Controversy and the Supreme Court are no strangers

Published July 9, 2015

Editorial by Burlington Times-News, July 8, 2015.

The backlash to the Supreme Court’s controversial 5-4 rulings last month brings back memories. In the turbulent 1960s the call was to “Impeach Earl Warren,” then chief justice of a High Court that took on the hot-button issues of those times. It was seen on billboards and bumper stickers.

So when calls began to outright abolish the court over the past couple of weeks, it had a familiar ring. Just this week, a letter writer to the Times-News called for the court to be abolished because it was damaging the Constitution. An ironic point of view since the court was itself established by that same Constitution the writer wishes to protect.

It gets confusing.

Highly contentious rulings have that kind of impact. The rulings about the Affordable Care Act and same-sex marriage fall into that category. There’s already talk posed by Republican leaders of a national marriage amendment, sort of like the one North Carolina passed back in 2012. The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that so far 14 magistrates around the state had recused themselves from conducting same-sex marriages as they are allowed now by a bill passed by the N.C. General Assembly a few weeks ago.

Defenders of traditional marriage, though, will have a tough row to hoe. The amendment would have to pass both houses of Congress by a two-thirds majority. Getting enough votes would be difficult. Then, the amendment would have to be ratified, or approved, by legislatures in 38 of the 50 states. There are more than 12 “blue” states on the map.

The Constitution provides supporters with an end run: Two-thirds of the state legislatures can call for a national convention to approve amendments. But that’s a tough proposition, too, since many people fear a convention could be a wild card. In 227 years, no convention has been successfully called.

In the meantime, some politicians, trying to surf public emotions, have been weighing in, and not always wisely.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who’s running for president on the GOP ticket, suggested in an impromptu speech that we “just get rid” of the Supreme Court much the way our letter writer suggested. Not likely. It would take another amendment. What would replace the high court wasn’t clear. (A few days later, Jindal apparently calmed down and told reporters Louisiana would abide by the court’s ruling, but he’d still push for a marriage amendment.)

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who’s also running for president, came up with an even more baroque solution. In a letter to National Review, he urged amendments to abolish the justices’ lifetime tenure. Instead, they’d have to face retention elections every eight years. It’s a deceptively appealing idea, but think a minute. Consider a typical election to Congress: In 2014, more than $78 million was spent on North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race, much of it coming from “dark money” groups that did not have to disclose their donors.

Now, consider how much money would be circulating in a Supreme Court election. At the state level, we’ve already seen $200 million spent since 2000 on supreme court races.

John Grisham and others have warned of wealthy corporations essentially buying favorable court rulings by installing amenable judges.

The fact is, the nation’s founders knew what they were doing when they erected high barriers to interfering with federal judges. The last thing we need to do is to politicize them further.

Actually, they’re pretty political already. As Finlay Peter Dunne famously put it, the Supreme Court reads the election returns. And in judging the shifts in public opinion, those nine lawyers in black robes might have a better sense about how the nation is turning than politicians rushing for a share of the vote.

http://www.thetimesnews.com/article/20150708/OPINION/150709074/15233/OPINION/?Start=1