbooks by aiding and abetting the Tyrannous Treasonous Coup. Your true colors showed with your ruling to remove of Habeas rights (exactly as Hitler did when his Brown Shirts pulled a coup on Germany), your allowance of the ANTIPATRIOTIC ACT and finally with the ELECTION FRAUD you conspired in, you sold out our country. Personally, I would hang every one of you b astard NWO freaks. How can you not have reacted even now after seeing that my wife and children were hours away from murdered and yet you still sit there and play see no evil? I await your next move on the chessboard, as it will tie the noose tighter in the end. Remember the Nuremberg Judges’ Trial; they will come hunting Nazi’s like you for another round of trying freaks of law like you that twist law to make concentration camps and torture legal. Mind you on the last filing with this Supreme Nazi Court, Iviewit summoned the Solicitor General to join our efforts in presenting the case for the crimes against the government to you but you denied us due process and procedure and dismissed the case prior to an answer from the Solicitor General, who never answered. A coordinated effort, by the Court charged with protecting the Peoples Rights, to deny Americans their right to have crimes against the country represented in a court of law. Before even hearing if the Solicitor General would join to prosecute on behalf of our government, for the crimes committed against the government and foreign nations, you J Offs rushed to dismiss the case before even getting an answer from him ~ how strange. Were you in a hurry?
Perhaps this is why Sandra Day jumped ship from the Supremes, a job not often rescinded voluntarily and they tried to replace her with some scary candidates. Harriett Meir, Bush’s legal girl at the Whitehouse, nominated as a Supreme Court Justice, what a f’ing joke. Then there is Alito, who has Skull and other weird club associations, who scares me that he belongs to several college cult groups which are all for discrimination and slavery. Bush needed the Court fully under NWO control, to try to stave off any charges against him for War Crimes and more, he needed a complicit Supreme Court or vice versa. Strange how O’Connor left right when Iviewit filed a Motion for Certiorari at the US Supreme Court[47] and then Rehnquist took a last breath or was his last breath cut short for him and so began the current siege on the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has become a Supreme Joke, stacked with non-qualified judges violating the Constitution versus upholding it. If that is the case, than as Marie Antoinette used to say, “off with their heads.” Conspiracy Theorists have questioned if Rehnquist’s death was natural, or if he was not going to go along further with this NWO farce, including, Treason, sedition, torture, warrantless wiretapping and war crimes, having a change of heart and so they off’d him.
Next time I come to the doors of the Supreme Court and you blow me off, I will have to call for a judicial cleansing of the Courts to the People, as the Constitution calls for us to take arms against our government when the government has corrupted against the people from Domestic Terrorists like Bush and Cheney. Forced to begin a peaceful uprising to throw your arses from their judicial seats to clean them of the stain you will leave if you do not uphold our Constitution. Yeah, I know you say, “yeah right,” what are you going to do about it? Just ask the other fellows named herein as criminals who underestimated me. I will be frank, so there is no misunderstanding of this FU to You, I am on a mission from G-d, believe it or not, that mission is to rid scum from the earth to clear the way for our children to fix the world. The world that has become a mess from the messed up laws and payola to d-head justices like you guys who put your own above the good of all and make laws that have ruined the country and her resources. Your new laws not only violate the people they violate G-D. You are no longer a court to respect, you are a f’ing joke, a court of jesters, the people grow weary of you and your laws you pass to protect Nazi ways. You do not scare me with your black robes or the power to do injustice to me to protect your unethical and perhaps in some cases criminal actions. Perhaps send Cheney over to visit me, although shotguns are far less intimidating than car bombs. Perhaps for my strong will to rid our country of sc-mbags who have infiltrated it for their own benefit, you can twist that into a terrorist threat and put a bag over my head, deny me further counsel, send me to Gitmo and let me rot with the others that are denied their fundamental rights by d-heads like you.
Yet I fear no evil, especially not from a small group of not so clever delusional criminals disguised as public officials and lawyers. You are merely a collection of men, simple public servants; your robes filled with honor or disgrace, your historical call, your actions will define your plight. You may block Patentgate today and perhaps tomorrow but there are generations of interested parties who not only have the evidence but also have claims to the inventions that will go on for years to come. Your actions against the shareholders noted so far will go down in history as people become aware that you prevented shareholders from filing complaints against public officers of state Supreme Courts. Public officers proven violating their public offices and you buried it. Then what, told them to blow up my family, again sounds pretty Nazish around here to me. The country is all ready sick of all the corruptions exploding on the scene, they are looking for some heads to hang for the messes we are in, I shall steer them your way. I will advise you now, forewarn you, and, I know you will laugh but to make us all proud of you and the country we live in, in our future, do your f’ing job! Get on with protecting things like inventors’ rights under the Constitution, Human Rights and insuring that Presidential Election Frauds never happen again, by the by, great job on picking the dumbest president ever. So give the Iviewit inventors back their inventions, the Iviewit shareholders their “MTV” and let’s get back to democracy, there is time to “cut bait” and before this becomes a national stain that scares inventors from this country or inventing entirely, sooner than later should be your desire. Finally, next time let the People choose the President and oversight the process to prevent further election frauds or this country is lost. That is until such time that a revolution begins. Oh yeah, remember G-d, the deity you swore oath too, whatever color it may be, to uphold TRUTH – JUSTICE AND THE AMERICAN WAY? Do not forget what false oath is to your maker and do not forget that coveting another’s is a cardinal sin. Or else, get ready as we go to battle over this and you may know my motto is:
“GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH”
http://www.iviewit.tv/CompanyDocs/Book/index.htm#_Toc265343614
and
http://www.iviewit.tv/supreme%20court/index.htm
bettykath – Your SO bahhddd (but spot on)
RobinH45 – Can’t say I disagree (in a 5th Element Baptist sort of way)
Dredd – Concur (in the sense that “They” simply don’t give a rat – f—-)
frank – concur, Concur and Concur; but I’m not afraid – Just PIssed!
I submit this “trend” of some Supreme Court Justices appearing at political gathering and/or allowing their expenses to be paid to speak at a function is a violation of most, if not all, state and federal judicial ethics and canons.
I agree with an old saying:
“I love my country, it’s the government I’m afraid of.”
And I am afraid of this branch of government!
What he means is that it is fine that he is doing his part to make the court so unpopular.
He is a sacrifice.
Or as psychologists might say, he gives voice and ink to suicidal impulses from time to time.