But one judge has thrown caution to the wind, charging that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and other conservatives on the court are "actively participating in undermining American democracy."
Judge Lynn Adelman of the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Wisconsin wrote an article headlined "The Roberts Courts' Assault on Democracy," which will be published soon in the Harvard Law & Policy Review, Fox News reported.
An online reference to the paper includes an abstract that lays out the allegations:
This article argues that economic and political developments in the last fifty years have in many respects undermined America’s democratic institutions and that, instead of working to strengthen democracy, the Supreme Court over which Chief Justice Roberts presides, is substantially contributing to its erosion. The Court has done this in two ways, first by carrying on a sustained assault on the right of poor people and minorities to vote. The Court has virtually eviscerated the landmark Voting Rights Act, it has upheld strict voter identification laws that serve no purpose other than to make voting more difficult, and it has authorized states to purge thousands of people from the voting rolls. In addition, the Court has abdicated its responsibility to end the anti-democratic process of partisan gerrymandering. The second way in which the Court is weakening democracy is by reinforcing the enormous imbalance in wealth and political power that has developed in recent decades and that has contributed to undermining democracy.
In the article, Adelman, a Clinton appointee, wrote that "the Roberts Court has been anything but passive."
"Rather, the Court's hard-right majority is actively participating in undermining American democracy," the judge said. "Indeed, the Roberts Court has contributed to ensuring that the political system in the United States pays little attention to ordinary Americans and responds only to the wishes of a relatively small number of powerful corporations and individuals."
Adelman made clear he liked neither the Supreme Court's "direct assaults on democracy such as cases that affect voting rights" nor where its "increased the economic and political power of corporations and wealthy individuals and reduced that of ordinary Americans and entities which represent them."
Fox News said the judge did not reserve his ire for the Supreme Court alone.
"He took shots at Senate Republicans for their handling of President Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, which GOP senators ignored in order to allow Obama's successor to appoint someone else – this resulted in President Trump successfully nominating Justice Neil Gorsuch."
The judge said Senate Republicans are like the "fire-eaters," the fervent defenders of slavery said to have pushed the South into the Civil War.
Judge Lynn Adelman is a rabid democrat upset with the fact that with the conservative justices, the Supreme Court will now be more careful not to push through goofy liberal decisions. That is it in a nut shell.
Why?