IMPRUDENT JURISPRUDENCE

     Jurisprudence is the philosophy of law. Unlike philosophy, jurisprudence requires a verdict. All candidates for higher court judgeships in the past have given their support to the legal concept of Stare Decicis which means to "stand by things decided". Until recently it was a legal standard accepted by both party's. At some point the party that believes in a questionable concept of Constitutional Originalism stopped giving lip service to Stare Decisus. The ultimate effect was to strike down Roe v Wade, after a half century of it being law. It may overturn a lot of legislative races in states here-to-fore considered red. I will not weep. 

     Our judicial branch has undergone a conservative make-over. It started with the appointment of Judge Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. He was appointed to the bench upon the retirement of Thurgood Marshall, the first black jurist on the Supreme Court. Thomas was nominated because he was also a black jurist. Any similarity between the much-lauded Thurgood Marshall and Thomas ends there. For most of the last twenty years Clarence Thomas was a popcorn fart on the Supreme Court. Silent but deadly. During this time the political activities of his wife were ignored. There were other instances of questionable bias from other members of the Supreme Court. 

     In the pivotal 2000 ruling on Bush v Gore the stink of corruption on the conservative bench began to include other jurists brought forward from The Federalist Society. Of the 5 justices who ruled in favor of George W. Bush to award the presidency to Bush in spite of his losing the popular vote, 3 of them had wives or family members expecting jobs from either the Bush administration or the RNC. Chief Justice William Rehnquist's wife was expecting to be hired by the RNC, so was Justice Thomas' wife. Justice Scalia's son, an anti-union activist, was expecting to be appointed to Secretary of labor in the Bush administration. This was concerning to many of us who had grown up in the era of great liberal justices, who helped to advance Civil Rights, ruled that police must read a suspect their rights under Miranda, and much more. I'm going to go out on a limb here to state that the stink of quid pro quo had not hung like a blanket over the bench in that former time. The incident prompting the advance of Bush v Gore to the Supreme Court, was when a group of republican activists stopped the recount of  the presidential vote in Miami-Dade County. Among the litany of instances of tampering of the Florida presidential vote, the "Brooks Brothers riot" became legendary. Among those Republican staffers were attorneys John Robert's, soon to replace William Rehnquist as Chief Justice, and and Brett Kavenaugh who would go on to eclipse Justice Thomas as sex-offender who got away with it. Another questionable incident on the bench was when Justice Anthony Kennedy suddenly retired from the bench when Donald Trump became president. Justice Kennedy's son was employed by Deutsche bank, the only bank that would loan citizen Trump money. Deutsche bank was suspected to have ties to Russian oligarchs. He was replaced by the aforementioned Brett Kavenaugh. The Senate hearings were rushed and questionable. The FBI conducted an incomplete background search on Kavenaugh and his accusers, under presidential orders. Even more suspicious, Kavenaugh's gambling debts and mortgage were mysteriously paid off. Gambling Debts? What could possibly go wrong? The previous appointment of Neal Gorsuch was suspicious as well but can accurately be considered a power-play by Mitch McConnell leader of the Senate. It stunk as well. More to come.

     Those were very powerful examples of an influence of dark-money groups in the Republican party. They were only the start. The Pullitzer Prize for investigative journalism was recently awarded to Pro-Publica for its reporting of billionaire activists befriending Supreme Court Justices by providing luxurious vacations and services to those justices in the conservative majority. Justice Thomas and his insurrection supporting wife, recieved a free private jet flight to Indonesia and a luxury yacht cruise through the islands from billionaire Harlan Crow, also a loan not to be paid back for a class A motor home, and several other examples of billionaire generosity. Crow is a Texas property developer.                   Justice Gorsuch needed to liquidate a mountain cabin that had been in his family for some time. A billionaire friend with business before the Court stepped forward to purchase that white elephant from the beleaguered elephant party jurist. Justice Alito enjoyed at least one fishing trip to an Alaska fishing lodge, including sea-plane transportation. I'm pretty confident that that hunting lodge was more opulent than what you might imagine from a Robert Service poem. Chief Justice Robert's does not escape scrutiny. His wife has a wonderful job recruiting top lawyers to elite law firms. Her compensation is around $10million per annum. There are many more examples that can be Googled. We find now, Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee to the federal bench in Florida, who is slow-walking the trial for trumps federal secrets case. It is safe to say, she is also of questionable integrity. And now we hear that her husband is connected through business to mob-boss John Rosetti, a friend of-you guessed it-Trump. It was recently revealed that, in 2022 she recieved a free vacation to a luxury mountain resort attributable ultimately to The Federalist Society. 

     Jurisprudence in this Court, and it's lower branches does not appear to exemplify prudence.