The Nation’s justice correspondent previews the court’s coming term—and explains why it will never stand up to Trump.

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 with its landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I hoped that Democrats would finally get a clue: The Supreme Court is not our friend. It has been corrupted and weaponized and functions as an antidemocratic enforcement mechanism of the Republican political agenda. When it’s not prosecuting the culture war on behalf of white-wing bigots, it’s destroying organized labor, engaging in copaganda, and anointing kings. The revocation of abortion rights was an opportunity for elected Democrats to wean themselves off the anachronistic view that the court is an “apolitical” engine of justice that must be deferred to and respected.

The opportunity was squandered. The Biden administration not only followed the letter and spirit of the Supreme Court’s various rulings, hobbling its own agenda; the president failed to use his bully pulpit to its fullest to turn public opinion against the court. The high court stymied one of Biden’s most popular initiatives, student-loan debt relief, and the administration did nothing. ProPublica handed the Democrats the largest Supreme Court corruption scandal in US history—the revelation that billionaire Harlan Crow had provided lavish, undisclosed vacations and other gifts to Justice Clarence Thomas—and the Democrats did next to nothing beyond writing a few angry letters and voting to issue some congressional subpoenas that were promptly ignored. Democrats refused to organize around court expansion or any other reform that could have reduced the power of this antidemocratic institution. They continued to prop up the court at the very moment there was an opportunity to cut it down to size.

Anytime I complained about this in print, on television, or at any bar in DC that would still offer me service, I was informed by establishment Democrats, left-of-­center lawyers, and even some progressives that protecting the independence and strength of the Supreme Court was necessary. They argued that the public would not accept a Democratic Party that openly defied the courts. They said that a strong Supreme Court was a necessary check against a potential Trump administration.

I told those people they were fools—and events have since proved me right. The Supreme Court has shown time and again that it will provide no resistance to Donald Trump. Quite the opposite, as the court has become an enforcement arm of Trump’s illegal, unconstitutional agenda. Meanwhile, Trump flouts and defies court orders he doesn’t like without paying any appreciable price in the court of public opinion. The Supreme Court has revealed itself to be a useful tool for legitimizing Trump’s policies, and an ineffectual restraint against anything Trump wants to do.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/supreme-court-term-worst-cases/