That's as good a description for them as any, though it wasn't said about them. That simile comes from a cynical justice on the Ohio supreme court.
The ruling that the Supreme Court hands down this month will leave unanswered questions about the relationship between the judicial and the legislative branches of government, and also between the past and the present. The separation of law from politics for which the Revolution was fought has proved elusive. That’s not surprising—no such separation being wholly possible—but some years have been better than others. One of the worst was 2000, when the Court determined the outcome of a disputed Presidential election. The real loser in that election, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his dissent in Bush v. Gore, “is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”
For centuries, the American struggle for a more independent judiciary has been more steadfast than successful. Currently, nearly ninety per cent of state judges run for office. “Spending on judicial campaigns has doubled in the past decade, exceeding $200 million,” Shugerman reports. In 2009, after three Iowa supreme-court judges overturned a defense-of-marriage act, the American Family Association, the National Organization for Marriage, and the Campaign for Working Families together spent more than eight hundred thousand dollars to campaign against their reëlection; all three judges lost. “I never felt so much like a hooker down by the bus station,” one Ohio supreme-court justice told the Times in 2006, “as I did in a judicial race.”
Federally, few rulings have wreaked such havoc on the political process as the 2010 case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, whereby the Roberts Court struck down much of the McCain-Feingold Act, which placed restrictions on corporate and union funding of political campaigns. Stevens, in his dissent, warned that “a democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.”
That, in the end, is the traffic to worry about. If not only legislators but judges serve at the pleasure of lobbyists, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers. Law will be commerce. And money will be king. ...Jill Lepore, NY'er
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One of the few justices who can't be considered a "hooker" warns we're in for more discord -- in the Court as well as out here.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is predicting “sharp disagreements” on the high court as the justices are on the cusp of landmark rulings including the fate of President Obama’s healthcare law.
“As one may expect, many of the most controversial cases remain pending,” she said in remarks Friday evening to the American Constitution Society, according to CNN. “So it is likely that the sharp disagreement rate will go up next week and the week after.” ...The Hill
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