Academics, Journalists Working With Democrats to Discredit the Supreme Court

Academics, Journalists Working With Democrats to Discredit the Supreme Court

There’s no question that the left has mounted a campaign to delegitimize the Supreme Court. The only question is how far it will go.

From Restoration News:

Smoke, Mirrors, and Attacks on the Law

The Cabal You Don’t See

On April 6, 2023, in the last months of what’s likely to be a landmark Supreme Court term, America’s establishment media lobbed a preemptive grenade against the Court’s conservative majority. The vessel was the prominent investigative news site ProPublica. The grenade was a 3,000-word article titled “Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire” detailing Thomas’ 30-year relationship with Harlan Crow, a real estate investor and Republican donor. The “scoop” was that Crow had invited Thomas, his wife, and other guests on at least five all-expense-paid trips and provided the Justice at least six private plane rides. Crow reportedly also sponsored at least two public donations in Thomas’ honor, bought his childhood house with the intent of turning it into a public museum, and gifted him a $19,000 Bible.

Not much in the story will surprise or upset anyone already aware of Thomas’ history or the Supreme Court’s business. Thomas was a “movement conservative” even before his appointment to the bench and has socialized in conservative political circles for 40 years. The ProPublica report didn’t uncover a case where Thomas ruled in favor of Crow, since Crow’s companies never appeared before the court. Even the fact that Thomas hadn’t reported Crow’s gifts, the “smoking gun” of the story, was not news: Until this year justices operated under reporting requirements that were extremely discretionary. In a statement issued two days after the story broke, the Justice assured the public that he would comply with the new guidelines.

Still, Slate, New York Magazine, and the Washington Post condemned Thomas while the New York Times called for Congress to tighten ethics rules for the Court. Democratic Senators called for a Justice Department investigation. Democratic Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demanded Thomas’ impeachment. There was pushback from conservatives but few met the attack head-on. That’s unfortunate because, as with so much of the smoke-and-mirror game coming from Washington and New York, the apparent story here isn’t the real one. Whether you agree or disagree with Justice Thomas’ views, in the real story he’s only a minor player.

The major players are academics and journalists at national institutions who indirectly—but definitely—shape the narrative the country hears about the Supreme Court. Though they project the authority of the Ivy League and establishment media, they don’t make law and aren’t public figures, so their backgrounds and beliefs aren’t deeply examined. But they should be, because even a cursory examination of their actions since Donald Trump jeopardized the Court’s 70-year role as a vehicle for expanding national power makes a pattern plain. For the past six years, these purportedly objective operators have given explicit institutional support to the Democratic Party, helping it delegitimize the Supreme Court with a thousand cuts, both small and large. In the process, they’ve threatened the Constitution’s separation of powers and obscured a real debate over what the court’s role in the federal system should be.

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