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Thomas Ray's Reviews > Justice on the Brink: The Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Rise of Amy Coney Barrett, and Twelve Months That Transformed the Supreme Court
Justice on the Brink: The Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Rise of Amy Coney Barrett, and Twelve Months That Transformed the Supreme Court
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bookshelves: at-library, at-pinney, history, politics, detailed-reviews, important, images, judiciary
Aug 10, 2022
bookshelves: at-library, at-pinney, history, politics, detailed-reviews, important, images, judiciary
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/Justice on the Brink: The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Rise of Amy Coney Barrett, and Twelve Months that Transformed the Supreme Court/, Linda Greenhouse, 2021, 300 pages, Dewey 347.7326090512, ISBN 9780593447932
Clear, engaging, eye-opening. A year in the Supreme Court, 2020.06.30 through 2021.07.01. And, lots about the legal and political background. A good introduction to the major changes in many laws the Roberts court has made and is making: Require girls and women to bear children against their will. Require the government to give money to churches. Exempt anyone who professes a government-recognized religion from laws everyone must obey. Permit people in power who profess religion, to deny other people's rights, in ways that would be impermissible if the boss, owner, or official did not profess religion. Roll back voting rights, civil rights, and the rights of the accused. Erase restrictions on armed people roaming at large (but not in the Supreme Court building). Roll back environmental protections. Enshrine property rights. Slash government's power to regulate. Further curtail labor rights. Greenhouse gives us some glimpses behind the scenes, the justices' arguments among themselves that they don't share with the public. pp. 128-129.
With Ginsburg alive, the court was 5 justices who always want to privilege the privileged and oppress the oppressed (wrongly termed "conservative," including by Greenhouse) to 4 who only sometimes wanted to do so (wrongly termed "liberal.") With Barrett having succeeded Ginsburg, it's 6 to 3. So the outcomes are largely the same. The difference is that Chief Justice John Roberts can no longer insist on a pretense of following precedent. He's now outvoted by 5 extremists openly contemptuous of any principle other than remaking the world as they choose. Roberts is acting to create the same Catholic plutocracy the rest of them are: he just would prefer to do it in a way that he thinks makes him look judicial. pp. 219-220, 233. The 2022 succession of Stephen Breyer by Ketanji Brown Jackson doesn't change the typical 6-3 split. The court was divided 5-4 from the late 1970s until 2020. All the "swing" justices were Republican-appointed, each farther toward "all-for-the-billionaire, nothing-for-the-rest" than the last. p. 234.
As of 2022, there are four women on the court: three who compose the typical voice-of-reason dissent (Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan), and one among the radical-right majority (Amy Coney Barrett).
All six radical-right justices were appointed by Republican presidents; the three moderates are Democratic appointees. (Among the predecessors of the 2022-current nine also, six were appointed by Republicans and three by Democrats.)
1947 Linda Greenhouse born. (Author of this book. https://law.yale.edu/linda-greenhouse )
1948 Clarence Thomas born. (G.H.W. Bush appointee, 1991, succeeding LBJ appointee Thurgood Marshall)
1950 Samuel Alito born. (George W. Bush appointee, 2006, succeeding Reagan appointee Sandra Day O'Connor)
1954 Sonia Sotomayor born. (Obama appointee, 2009, succeeding G.H.W. Bush appointee David Souter)
1955 John Roberts born. (George W. Bush appointee, 2005, succeeding Reagan appointee William Rehnquist)
1960 Elena Kagan born. (Obama appointee, 2010, succeeding Gerald Ford appointee John Paul Stevens)
1965 Brett Kavanaugh born. (Trump appointee, 2018, succeeding Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy)
1967 Neil Gorsuch born. (Trump appointee, 2017, succeeding Reagan appointee Antonin Scalia)
1970 Ketanji Brown Jackson born. (Biden appointee, 2022, succeeding Clinton appointee Stephen Breyer)
1972 Amy Coney Barrett born. (Trump appointee, 2020, succeeding Clinton appointee Ruth Bader Ginsburg)
1981-2021 Reagan and all subsequent Republican presidents plege to appoint federal judges who would overturn the abortion rights of Roe v Wade. Meaning Catholic. p. 19.
1981-1982 John Roberts, then a lawyer in the Reagan administration, tries to end the Voting Rights Act. p. 5, 162, 234.
