There has been a lot of focus on voting rights lately, but maybe our democracy is already gone if the Supreme Court has become corrupt. Consider:

• Bush v. Gore. After 22 years, I still don’t know what to make of Bush v. Gore. The decision ultimately turned on arcane legal arguments that ordinary people are unable to follow, and that is obviously not a case of the people of our nation selecting a leader democratically. I still mostly blame the state of Florida for not having effective procedures in place for people to vote, then to count the vote, then to recount the vote if needed. And I thought at the time that even if the Supreme Court flipped a coin, it was best for them to have the last word on a question of the utmost and obvious national importance. However, Al Gore would have won that election if the votes had been counted accurately, and we would be living in a different world today.

In 2001, the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, sponsored by a consortium of major United States news organizations, conducted the Florida Ballot Project, a comprehensive review of 175,010 ballots that vote-counting machines had rejected from the entire state, not just the disputed counties that were recounted.[3] The project’s goal was to determine the reliability and accuracy of the systems used in the voting process, including how different systems correlated with voter mistakes. The study was conducted over a period of 10 months. Based on the review, the media group concluded that if the disputes over the validity of all the ballots in question had been consistently resolved and any uniform standard applied, the electoral result would have been reversed and Gore would have won by 60 to 171 votes.

Wikipedia

So blame Florida. Yet, also according to Wikipedia, a majority of legal scholars who have studied the case disagree with the Supreme Court decision. So why did these five particular people (it was a 5-4 vote) have the right to decide our country’s future?

• Citizens United. This is the worst. The single biggest reason the United States is not a true democracy is not our imperfect voting system. It’s the capture of our government by big business interests, so that money ends up deciding elections rather than votes. This is legalized corruption, and the Supreme Court legalized it. We tend to think they did this for ideological reasons, but what if big business lobbyists are getting to them? It would be hard to say we live in a democracy in that case. I had not considered this possibility until recently.
• Pollution and Climate Change. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren make this case fairly well in a brief filed in advance of a case where the Supreme Court may throw away our nation’s air quality to line the pockets of the fossil fuel industry.

The industry-funded and industry-promoted arguments made here have been repeatedly rejected by the Court, and would empower and enrich polluting corporations at the expense of public health, welfare, and the environment. The Court should refuse to participate in this industry-driven project. Reversals of precedent that reek of politics, and are advanced by thinly-disguised but highly motivated industry front groups, create a “stench” that is likely to undermine the public’s remaining faith in the Court.

Brief of U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard Blumenthal, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents

• Which brings me to Clarence Thomas. There have been a number of news stories recently suggesting that his wife is acting as an unpaid lobbyist for various industry groups, and that he is in regular contact with conservative governors representing special interests. If this is what is determining the outcome of court cases, the court is corrupt and the United States is not a democracy.

There is no higher legal authority in the judicial system that can accuse and find a justice guilty of a crime. That would have to be done by Congress. Impeaching a justice every once in a while might be a good idea to keep the court on notice that there are checks and balances in our country, and Clarence Thomas would be an outstanding candidate. Of course, it is almost impossible to imagine our even more corrupt Congress actually doing this.

Term limits for justices would also obviously be a good idea. The proposal for an 18-year term limit, so that each 4-year presidential term would come with two retirements and two new appointments, seems completely reasonable.

I’m going to agree with Bernie Sanders, as I often do. There is a reek and a stench wafting from the direction of the U.S. Supreme Court, and it is undermining the public’s remaining faith in the institution. If Bush v. Gore happened today, I personally would not be able to accept their decision as having any legitimacy, as I grudgingly did in 2000 even though I hated the outcome.