Jamie Raskin, former Constitutional law professor, later impeachment manager in the House, wrote a piece for the New York Times.
Most of us have heard of the insurrectionist flag Samual Alito flew at his beach house and the upside down US flag (also a symbol co-opted by the January Six-ers) at his home. He claims the latter started after his wife had had a tiff with a neighbor and that she did it; but his story keeps changing. (Edit: new details here.)
Meantime, the Supreme Court majority has refused for months to rule on Trump’s absurd claim of absolute immunity, including, it was spelled out, the right to assassinate his opponents.
Which, a year from now, could include the Supreme Court itself.
Senator Durbin wrote to John Roberts asking that Alito recuse on the immunity case.
Alito himself wrote back defying him.
For those who don’t get the Times, Raskin said that there is another option: the Justice Department can request that the other members of the Court require Alito to recuse.
And here’s why that’s possible: there was an elected Chief Justice in West Virginia fourteen years ago who had a case before him of a coal executive who had donated millions to the campaign that got that judge that judgeship. Not cool.
So Congress passed a law stating that in cases where there is a reasonably perceived lack of impartiality, judges and justices–specifically including those on the Supreme Court–can be required by law to recuse themselves and it spelled out how that is to be done.
The Supreme Court Justices can do it themselves, whether Merrick Garland moves on this or not, but if he does, then, by law, they must order that recusal.
And it wouldn’t just be Alito. Clarence Thomas’s wife allegedly funded transportation for busloads of insurrectionists and Thomas was the sole vote backing Trump’s effort to keep his Presidential records out of the hands of the Congressional January 6 investigative committee.
So now we’ll see whether the other members of the Supreme Court will choose to uphold the Constitution and the law. Now that the rest of us know what that one says.
Or not.
VOTE. Our democracy depends on every single vote.
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No one is above the law … not even Supreme Court justices.
As one who clearly remembers the fight for 18-year-olds to get the vote, franchise is very important to me. I wish everyone understood how critical it is to our democracy.
Comment by Anne 05.30.24 @ 12:11 amLeave a comment
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