The legal profession has failed to muster a meaningful defense of our system of government and the rule of law in the face of unprecedented attacks from the Left.
Who will defend the U.S. Supreme Court and our system of self-government from leftists bent on regaining power by any means necessary? Oddly enough, not the legal profession.As the Court faces increased pressure from leftists outraged over the Court’s new majority of justices who believe in adherence to the Constitution, the private bar has done nothing to push back against claims of the Court’s illegitimacy.
Instead, the countless lawyers in government, academia, private practice, and the media remain strangely silent as they witness these unprecedented attacks on the Court.
As threats against six of the justices require them to take abnormal security measures, prominent legal figures continue to attempt to de-legitimize and weaken the vital third branch of our constitutional government. Still, the private bar stays mute.
Justice Samuel Alito recently spoke with the Wall Street Journal and revealed shocking details of life as a Supreme Court justice after the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the case that overturned the grievously wrong Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood decisions, thereby returning to the states the question of legal restrictions on abortion.
The Left celebrated the Supreme Court’s era of made-up constitutional rights hiding within “penumbras” that are “formed by emanations” from the Constitution.
The Left supported the claim that an individual right guaranteed by the black-and-white constitutional text is the “announcement of a new constitutional right.”
But the Left let out a unanimous primal scream upon learning, with last year’s leak of the draft Dobbs decision, that the Court was poised to overrule Roe, a decision infamously described in 1973 by a liberal Yale Law professor:
“It is bad because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.”
In a concerted effort to change the probable result of the decision, supporters of the abortion-on-demand-and-up-until-birth regime sought to blow up the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as an institution.
They publicly threatened the Court and the justices. The result has been the organized illegal harassment of six of the justices and their families at home and, most appalling, an assassination attempt against Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Before the Dobbs case, most Americans would not have known any justice’s name, let alone recognize a single justice out in public. Sitting justices were generally safe from personal character attacks and media vilification, unlike the character assassination that Democrats have made a rite of passage for Republican nominees.
Today, Alito “cannot go anyplace by myself without the tank and members of the police force.” The justices’ homes are under round-the-clock security detail. Republican-appointed justices are targets for assassination by crazy leftist nuts who want Joe Biden to appoint a new justice.
“The idea has always been that judges are not supposed to respond to criticisms,” Alito told the Wall Street Journal, “but if the courts are being unfairly attacked, the organized bar will come to their defense.”
Instead, the legal profession has remained completely silent as the Court and individual justices face extraordinary attacks.
Biden took up court-packing as a priority by creating a committee to review whether Congress should “expand the court” by adding more justices, creating newly vacant seats for Democrats to pack the court with more Democratic appointees.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed federal agents not to enforce 18 U.S. Code 1507, which criminalizes protests outside any judge’s house to influence judicial decisions.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) stood on the Supreme Court steps and threatened, “You have unleashed the whirlwind and you will pay the price! You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions!”
Leftist law professors have revealed how they feel about the Court’s legitimacy and how they are changing their teaching to reflect their feelings.
Might we expect better from professors of law, entrusted with training the next generation of lawyers? Not a chance. As an academic study has shown, lawyers lean left, academia leans left, and the law professoriate leans very far to the left.
The media echo chamber picked up on the messaging of the Biden Administration, top Democratic Party lawmakers and Democratic politicians.
Targeted pieces by MSNBC, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other media outlets attack the Supreme Court.
The justices and the Court rarely address criticism, but the tenor and the volume of the attacks have prompted responses by the Court, including a response by the Court to Senator Dick Durbin, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Signed by all current members of the Court, the statement emphasizes the justices’ security needs:
“Judges at all levels face increased threats to personal safety,” especially Supreme Court justices, given the higher profile of their cases. “Recent episodes confirm that such dangers are not merely hypothetical,” warn the justices.
Despite the obvious effort by Democrats and their media allies to put a target on the backs of six of the justices and diminish the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, the legal profession has failed to muster a meaningful defense of our system of government and the rule of law.