1988.02 The Senate confirms President Reagan's nominee, Anthony Kennedy, to the Supreme Court. p. xiii.
1991.10.23 Clarence Thomas, appointed by G.H.W. Bush, succeeds Thurgood Marshall.
1996.06.26 Ginsburg, Stevens, O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer, Rehnquist decide United States v Virginia: Virginia Military Institute must admit qualified women. Scalia dissents. Thomas, whose son attended the school, recuses himself. pp. 43-44.
2002.06.27 Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas decide Zelman: public funds can be used for religious schools. Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer dissent. p. 17.
2005.09.29. John Roberts becomes chief justice, appointed by George W. Bush, succeeding Rehnquist. In the Roberts court, nearly 90 percent of religious claims prevail, vs. about half in the previous 52 years. Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett, all Catholic, and Gorsuch, Episcopalian raised Catholic, all favor the religious side in more than 90% of such cases. p. 19-20.
2006.01.31 Sandra Day O'Connor, the "swing" justice of her time, retires; Samuel Alito, appointed by George W. Bush, succeeds her, wrenching the court to the right on abortion, race, religion, and women's rights. p. 90. O'Connor was the only justice then or later, to have held elective office. p. 238. Before she announced her retirement, she wrote, "When we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for the constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails while allowing private religious exercise to flourish. Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must answer: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?" No current Republican appointee would say any such thing. They are all busily enshrining religion in law. p. 238.
2007.06.28 Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito decide Parents Involved in favor of white parents: integrating schools violated their Constitutional right to equal protection. Stevens, Breyer, Souter, Ginsburg dissent. pp. 5-6, 130-131.
2008.06.26 Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito decide District of Columbia v Heller, creating an individual right to bear arms, where the Constitution grants the right only for state militias. Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer dissent. pp. 170-175.
2009.08.08 Sonia Sotomayor, appointed by Obama, succeeds David Souter. She is the only one on the court to have ever presided over an actual trial. She was a Manhattan assistant district attorney five years, six years as a trial judge in federal district court in New York, and eleven years on the Second Circuit. p. 123.
2010.08.07 Elena Kagan, appointed by Obama, succeeds John Paul Stevens. She had been dean of Harvard Law School (where she hired "conservative" and "liberal" professors), then Obama's solicitor general. p. 228.
2013.06.25 Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito decide Shelby County [Alabama] v [Obama's Attorney General Eric] Holder, nullifying part of the Voting Rights Act. In dissent, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, says that the majority is throwing away our umbrella in a rainstorm because they haven't been getting wet. States rush to impose voting restrictions. pp. 13, 158-164, 224-229, 234.
2014.06.30 Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas decide Hobby Lobby: corporations don't have to provide legally-mandated healthcare coverage if the owner professes religion. Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Breyer, Kagan dissent. p. 23.
2015.06.26 Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan decide Obergefell: states must grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito dissent. pp. 56-58.
2016.02 Justice Antonin Scalia dies. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately announces he won't permit President Obama to fill the vacancy. Nor to fill numerous other vacant federal judgeships. pp. xiii, xxi.
2016.06.27 Breyer, Ginsburg, Kennedy, Sotomayor, Kagan decide Whole Womens' Health: Texas may not impose undue burdens on abortion providers that would require closing half the abortion clinics in Texas. Roberts, Thomas, Alito dissent. p. 27, 189-191.
2016.11 Hillary Clinton loses to Donald Trump. With appointments by a Democratic president, the court would've upheld the right of the unborn to remain unborn to mothers who don't want and can't care for them; would've upheld voting rights, civil rights, and sometimes the rights of the accused. With a democratic socialist president, the appointed justices would also not have granted personhood rights to concentrations of wealth. p. 4, 89.
2017.01 Trump nominates Neil Gorsuch to fill the Scalia vacancy. Senate Republicans abolish the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments, so Democrats can't stop it. Gorsuch joins the court 2017.04.10. pp. xiii-xiv.
2017.05.08 Trump nominates Amy Barrett to a federal judgeship. p. xxi.
2017.06.26 Roberts, Kennedy, Alito, Kagan, Thomas, Gorsuch, Breyer decide Trinity Lutheran v Comer, requiring the state of Missouri to give money to a church. Only Sotomayor and Ginsburg object. pp. 15-16, 217-221.
