The Supreme Court is an institution rooted in slavery see and still carries the brand.
My art can be found on Instagram @klonskyart.
As we were heading home from Saturday’s Chicago protest of the impending Supreme Court decision to overturn fifty years of Roe, I ran into an old friend.
Both of us have been through decades of struggles against wars and racism. We have the receipts and battle scars we wear proudly.
“I can’t believe they did this,” she said.
“Who?” I asked.
“The Supreme Court!” she yelled.
You see?
Even after decades of fighting the system, even the most seasoned of our social justice veterans have an expectation of justice.
And we can still be disappointed, even surprised, that it fails to deliver it so often.
But the Supreme Court, like many American institutions, was birthed by the system of slavery and still bears its brand.
It is a thoroughly undemocratic institution with life-time membership. Five of the current members were appointed by presidents who were elected by a minority of voters. For most of the Court’s history it excluded all but white men.
Most justices will likely be on the Court for the next quarter century. There is no legal recourse to a decision they make.
The Dred Scott decision of 1857 ruled that the framers believed Black people were “beings of an inferior order” and “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”
It took The Civi War to over turn that decision.
Ian Millhiser at Vox does a good job of tracing the Court’s reactionary history.
I do not believe that relief will be found in the courts from this terrible decision in my life-time
States’ rights, the theory that was invented to protect slavery, will be their defense.
We will need to find another route of attack.