There is a good reason why US President Joe Biden has been singing hosannas to the American judicial system after his son Hunter was found guilty of three felony counts related to buying guns while an addict and then lying about it. He needs to balance out the concerted attack on the US Supreme Court by those affiliated to his side of the political spectrum—or divide—ahead of a key case involving the current frontrunner for the White House in November, Donald Trump.
The fact that a ‘liberal’ activist inveigled herself into a private event and recorded conversations with a conservative justice of the US Supreme Court in order to make remarks that would force their recusal from cases involving Trump indicates an insidious plan to delegitimise key institutions. This happening as US heads into a very contentious election would sound familiar to Indians who had been swamped with anti-Election Commission and anti-EVM news.
In India too, partisan politics in the guise of liberal ‘concerns’ was taken to the highest court with select media drumming up a narrative that the justices might have been amenable to government pressure, in case their verdicts did not suit the petitioners. The results of the elections vindicated the judges’ impartial dismissal of accusations against two key parts of India’s electoral system, but the assaulters have not made any public apologies for their motivated allegations.
In the US, a curiously similar move is afoot, with the courts in some states being openly used to corral the Republican presidential candidate and prevent him from being on the 2024 ballot. The US Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, is seen as the only “unmanageable” section of the judiciary by liberal activists and hence there have repeated attacks on certain key judges, particularly the combative Samuel A Alito Jr, elevated to the SC Bench by George W Bush.
So it was not surprising that private remarks of Justice Alito were recorded and released by Lauren Windsor. But they did not exactly reveal, as intended, a bigoted conservative demon. A lot depended on how the outspoken judge’s mostly anodyne observations were interpreted by liberal megaphones in the US. The Wall Street Journal called the sting and its presentation as a “partisan pile-on” and wryly added that Justice Alito stood falsely accused of candour.
Asked a leading question by Windsor (who posed as a religious conservative to attend a private event where Alito was present) whether the court should intervene in a case, all Justice Alito said was, “We have a very defined role. We need to do what we’re supposed to do, but this is a bigger problem. This is way above us. So I wish I knew the answer. I do.” That is hardly evidence of a judge behaving in a biased manner on a key matter, rendering him unfit to judge Trump.
But Windsor’s explanation to Rolling Stone magazine was predictable. She said, “One of the main drivers for me in this work is showing Americans that we are at a crossroads: Do we embrace the idea of secular democracy and uphold that tradition, or do we start to transition into a Christian theocracy?” Swap the words ‘American’ and ‘Christian’ with ‘Indian’ and ‘Hindu’ and it sounds much like the Doomsday scenarios commonly articulated in ‘liberal’ Indian media.
Alito is a favourite target, along with his fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, particularly as two key cases relating to Trump are about to reach the Supreme Court, including the “riot” on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. In fact, the clamour over an upside down US flag flying atop Alito’s home that same month is intended to convey that he is biased, because many Trump supporters did the same, to show their anger over his victory being “stolen” by Biden.
Conflicting accounts of the upside down flag incidents suggest a determined bid to tar Alito with the bigot brush. Consider if the following happens to an Indian Supreme Court Justice or spouse: On the street where the judge lives, a neighbour deliberately puts up offensive signs, calculated to upset supporters of a certain controversial top political leader. Several months later, the same neighbour puts up a few more equally rude signboards, this time using two ‘F’ words.
Then that neighbour takes a drive up the street—a cul de sac, so it was not an inadvertent passing of the judge’s residence—to see the reaction of that judge and family. They are seen by the judge’s spouse, who decides they are harassing her by their signboards and drive-bys. She raises an upside down flag on her home, a traditional method used by sailors to indicate distress. Her husband is then branded a bigot, but the neighbour’s actions are not seen as intimidatory!
There is also an incident a few weeks later wherein the judge’s wife has a verbal altercation with that neighbour in which expletives were used by both sides. The neighbour calls that exchange ‘harassment’ but not her own actions! A year or so later, when the same judge is part of a landmark Supreme Court verdict, protestors demonstrate with placards outside his residence, after his supposed judgement is leaked. Would this behaviour be tolerated at all by Indian SC judges?
The focused nature of their attack is significant. Biden has praised the federal judge and judicial system, but the foot soldiers of the movement to get him re-elected have been targeting every aspect of Alito’s life on and off the bench. Apart from his supposed conservative ‘bias’ he has often been described by media and liberal politicians as having taken favours from big business—all because he once took the last seat on a billionaire’s private plane to an event in Alaska!
There are pretty categorical rules for judges, including the circumstances under which they should recuse themselves from cases. The US Supreme Court has an overwhelming majority of conservative judges and, unlike in India, they will stay on the Bench for life or until they willingly retire. Pressuring judges seen to be ‘unfriendly’ to the dispensations in the White House and Capitol Hill is not unknown. But the current level of pressure on Alito is unprecedented.
There has been an escalation of pressure on judges in India too before important cases are adjudicated. But so far neither activists nor the media have taken to looking at the off-Bench lives of judges in order to build pressure, as they are now doing in the US. Perhaps because judges here are quite sensitive to unfair intrusions into their personal spaces and there are enough instances of contempt of court rulings on such infractions to prevent US style attacks on judges.
These attacks on the conservative justices of the US Supreme Court are certain to continue, even after the cases are begun to be heard. Meanwhile Biden is also likely to continue to mouth platitudes about the judicial system so that it does not seem like a coordinated move to help his currently parlous re-election chances. Apex court judges in all countries should take note of what is happening in the US, as this sort of virus tends to spread very rapidly through the Internet.
The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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