2017-2020 Trump picks, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell installs, more than 200 federal judges. p. xi.
2018.10.06 Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by Trump, succeeds Anthony Kennedy. pp. xii-xiii.
2020.05.25 Minneapolis police murder unarmed black man George Floyd. The Roberts court will wait until fall to continue undoing civil rights. p. 4.
2020.06.05 Indiana University professor Winnifred Fallers Sullivan publishes a book, /Church State Corporation/, pointing out that the Roberts court has in numerous decisions privileged "the church," and corporations with power to deny legal rights to individuals. Even though "church" nowhere appears in the Constitution. Instead, the First Amendment grants religious rights to /individuals/ not to be required by the government to participate in a particular religion, nor to be prevented by the government from doing so. p. 21.
2020.06.30 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, all Catholics, and Gorsuch, Episcopalian raised Catholic, decide Espinoza v Montana: the state is REQUIRED to give money to religious schools. Ginsburg, Kagan, Breyer (three Jews), and Sotomayor (nonpracticing Catholic) dissent. pp. 16-18, 218-221, 233.
2020.07.08 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Kagan, Breyer decide Our Lady of Guadalupe: Religious schools are allowed to discriminate widely and with impunity for reasons wholly divorced from religious beliefs. Sotomayor and Ginsburg dissent. pp. 21-22, 218-219.
2020.07.08 Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanagh, Kagan, Breyer decide Little Sisters of the Poor: Employers which are religious may deny their employees healthcare coverage. This permits such employers to deny coverage to their 2.9 million employees. Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissent. pp. 26, 88, 126-127.
2020.09.18 Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies. p. xv.
2020.09.26 Trump nominates Amy Coney Barrett. The Senate confirms her 2020.10.26; she joins the court 2020.10.27. pp. xii, 65.
2020.07-2021.01 Trump puts thirteen condemned prisoners to death. Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Barrett (2020.11- ) deny all appeals, consistently rejecting inmates' credible claims for relief. They refuse to consider reasons for a stay of execution, nor to give their reasons for denying a stay, or even vacating an existing stay. This is not justice, say Sotomayor and Ginsburg (2020.07), in dissent. Kagan usually dissents; Breyer often dissents. pp. 90-95, 111-112, 118-123, 144-148, 179-182, 198-201.
2020.11.25 Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo: Whatever anyone gets, religion must get too. If people are allowed to shop for groceries, there must be no limit on the number of congregants at a religious service, at whatever cost to public health, in a pandemic, with deaths at record levels, while the Supreme Court itself is meeting by phone. Roberts, Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor dissent. pp. 96-99, 105, 106, 175-179, 255.
2021.01.06 Donald Trump incites a riot in the U.S. capitol in which several people die. p. 116.
2021.02.05 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide South Bay United Pentecostal: California must weaken restrictions on public gatherings by making a special exemption for worship services. Kagan, Breyer, Sotomayor dissent. pp. 141-144.
2021.06.17 Roberts, Thomas, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett (9-0) decide Fulton v Philadelphia: An agency that finds foster parents has a religious right to deny same-sex couples consideration as potential foster parents, in violation of the city's antidiscrimination law. The city cannot refuse to contract with the agency. The government is now no longer neutral on religion. Religious claims now trump all others. "God hates fags" has the force of law. pp. 58, 75, 77-83, 207-221.
2021.06.23 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide Cedar Point Nursery v Hassid: Any entry of a labor-union representative into a workplace is a categorical "taking" of the owner's property that the government cannot mandate without paying the owner. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent. pp. 221-224.
2021.07.01 Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide Brnovich v Democratic National Committee: Governments are free to make voting as inconvenient as they choose for racial minorities, Native Americans, people who live in non-affluent neighborhoods, students, anyone likely to vote Democratic. All that the Constitution now requires is that voting be theoretically possible. Kagan, Breyer, Sotomayor dissent. pp. 224-229, 234.
2021.08.13 This book's manuscript finished.
2021.11.09 This book's publication date.
2022.06.23 Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide New York State Rifle & Pistol v Bruen: to carry a pistol in public (but not in the Supreme Court building) is a constitutional right. The state must not ask why the person wants to. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent. pp. 170-175.
2022.06.24 Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Roberts decide Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health: Roe v Wade and Casey are invalidated. Government officials may now compel a girl or woman to bring an unwanted child into the world against her will, however early in pregnancy she seeks to end it. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent. pp. 185-198.
