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Join NowHow Corrupt Is SCOTUS? The History of SCOTUS Corruption and What We Can Do About It
Seven out of 10 Americans think the Supreme Court operates based on ideology, rather than being fair and impartial. We’ve seen reports of justices accepting luxury gifts and vacations worth millions of dollars. Supreme Court justices are not above the law, and we can help hold the Supreme Court accountable.
We spoke with Alex Aronson, founder of Court Accountability, who researches corruption within the Supreme Court.
Once again, it’s an unprecedented time in the U.S., and SCOTUS is playing a major role in what we’re seeing.
How did the Supreme Court become corrupt?
According to Alex, the Supreme Court didn’t start becoming corrupt recently; it’s been an intentional process for more than 70 years.
As Alex says, “The Supreme Court that we have today, this durably entrenched 6-to-3 extreme Supreme Court, is the product of a 50-year special-interest campaign that really got off the ground in the backlash to racial integration and Brown v. Board of Education in the 1950s.”
Diving deeper into how our extremely divided Supreme Court came to be, Alex notes what was happening about 50 years ago.
“It really was fueled by fossil fuel interests and corporate billionaires in the ‘70s who realized that the courts could be a powerful vehicle for the advancement of their corporatist agenda. And then, of course, the galvanization of the religious right around the goal of overturning Roe v. Wade.”
We’ve seen how profits and corporations influence politics. We’re seeing lifesaving laws being overturned and new and scary precedents being set.
As Alex states, “What these judges were put there to do and what we’ve seen them do is not just advance the substantive agenda of these billionaires and [religious] extremists but also clamp down the levers of democracy.”
These are not new practices for the Supreme Court or corporations, but in recent years and with unprecedented rulings, it feels more dire and dangerous.
We now know the extent of gifts Supreme Court justices receive from wealthy political donors. Justice Alito has received luxurious resort vacations from GOP donors, while Justice Thomas has accepted gifts and vacations worth more than $4 million over his career.
What can we do about Supreme Court corruption?
Elected officials have started probing into Supreme Court corruption by introducing articles of impeachment for Justice Alito and Justice Thomas.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just called for the impeachment of Justice Alito and Justice Thomas due to their breach of ethics—such as Alito flying insurrectionists flags in his yard and Thomas accepting lavish trips from right-wing billionaires and his wife being a key player in the scheme to overturn the 2020 election. Both justices have refused to recuse themselves from cases related to Trump and January 6.
These articles of impeachment are exactly what needs to be happening. Alex notes that our elected officials have the power to bring ethics to the Supreme Court. “The most serious responsibility lies in the hands of Congress, and particularly the Senate in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has the power right now to conduct oversight, to do investigations, to uncover more about what’s happening here.”
Our elected officials have started the process to bring ethics and fairness back to the Supreme Court, but there’s a lot we can do to help.
Join us!
We need to hold the Supreme Court accountable to bring stability and fairness back to the U.S. We can restore checks and balances by supporting our elected officials who have started this process.
According to Alex, “I think there’s a real opportunity to catalyze the energy that we’re already seeing in our movement spaces and in our constituencies to build a movement toward reform.”
Sign the petition to demand Congress take action to fight back against Supreme Court corruption.
Together, we can start to hold Supreme Court justices accountable to ensure they are operating fairly and without bias.
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