Courts

Supreme Court's WALL Decision Means 'Rule Of Law' Now Just For Show

Laws are of no more use here.

By  
on

(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Under the figurative cloak of darkness, at 6:30 p.m. (EDT) summer Friday, the Supreme Court decided that the rule of law no longer applies to Republican presidents.

That’s not how the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Sierra Club is being reported. And that is by design. As with every Court decision, the legalese of the opinion flummoxes most mainstream, non-legal media. Meanwhile, the legal press is so committed to pretending that Supreme Court justices are something more than naked partisan hacks that we drown in the minutia while trying to make ourselves sound smart because we understand “standing.”

As with Trump v. Hawaii (the Muslim Ban), the guiding legal principle here is “Trump must win.” Trump v. Sierra Club is dressed up to look like a “legal” opinion, but it is an entirely political one. A dog is a dog even if it is wearing a dress.

For those interested in getting the legal wedge in the trivial pursuit of “Arguments To Justify Tyranny,” the Court ruled that an injunction against the Trump administration stealing $2.5 billion of Pentagon funds to begin construction on the border wall should be lifted, because the plaintiffs (which included environmental groups like the Sierra Club), likely did not have standing to challenge the thievery of the funds. This is a bad argument for two reasons:

  • If environmental groups don’t have standing to challenge the environmental harm caused by the misappropriation of military funds to ruin the environment, who the hell does?
  • Saying that Trump can steal the funds while we wait to figure out who has the right to challenge his theft is like saying you can steal a car from a parking lot until the police can figure out who the rightful owner was. The Supreme Court just authorized Trump to take a joy ride with public tax dollars.

I don’t want to spend too much time dissecting the Court’s bad faith logic here, because it is illogical and offered in bad faith. The Supreme Court has decided that Trump can build his wall. How they legally got to “yes” on that question is irrelevant. Some who are willing to play the Court’s game and parse its language see “hope” for a future democratically elected president should he or she want to misappropriate Pentagon funding to combat climate change, over the expressed will of Congress. I think these people are missing the core concept of what is going on here. The five conservatives on the Supreme Court do not care about “precedent,” and they don’t care about intellectual consistency. Chief Justice John Roberts will grant standing to freaking Nemo if he doesn’t like how a Democrat violates the separation of powers.

Sponsored

Laws are of no more use here. Our government no longer operates under the “rule of law” in any meaningful way; it’s only about raw political power now. The Republicans will do whatever they can get away with. At least four Supreme Court justices will go along with those efforts, no matter what. The fifth, John Roberts, thinks his job is to bend the law to the Republican will as much as he can without “breaking it,” with the understanding that he believes himself to be the final arbiter on when things are broken.

Does Trump have the raw political power to build his wall? If the “resistance” keeps waiting for the courts to save us, he sure does.

If not, well, massive construction projects don’t go very well when a fierce majority of people are willing to oppose it. Every wall in history has, ultimately, been breached. The question is merely one of dedication.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But I promise you a sledgehammer is more powerful than the Supreme Court’s rubber stamp.

Here’s Some Bullshit [SupremeCourt.gov]

Sponsored

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

Topics

, ,