2022.06.30 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide West Virginia v Environmental Protection Agency: EPA must not require power companies to shift to solar or wind. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent.
2022.06.30 Stephen Breyer retires; Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed by Biden, joins the court. She's the first justice raised Protestant to be appointed since G.H.W. Bush picked Souter (Episcopalian) in 1990. There are now five practicing Catholics (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett), one Episcopalian raised Catholic (Gorsuch), one nonpracticing Catholic (Sotomayor) and one Jew (Kagan).
Too bad we couldn't've had a Justice Linda Greenhouse.
"I had nine months to write this book. It took every one of those months, plus the previous four decades of immersion in the life of the Supreme Court as a journalist, writer, and teacher."
Updates:
2022.09.06 Trump's radical-right judges dance to his tune:
2023.05.25 The Supreme Court deleted wetlands protections from the Clean Water Act. Heather Cox Richardson: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... The actual Supreme Court opinion:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions... pp. 62-67 is Kagan's dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson.
2023.06.01: Court erodes workers' right to strike, in Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters, 8-1: only Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Pp. 22-48 of the pdf is her dissent:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions...
Article in The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/pol...
2023.06.22 Right-wing justices accept expensive gifts from billionaires with cases before the court: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...
2023.06.30 The Court reversed the secretary of education's provision of debt relief to student-loan borrowers during COVID. Pages 48-77 of the pdf are Justice Elena Kagan's dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions...
Heather Cox Richardson's blog on it: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...
Clear, engaging, eye-opening. A year in the Supreme Court, 2020.06.30 through 2021.07.01. And, lots about the legal and political background. A good introduction to the major changes in many laws the Roberts court has made and is making: Require girls and women to bear children against their will. Require the government to give money to churches. Exempt anyone who professes a government-recognized religion from laws everyone must obey. Permit people in power who profess religion, to deny other people's rights, in ways that would be impermissible if the boss, owner, or official did not profess religion. Roll back voting rights, civil rights, and the rights of the accused. Erase restrictions on armed people roaming at large (but not in the Supreme Court building). Roll back environmental protections. Enshrine property rights. Slash government's power to regulate. Further curtail labor rights. Greenhouse gives us some glimpses behind the scenes, the justices' arguments among themselves that they don't share with the public. pp. 128-129.
With Ginsburg alive, the court was 5 justices who always want to privilege the privileged and oppress the oppressed (wrongly termed "conservative," including by Greenhouse) to 4 who only sometimes wanted to do so (wrongly termed "liberal.") With Barrett having succeeded Ginsburg, it's 6 to 3. So the outcomes are largely the same. The difference is that Chief Justice John Roberts can no longer insist on a pretense of following precedent. He's now outvoted by 5 extremists openly contemptuous of any principle other than remaking the world as they choose. Roberts is acting to create the same Catholic plutocracy the rest of them are: he just would prefer to do it in a way that he thinks makes him look judicial. pp. 219-220, 233. The 2022 succession of Stephen Breyer by Ketanji Brown Jackson doesn't change the typical 6-3 split. The court was divided 5-4 from the late 1970s until 2020. All the "swing" justices were Republican-appointed, each farther toward "all-for-the-billionaire, nothing-for-the-rest" than the last. p. 234.
As of 2022, there are four women on the court: three who compose the typical voice-of-reason dissent (Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan), and one among the radical-right majority (Amy Coney Barrett).
All six radical-right justices were appointed by Republican presidents; the three moderates are Democratic appointees. (Among the predecessors of the 2022-current nine also, six were appointed by Republicans and three by Democrats.)
