Stop Saying the Supreme Court Is Illegitimate, Everybody. It’s Making Samuel Alito Super Sad.
Samuel Alito is really pissed that people are calling out and questioning the legitimacy and the integrity of the Supreme Court, all just because the court has proven itself to be totally illegitimate and devoid of integrity.
“It goes without saying that everyone is free to express disagreement with our decisions and to criticize our reasoning as they see fit,” Alito told The Wall Street Journal this week. “But saying or implying that the court is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line.”
Yes, apparently we’re not supposed to question the legitimacy of an institution that has become an undeniable arm of the Republican party, that spent its last term overturning decades of precedent in order to enshrine christofascist dogma into the U.S. Constitution, and that publicly mocked those who criticized their decisions.
Half of the population was just robbed of their bodily autonomy. One Supreme Court Justice was a member of a misogynistic religious cult while another was only confirmed after the FBI pretended to (but absolutely did not) investigate claims of sexual harassment and assault. Oh, and the wife of another justice was just questioned for her alleged role in an ongoing attempt to overturn an election. Just to name a few things the court has going on at the moment!
But according to Alito, we’re not allowed to question whether any of that compromises the legitimacy of the court. That “crosses a line.”
Late last year, when the court was hearing arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson WHO—the case that overturned Roe v. Wade—Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that if the court repealed those rights, it would irreparably damage the reputation of the institution.
“Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception, that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” she asked at the time. The answer is very clearly no.
So sorry to Samuel Alito if that hurts his feelings.
(via , image: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
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