As a result of a number of recent decisions, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has come under increased scrutiny, earning growing disapproval and mistrust. Sadly, but hopefully, the July 4th mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois should call into question not just any one of these particular decisions, but their approach and method to Constitutional law itself.
The issue I want to bring up is with the Supreme Court’s tendency to read, interpret, and—most importantly—understand how the law and the Constitution themselves relate to improving the lives of Americans in a more broad-based and thorough manner.
The July 4th shooting in Highland Park makes clear that the approach I’m referring to is one of bad faith and is disarmingly anti-intellectual in addition to being absolutely lethal for Americans, demonstrating the SCOTUS’s supreme disregard for American lives.
Let’s start with Justice Samuel Alito’s criticism of Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent in the court’s recent decision invalidating New York’s concealed carry gun law. Justice Stephen Breyer argued that Justice Clarence Thomas’ majority opinion made it significantly more difficult to regulate the possession of firearms moving forward.
In the concurrence he wrote in support of Thomas’ majority opinion, Alito expressed outrage and accused Breyer of writing and arguing outside the bounds of the case by bringing up the epidemic of gun violence and homicide in America.
He wrote, “That is all we decide. Much of the dissent seems designed to obscure the specific question that the Court has decided. Our ruling makes no decisions regarding who is eligible to legally own a firearm or the requirements needed to purchase one.
“It is hard to see what legitimate purpose can possibly be served by the majority of the dissent’s lengthy introductory section,” he wrote in an attack on Breyer’s dissent.
He specifically asks “Why, for example, does the dissent think it is relevant to recount the mass shootings that have occurred in recent years,” which is one of his most pointed questions.
Breyer does make mention of the 45,222 Americans who were killed by firearms in 2020 in the first line.
But why, in Alito’s opinion, is it relevant that thousands of murders are associated with the widespread and largely unchecked proliferation of gun ownership?
God forbid that the laws we enact actually address the issues facing the world in which we live, I suppose!
The Sabbath was created for man, not man for the Sabbath, as Jesus reminded the Pharisees in the gospel of Mark.
In other words, laws are meant to protect human life and those who live in the social world that our legal system governs.
A law must be rooted in the history and traditions of the country in order to be valid, according to Thomas’ majority opinion in this case and Alito’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade. This means, as far as one can tell, that if one cannot find legal precedent dating back before the mid-nineteenth century, then we simply cannot create a new law.
The murderous shooting on July 4th, of course, highlights how deeply ingrained murder and gun violence are in the history and traditions of our nation.
Instead of examining our past and reconsidering traditions that are unhealthy or even deadly for us, the Supreme Court, under the leadership of Alito and Thomas, uses tradition to support laws and rulings that are harmful or even fatal for Americans.
They believe that when we create laws to control and protect human life, we fail to consider the circumstances of modern reality.
They won’t consider how assault weapons are readily available to Americans and how gun violence endangers their lives.
However, Alito criticized the justices who disagreed with his decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, writing that their “lack of any serious consideration of the legitimacy of the States’ interest in protecting fetal life is the most striking feature of the dissent.”
I’m confident that the Constitution does not address the rights of hypothetical lives.
However, these justices ignore the current reality of life in America.
Their efforts to create a reality—or reject reality—as the foundation for their judgments bring to mind Chief Justice John Roberts’ 2013 ruling that struck down the Voting Rights Act. He essentially insisted that racism was no longer a problem in the United States, and that since the conditions of racism that made the Voting Rights Act necessary didn’t exist, the conditions of the act didn’t need to exist either. He played amateur sociologist and professional denier of reality.
Naturally, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg likened Roberts’ decision to throwing away one’s umbrella in the rain in order to avoid getting wet.
Like Roberts, Alito and Thomas disregard reality. Even worse, as demonstrated by Alito’s criticism of Breyer, they conceptualize the creation of law as an activity distinct from the physical world we inhabit.
Not only is it a major issue, but failing to represent and create laws that benefit those who live in our modern world amounts to encouraging murder.