1947 Linda Greenhouse born. (Author of this book. https://law.yale.edu/linda-greenhouse )
1948 Clarence Thomas born. (G.H.W. Bush appointee, 1991, succeeding LBJ appointee Thurgood Marshall)
1950 Samuel Alito born. (George W. Bush appointee, 2006, succeeding Reagan appointee Sandra Day O'Connor)
1954 Sonia Sotomayor born. (Obama appointee, 2009, succeeding G.H.W. Bush appointee David Souter)
1955 John Roberts born. (George W. Bush appointee, 2005, succeeding Reagan appointee William Rehnquist)
1960 Elena Kagan born. (Obama appointee, 2010, succeeding Gerald Ford appointee John Paul Stevens)
1965 Brett Kavanaugh born. (Trump appointee, 2018, succeeding Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy)
1967 Neil Gorsuch born. (Trump appointee, 2017, succeeding Reagan appointee Antonin Scalia)
1970 Ketanji Brown Jackson born. (Biden appointee, 2022, succeeding Clinton appointee Stephen Breyer)
1972 Amy Coney Barrett born. (Trump appointee, 2020, succeeding Clinton appointee Ruth Bader Ginsburg)
1981-2021 Reagan and all subsequent Republican presidents plege to appoint federal judges who would overturn the abortion rights of Roe v Wade. Meaning Catholic. p. 19.
1981-1982 John Roberts, then a lawyer in the Reagan administration, tries to end the Voting Rights Act. p. 5, 162, 234.
1988.02 The Senate confirms President Reagan's nominee, Anthony Kennedy, to the Supreme Court. p. xiii.
1991.10.23 Clarence Thomas, appointed by G.H.W. Bush, succeeds Thurgood Marshall.
1996.06.26 Ginsburg, Stevens, O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer, Rehnquist decide United States v Virginia: Virginia Military Institute must admit qualified women. Scalia dissents. Thomas, whose son attended the school, recuses himself. pp. 43-44.
2002.06.27 Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas decide Zelman: public funds can be used for religious schools. Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer dissent. p. 17.
2005.09.29. John Roberts becomes chief justice, appointed by George W. Bush, succeeding Rehnquist. In the Roberts court, nearly 90 percent of religious claims prevail, vs. about half in the previous 52 years. Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett, all Catholic, and Gorsuch, Episcopalian raised Catholic, all favor the religious side in more than 90% of such cases. p. 19-20.
2006.01.31 Sandra Day O'Connor, the "swing" justice of her time, retires; Samuel Alito, appointed by George W. Bush, succeeds her, wrenching the court to the right on abortion, race, religion, and women's rights. p. 90. O'Connor was the only justice then or later, to have held elective office. p. 238. Before she announced her retirement, she wrote, "When we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for the constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails while allowing private religious exercise to flourish. Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must answer: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?" No current Republican appointee would say any such thing. They are all busily enshrining religion in law. p. 238.
2007.06.28 Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito decide Parents Involved in favor of white parents: integrating schools violated their Constitutional right to equal protection. Stevens, Breyer, Souter, Ginsburg dissent. pp. 5-6, 130-131.
2008.06.26 Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito decide District of Columbia v Heller, creating an individual right to bear arms, where the Constitution grants the right only for state militias. Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer dissent. pp. 170-175.
2009.08.08 Sonia Sotomayor, appointed by Obama, succeeds David Souter. She is the only one on the court to have ever presided over an actual trial. She was a Manhattan assistant district attorney five years, six years as a trial judge in federal district court in New York, and eleven years on the Second Circuit. p. 123.
2010.08.07 Elena Kagan, appointed by Obama, succeeds John Paul Stevens. She had been dean of Harvard Law School (where she hired "conservative" and "liberal" professors), then Obama's solicitor general. p. 228.
2013.06.25 Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito decide Shelby County [Alabama] v [Obama's Attorney General Eric] Holder, nullifying part of the Voting Rights Act. In dissent, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, says that the majority is throwing away our umbrella in a rainstorm because they haven't been getting wet. States rush to impose voting restrictions. pp. 13, 158-164, 224-229, 234.
2014.06.30 Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas decide Hobby Lobby: corporations don't have to provide legally-mandated healthcare coverage if the owner professes religion. Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Breyer, Kagan dissent. p. 23.
2015.06.26 Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan decide Obergefell: states must grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito dissent. pp. 56-58.
2016.02 Justice Antonin Scalia dies. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately announces he won't permit President Obama to fill the vacancy. Nor to fill numerous other vacant federal judgeships. pp. xiii, xxi.
2016.06.27 Breyer, Ginsburg, Kennedy, Sotomayor, Kagan decide Whole Womens' Health: Texas may not impose undue burdens on abortion providers that would require closing half the abortion clinics in Texas. Roberts, Thomas, Alito dissent. p. 27, 189-191.
