With its new right-leaning supermajority, the US high court is rapidly changing America. It struck down the right to an abortion, allowed legally carried weapons on city streets, blocked government efforts to address the climate catastrophe and the Covid pandemic, and slashed the long-standing wall separating religion and state in just one judicial year.
The 2021–22 term, which ended in June, was hailed by veteran watchers as possibly the most significant in the court’s 233-year history.
The six conservative justices, three of whom Donald Trump appointed, showed an iron grip on high-profile issues.
Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, the three liberally inclined judges, were outnumbered and severely wounded.
The harsh 6-to-3 dynamic will be in place when the court meets again in October, although Ketanji Brown Jackson will take the place of retired Justice Breyer.
wounded but unbowed. Even though they may be in the minority, the three liberal justices are quickly establishing themselves as an essential bulwark against the current judicial revolution being spearheaded by Trump.
The three generated opposing opinions as a result of that pushback. Liberal dissents were not just more prevalent in 2021–2022—Sotomayor alone authored 13, more than she did in any previous term—but also more blunt and unrestrained in their language.
The dissents went beyond courteous jurisprudence arguments. They amounted to the ringing of an alarm, warning the populace that constitutional government, equal rights, and even what it is to be an American are all in danger.
Here are six of the more graphic warnings made by the three liberally inclined judges in their dissents.
Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan tore through the majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, which struck down the right to an abortion, in nearly 60 fiery pages of dissent.
They denounced the decision as a direct assault on an individual’s freedom, pointing out that such a right had been the rule of the nation for fifty years.
The dissenting opinion stated that young women would grow up with fewer rights today than their mothers and grandmothers did. There are “no rights to speak of for a woman” as of the moment of fertilisation.
They claimed that the choice went against fundamental American ideals. Equal rights and individual freedom “have gone a long way to defining what it means to be an American.
Because in this country, we do not think that a free people and a government that controls all individual decisions can coexist.
“We the people” are the ultimate source of authority in the United States. There are currently 240 million citizens who can cast ballots for the president and members of Congress.
The supreme court is also controlled by five men and one woman who are actively altering American society.
The conservative judges are accused by the liberal justices of prioritising their own will over the will of “we the people” The majority decision in West Virginia v. EPA, limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ability to address the climate catastrophe by regulating fossil-fueled power plants, was written by Kagan.
Kagan accuses the six conservative justices of disobeying explicit directives from Congress to the EPA to address the “possibly catastrophic impacts” of global warming. The Clean Air Act had been effectively amended by the justices to support their own policymaking.
“The court designates itself as the decision-maker on climate policy, not Congress or the expert agency. There aren’t many things that I can imagine that is scarier, Kagan remarked.
In a separate decision, the supermajority rejected the Biden administration’s demand that large company employees get the Covid vaccine or undergo weekly tests.
The decision was 6 to 3 in favour of the supermajority. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) was required by a law passed in 1970 to safeguard employees who were “exposed to grave danger,” and all three liberal justices stated in their dissenting opinions that the majority had again ignored the will of the people as represented in that statute.
The dissent argued that on the one hand, Osha is working to safeguard workers from the “severe threat” posed by Covid. The president, who in turn “is answerable to – and can be held to account by – the American public,” is in charge of the agency.
The highest court is the alternative option. The dissidents pointed out sarcastically that “its members are chosen by, and answerable to, no one.”
The supermajority is accused by the liberal-leaning justices of disregarding established legal standards in their haste to enact drastic change.
The most important of these is “stare decisis,” which means “to stand by things decided” and refers to the court’s previous precedents.
The six conservative justices rejected stare decisis by invalidating the right to an abortion that Roe v Wade established in 1973, demonstrating that “now, the proclivities of individuals rule.” Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan wrote that the court violated its duty to properly and impartially apply the law.
The notion that the right-wing justices are ruling by political inclination rather than legal principle incenses them greatly. The de facto leader of the new supermajority, Clarence Thomas, irritably refuted the assertion in September.
He complained, “The media portrays you as constantly just going right to your personal preference.
He doesn’t need to turn to the media for such a charge. His opinion has been strongly stated by three of his fellow justices.
The liberal justices pointed out in their dissenting opinion in the Dobbs case that it took the court less than two years to overturn Roe v. Wade when Trump’s third selection, Amy Coney Barrett, was appointed. They maintained that no change in the nation’s social landscape could account for such a quick turnaround.
The court’s makeup and the new perspectives it brought with it were the only things that had changed. Because it has always hated them and now has the votes to do so, the majority overruled Roe for one and only one reason: hatred.
If the highest court is perceived to be more influenced by personal inclinations than by legal considerations, the results could be catastrophic. The dissenters argued that this “undermines the legitimacy of the court.”
The three justices outline the effects of eliminating abortion access for women of various socioeconomic backgrounds in their Dobbs dissent. Wealthy women will leave areas where abortion is illegal and travel to those where it is permitted to “find methods around a state’s assertion of power.”
Without the funding, other women “will not be so fortunate.” They might choose to have the child at a significant personal and financial cost to themselves and their families; they might choose to have an illegal abortion and suffer harm “or perhaps death”; “at the very least, they will pay the price of losing control over their life,” the article states.
The dissidents cautioned that there are far-reaching effects in addition to the terrible effects on particular women. Equal protection under the law, a cornerstone of the US constitution and of American principles, has likewise been lost.
“Today’s majority believes that despite the constitution’s provisions of equality and freedom for all, it will not act as a shield.”
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the supermajority overturned New York’s gun licencing restrictions, paving the way for the open public carry of loaded pistols in US cities.
Thomas, the judge who wrote the decision, ignored any arguments regarding the risks posed by guns in contemporary America when gun violence is significantly higher than in comparable nations.
He asserted that licencing policies should instead be in line with “this nation’s historical practise of firearm regulation,” particularly with how the US operated in 1791 when the right to bear arms was ratified.
In his statement of disapproval, Breyer claimed that this “history-only approach” not only ignored the “real and present danger of guns in modern American society,” but also established a framework that was so rigid it would be impossible to apply to contemporary circumstances “beyond the Framers’ imaginations.”
For example, how could laws that date back hundreds of years “dictate the legitimacy of restrictions targeting ‘ghost firearms,’ created with the aid of a three-dimensional printer?”
The most ominous warning conveyed by the liberal justices is that the revolution is just getting started, notwithstanding the supermajority’s recent barrage of contentious opinions.
They state in their Dobbs dissent that “no one should be certain that this majority is finished with its work.”
With no exceptions for rape or incest, the supermajority may then decide to outlaw all abortions countrywide, starting at the moment of conception. The same reasons that were used to overturn Roe may also be used to support contraception, the right to same-sex relationships and marriage, and even multiracial unions.
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The legal strategy of the supermajority leads to the inevitable conclusion that “all rights without a history dating back to the middle of the 19th century are insecure… Additional constitutional protections are in jeopardy.
In Carson v. Makin, Sotomayor ended her opinion on a gravely unsettling note. The 6-to-3 ruling bulldozed decades of precedent on the separation of church and state by insisting that Maine had to extend its taxpayer-funded tuition assistance program to include students attending religious schools.
“With growing concern for where this court will lead us next,” Sotomayor wrote, “I respectfully dissent.”
