Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution

by Elie Mystal

But if a Democratic president can expand the Court, can’t a Republican president do the same if that party controls all of government again? And won’t that lead to an endless tit for tat, where the Supreme Court is an endlessly increasing body that turns into a “super legislature” that changes control based on the party in power? Yes. And I don’t care. I don’t care because the Supreme Court is already a super legislature that works to frustrate and disrupt law passed by democratically elected representatives. I don’t care because, absent a couple of decades in the middle of the twentieth century, that super legislature almost always works against the interests of minorities and women. I don’t care because telling people that we have to wait until Neil Gorsuch (appointed after Mitch McConnell refused to even hold a hearing on Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland) and Brett Kavanaugh (appointed despite credible accusations of attempted rape) and Amy Coney Barrett (appointed after an election had already started to replace the twice-impeached man who nominated her) literally have to drop dead before we can advance urgent legislation needed to combat climate change, is unacceptable. The country cannot be held hostage by four years’ worth of Trump judges for the next fifty years. I don’t care about what Republicans will do if they ever control all of government again, because a Supreme Court willing to protect voting rights and take the Fifteenth Amendment out of cryostasis ...