Troy Brown writes for The [F]law that, “the Court [is] a shaky foundation on which to try to build a more just society.”
“But as progressives contemplate the future of the judiciary, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the left’s strategy has to go far beyond stellar appointees. As the story of the Warren Court makes clear, lasting progressive power-building has to come from outside the courtroom; progressives can’t simply try to replicate the conservative legal project, replacing Justice Alitos with Justice Jacksons. Accepting the legitimacy of judicial supremacy means accepting the risk that progress can be rolled back simply by flipping a seat or two on the Supreme Court. It’s a risk progressives can’t afford to take again. ‘If we believe in democracy, if we believe in building a more democratic political order, then we need to be reducing the size, power, and influence of the Federal courts’ says Molly Coleman, Executive Director of the People’s Parity Project.
For progressives, Coleman says, that means ‘we shouldn’t be engaged in political projects that increase [the Courts’] power. We should be engaged in political projects that decrease their power, while also ensuring that the people who are going to be in those decision-making roles on the bench are people who care about workers, who care about consumers, who care about progress, and aren’t going to use that position, and whatever power they have in it to roll back our rights, roll back our democracy.’”