2016.11 Hillary Clinton loses to Donald Trump. With appointments by a Democratic president, the court would've upheld the right of the unborn to remain unborn to mothers who don't want and can't care for them; would've upheld voting rights, civil rights, and sometimes the rights of the accused. With a democratic socialist president, the appointed justices would also not have granted personhood rights to concentrations of wealth. p. 4, 89.
2017.01 Trump nominates Neil Gorsuch to fill the Scalia vacancy. Senate Republicans abolish the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments, so Democrats can't stop it. Gorsuch joins the court 2017.04.10. pp. xiii-xiv.
2017.05.08 Trump nominates Amy Barrett to a federal judgeship. p. xxi.
2017.06.26 Roberts, Kennedy, Alito, Kagan, Thomas, Gorsuch, Breyer decide Trinity Lutheran v Comer, requiring the state of Missouri to give money to a church. Only Sotomayor and Ginsburg object. pp. 15-16, 217-221.
2017-2020 Trump picks, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell installs, more than 200 federal judges. p. xi.
2018.10.06 Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by Trump, succeeds Anthony Kennedy. pp. xii-xiii.
2020.05.25 Minneapolis police murder unarmed black man George Floyd. The Roberts court will wait until fall to continue undoing civil rights. p. 4.
2020.06.05 Indiana University professor Winnifred Fallers Sullivan publishes a book, /Church State Corporation/, pointing out that the Roberts court has in numerous decisions privileged "the church," and corporations with power to deny legal rights to individuals. Even though "church" nowhere appears in the Constitution. Instead, the First Amendment grants religious rights to /individuals/ not to be required by the government to participate in a particular religion, nor to be prevented by the government from doing so. p. 21.
2020.06.30 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, all Catholics, and Gorsuch, Episcopalian raised Catholic, decide Espinoza v Montana: the state is REQUIRED to give money to religious schools. Ginsburg, Kagan, Breyer (three Jews), and Sotomayor (nonpracticing Catholic) dissent. pp. 16-18, 218-221, 233.
2020.07.08 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Kagan, Breyer decide Our Lady of Guadalupe: Religious schools are allowed to discriminate widely and with impunity for reasons wholly divorced from religious beliefs. Sotomayor and Ginsburg dissent. pp. 21-22, 218-219.
2020.07.08 Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanagh, Kagan, Breyer decide Little Sisters of the Poor: Employers which are religious may deny their employees healthcare coverage. This permits such employers to deny coverage to their 2.9 million employees. Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissent. pp. 26, 88, 126-127.
2020.09.18 Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies. p. xv.
2020.09.26 Trump nominates Amy Coney Barrett. The Senate confirms her 2020.10.26; she joins the court 2020.10.27. pp. xii, 65.
2020.07-2021.01 Trump puts thirteen condemned prisoners to death. Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Barrett (2020.11- ) deny all appeals, consistently rejecting inmates' credible claims for relief. They refuse to consider reasons for a stay of execution, nor to give their reasons for denying a stay, or even vacating an existing stay. This is not justice, say Sotomayor and Ginsburg (2020.07), in dissent. Kagan usually dissents; Breyer often dissents. pp. 90-95, 111-112, 118-123, 144-148, 179-182, 198-201.
2020.11.25 Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo: Whatever anyone gets, religion must get too. If people are allowed to shop for groceries, there must be no limit on the number of congregants at a religious service, at whatever cost to public health, in a pandemic, with deaths at record levels, while the Supreme Court itself is meeting by phone. Roberts, Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor dissent. pp. 96-99, 105, 106, 175-179, 255.
2021.01.06 Donald Trump incites a riot in the U.S. capitol in which several people die. p. 116.
2021.02.05 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide South Bay United Pentecostal: California must weaken restrictions on public gatherings by making a special exemption for worship services. Kagan, Breyer, Sotomayor dissent. pp. 141-144.
2021.06.17 Roberts, Thomas, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett (9-0) decide Fulton v Philadelphia: An agency that finds foster parents has a religious right to deny same-sex couples consideration as potential foster parents, in violation of the city's antidiscrimination law. The city cannot refuse to contract with the agency. The government is now no longer neutral on religion. Religious claims now trump all others. "God hates fags" has the force of law. pp. 58, 75, 77-83, 207-221.
2021.06.23 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide Cedar Point Nursery v Hassid: Any entry of a labor-union representative into a workplace is a categorical "taking" of the owner's property that the government cannot mandate without paying the owner. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent. pp. 221-224.
