Supreme Court Independence Jeopardized by Leftist Fanatics

Last week was a big week for the Supreme Court. The Court disposed of its rather muddled affirmative action precedents by declaring the entire practice anathema. It enforced constitutionally required separation of powers by rejecting Joe Biden’s executive order creating a $430B student loan forgiveness program. And finally, in keeping with the earlier Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, it reaffirmed the right for people in business to avoid compulsory expressive speech (in this case, web design) contrary to their religious beliefs.

This line of decisions comes on the heels of last year’s ruling in Dobbs, through which the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, returning the question of abortion to the political process within the states.

The Court has been doing a lot of work and, in the process, overturning a range of anti-democratic, activist precedents that have accrued since the 1960s. In the process, a number of decades-long conservative goals have reached fruition.

Recent Decisions Restore Principles of Self-Government

The recent decisions affirm the principles of majority rule, as limited by the plain language of the Constitution. In spite of the Left’s attempted ownership of the concept of democracy, this principle is not advanced by selectively and randomly vetoing legislative enactments and torturing constitutional language to reach favored conclusions.

Instead, self-government requires adherence to a fairly prosaic set of ideas: we elect men to make laws; the words that constitute laws mean what they say; this principle applies to the supreme law that is the Constitution; and, judges are supposed to interpret those words naturally according to their original meaning and neutrally as between the litigants.

This means that “equal protection” does not permit policies of collective punishment towards the white race because of certain past evils. Even under the Fourteenth Amendment, the law deals with individuals as individuals, not as avatars of preferred or disfavored groups.

Similarly, the separation of powers principles and the plain language of Article I of the Constitution require spending—including a massive loan forgiveness program—to originate in the Congress. Biden’s student loan decision may very well be a good policy or a terrible one. But the Court was rightly agnostic on the question of merits, instead asking whether the enactment is within the President’s power.

The decision touching on free speech and gay rights reflects an unavoidable tension, which the Court’s precedents have never fully resolved. Namely, antidiscrimination laws, particularly as applied to private businesses, represent an equal and opposite set of principles as those of the First Amendment. The former turn everyone de facto into a common carrier, a quasi-public institution, which must serve all paying customers equally. By contrast, the First Amendment permits expressive conduct by businesses, even offensive conduct, as well as the right of refusal under the principle of...

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