How the US Supreme Court Put a Blowtorch to American Democracy. Here are the Five Cases.

(Chevron might have taken my law license, but I still spend time confronting the predators who are destroying our planet. This platform is one way I can generate income after Chevron wiped out my bank accounts in retaliation for winning the landmark $10 billion pollution case in Ecuador. Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. — Steven)

You know the Supreme Court of the United States is bad. It’s actually worse than you think — even much worse.

I’m going to try to explain from the perspective of a longtime human rights advocate how the US Supreme Court is putting a blowtorch to American democracy. Yes — the court that is supposed to be the last line of defense to protect our democracy is now actively undermining it with a super-majority of six right-wing extremists that is consistently and systematically hostile to the very concept of majority rule.

I highlight five Supreme Court rulings dating back to 2010 to help illustrate this point. There are of course many more more problematic rulings from the court, particularly in recent years. I have chosen these five because I believe they are representative of how the law in the United States is being weaponized to target our democracy.

All of the five decisions issued under the tenure of Chief Justice John Roberts (who came on the Court in 2005), an ardent corporatist. These rulings are not a series of bad one-offs; they are part of an overall strategic plan that has existed in right-wing networks for decades to try to achieve a multi-generational dominance of American society by the billionaires, oligarchs, and large corporations. This plan — documented brilliantly by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse in the book The Scheme — is for the wealthy (including billionaires like Musk and Bezos and powerful corporations like Chevron and Merck) to achieve societal dominance by exercising power via the lever of the Supreme Court, part of the only branch of government not elected by the people.

This plan for right-wing dominance is in my view simply incompatible with democracy. It cannot coexist with rule by the majority because that would threaten the growing power of the elites. Most importantly, it could not happen unless the six right-wing justices of the Supreme Court were willing partners open to using the “law” to systematically undermine the key infrastructure that makes democracy possible.

Think about how clever this is.

If a tiny elite wanted to create a society where those with the greatest economic power control key decisions, all one has to do is to gain control of the one political body where power is the most concentrated and all-encompassing. That’s the Supreme Court. This is where a majority of only five people can determine to an almost unbelievable degree how the rest of us 370 million people in this country are allowed to live — including whether people of color can enjoy the right to vote, whether women can control their own bodies, and whether the President of our country is allowed to commit crimes with impunity.

Below are the five key cases the US Supreme Court used to put a blowtorch to liberal American democracy. There’s many more cases and rulings contributing to the demise of our liberal democratic system of governance, but I consider these to be the bellwether cases. I am going to try to describe them in a way where everyone can understand their meaning, independent of the technical esoterica the Court often employs to obfuscate its very obvious political agenda.