2021.07.01 Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide Brnovich v Democratic National Committee: Governments are free to make voting as inconvenient as they choose for racial minorities, Native Americans, people who live in non-affluent neighborhoods, students, anyone likely to vote Democratic. All that the Constitution now requires is that voting be theoretically possible. Kagan, Breyer, Sotomayor dissent. pp. 224-229, 234.
2021.08.13 This book's manuscript finished.
2021.11.09 This book's publication date.
2022.06.23 Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide New York State Rifle & Pistol v Bruen: to carry a pistol in public (but not in the Supreme Court building) is a constitutional right. The state must not ask why the person wants to. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent. pp. 170-175.
2022.06.24 Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Roberts decide Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health: Roe v Wade and Casey are invalidated. Government officials may now compel a girl or woman to bring an unwanted child into the world against her will, however early in pregnancy she seeks to end it. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent. pp. 185-198.
2022.06.30 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide West Virginia v Environmental Protection Agency: EPA must not require power companies to shift to solar or wind. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent.
2022.06.30 Stephen Breyer retires; Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed by Biden, joins the court. She's the first justice raised Protestant to be appointed since G.H.W. Bush picked Souter (Episcopalian) in 1990. There are now five practicing Catholics (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett), one Episcopalian raised Catholic (Gorsuch), one nonpracticing Catholic (Sotomayor) and one Jew (Kagan).
Too bad we couldn't've had a Justice Linda Greenhouse.
"I had nine months to write this book. It took every one of those months, plus the previous four decades of immersion in the life of the Supreme Court as a journalist, writer, and teacher."
Updates:
2022.09.06 Trump's radical-right judges dance to his tune:
Trump-appointed judge Aileen Cannon granted Trump’s request for a special master to review the government documents the FBI recovered from Mar-a-Lago … which could delay the FBI investigation indefinitely ... an appeal would go to the 11th circuit, where Trump appointed 6 of the 11 judges who, if they wished, could further delay the case, and then agree with Cannon. The Department of Justice could then appeal to the Supreme Court: which now has a 6 to 3 Republican majority, three of whom Trump himself appointed. --Heather Cox Richardson https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...
2023.05.25 The Supreme Court deleted wetlands protections from the Clean Water Act. Heather Cox Richardson: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... The actual Supreme Court opinion:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions... pp. 62-67 is Kagan's dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson.
2023.06.01: Court erodes workers' right to strike, in Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters, 8-1: only Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Pp. 22-48 of the pdf is her dissent:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions...
Workers are not indentured servants, bound to continue laboring until any planned work stoppage would be as painless as possible for their master. They are employees whose collective and peaceful decision to withhold their labor is protected by the NLRA even if economic injury results. pdf p. 47 of 48.
Article in The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/pol...
2023.06.22 Right-wing justices accept expensive gifts from billionaires with cases before the court: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...
2023.06.30 The Court reversed the secretary of education's provision of debt relief to student-loan borrowers during COVID. Pages 48-77 of the pdf are Justice Elena Kagan's dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions...
Heather Cox Richardson's blog on it: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...
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Ms.pegasus
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Sep 07, 2022 10:31AM
Formerly, I had great interest in the arguments used to buttress various decisions. I have read a number of books on the Court, and was particularly impressed by the late Justice Stevens' autobiography. He had a broad range of judicial experience, including having a private practice. Since the events following Justice Ginsburg"s death, I have been unable to continue reading about the Court. They're decisions make a travesty of that long and considered history. The public has been criticized for not reading the decisions. I HAVE read the decisions and believe I have understood as much as any layperson can. I have no problem calling out the blatant hypocrisy and disingenuous attitude of the Court.
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The Court is now a blatantly political clique. Its decisions are legislation.
An excellent review. And what a horror!
Thanks, Casey. I often feel as Steve Martin's character did in Roxanne, seeing what's going on: youtube(dot)com/watch?v=hW5EiGwi_a8
Thomas Ray wrote: "I often feel as Steve Martin's character did in Roxanne, seeing what's going on: youtube(dot)com/watch?v=hW5EiGwi_a8"Ha! What a great scene! Exactly! Lol.
Oh looks interesting. What a frightening compendium of theocratic rulings. I just downloaded the book from the library - Thanks!
