The Corrupt Supreme Court is the Logical Result of Neoliberalism
Photo by Jacquelyn Martin-Pool/Getty Images
In the fall of 2005, at John Roberts’s confirmation hearing, the future Supreme Court Chief Justice told the Senate, “I believe that no one is above the law under our system, and that includes the president.” Of course, now, in July of 2024, we understand this perspective has either changed or never existed.
It deserves noting, however, that Roberts was responding to a question from Senator Patrick Leahy regarding the infamous torture memos of the George W. Bush Administration. These reprehensible opinions, cooked up by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, were designed to validate unthinkable “official actions” in the prosecuting of the illegal War on Terror.
Like many, I was disgusted by the Bush Administration’s behavior and the support it received from both Republicans and Democrats alike, including current president Joe Biden, and citizens of all different ideological stripes. For any discerning person, it was not just counterproductive and strategically stupid, but immoral and repulsive. How that period of time played out was both predictable and disastrous, leading many of us to see the activities of the powerful in a different light.
It is through this lens that Monday’s monstrous 6-3 Supreme Court decision in Trump v. United States begins to make some semblance of sense.
Roberts’s change of heart isn’t surprising. After a while, any notion of ideological consistency among the powerful fades and gives way to the startling but clarifying reality that power is a metamorphic thing and willing and capable of changing based on circumstances. This helps, of course, in also understanding how the GOP has built its brand on promises of “conservatism,” including support of limited government and fiscal responsibility, while advocating an aggressive state (controlled by themselves, of course) that expands into every avenue of life while running up record deficits. In this way, the course of power is less a well-defined arrow than a stream of water always seeking the easiest and most opportune means of flowing downhill.
The truth is, the President of the United States has always been immune from prosecution, in large part due to the immense powers afforded it by Article II. The office depends on its occupant being able to leverage the power of the presidency to commit crimes on behalf of the powerful and the system of capitalism that flows throughout. From the very beginning it has been a gentleman’s agreement that presidents would do whatever was necessary to serve these purposes and be shielded from prosecution or consequences. This means everything from George Washington leading troops against citizens in 1794 to Ronald Reagan’s illegal Iran-Contra scheme to Bush overseeing an unprecedented expansion of U.S. power and associated capitalist markets of the War on Terror throughout his term.
It is notable, however, that the gentleman’s agreement was never explicitly stated or put into law until Monday. Doing so brings a hidden authoritarian feature of our system into full-view and, as a result, encourages its expansion and use.
While it is comforting to view things through a Red/Blue frame, this obscures the true nature of power. Further, to believe that Donald Trump is somehow an aberration rather than the logical evolution of a corrupted and dying system, conceals a pressing and existential rot. Rather than get caught up in personalities and mystification, which America loves more than fireworks on the 4th of July, it is necessary to grasp how power has flown over the rocks supposedly designed to cage it, roaring unencumbered to dominate all of its subjects.
Bush’s War on Terror was the next stage in the evolution of global capitalism after the neoliberal project of the 1990s, a capitalization on the attacks of September 11th that allowed the unleashing of U.S. military might to open new markets and aid international corporations in acquiring necessary resources. The flag-waving and coded terror alerts and general gnashing of the teeth and pulling of hair was all set dressing.