Chief Justice Roberts Begins The Supreme Court’s Great Reclamation Project

I must admit, I didn’t see this coming. But at the same time, I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, if you look at the polling these days, genital warts are more popular than the Supreme Court. And when it comes to integrity, hell, a Vegas live-sex-show ranks higher than the nine national nags in black mumus.

And so, finally, seeing his judicial reputation as Chief Justice of the Supreme court sliding inexorably into the goo of the La Brea tar pits, Roberts finally put his big boy pants on, and took independent action, action only he was qualified to take.

So, what was Justice Roberts’s firm, decisive action to restore the court’s integrity? No, unfortunately Chief Justice Roberts did not have a Come to Jesus moment telling corrupt Justice Clarence Thomas to STFU and recuse himself from anything touching on the Trump corruption cases. What Chief Justice Roberts did was to write a letter. But it was a letter that I have to admire, no matter how self serving it was.

What Justice Roberts did was to write a letter to the Judicial Council telling them to close a loophole. For those of you who may be uninitiated, the Judicial Council is the body that oversees the entire federal judiciary system. With the sole exception of the United States Supreme Court. Those *ssholes are untouchable.

The loophole that Justice Roberts was desperate to close was the one that accidentally led to a practice that is known as judge shopping. I’ll briefly explain the concept, and then how it is anti-democratic.

When the DOJ filed the stolen documents case in Florida, it was assigned randomly to a Florida magistrate, and then a district Florida judge. The judge was not a Trump friendly judge, which was a problem for His Lowness. And so the Trump legal beagles wrote out a motion requesting a special master to oversee the admissibility of the stolen documents, and then they filed the suit in a one court courthouse overseen by a totally unqualified Trump appointee to hear the case. And we are all now sadly familiar with Kindergarten Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who promptly decided for Trump on every motion, until the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals slapped her down and overturned every ruling.

This practice is especially prevalant with anti abortion zealots in the southwest. Trump appointed a well know, formerly anti abortion lawyer named Kacsmaryk to a one court courthouse in western Texas. Anti abortion zealots simple create a filing, create a fake astroturf local entity, and then present their filing to the court, already knowing that Judge Kasmyrek will give them friendly treatment. Which starts a cycle that inevitably ends up in the far right Supreme Court.

This is a total bastardization of the normal district judicial court process. Federal district courts are made up of multiple courts in multiple jurisdictions. And in the federal courts, just as in district, county and state courts nationwide, they are ruled by what they call  The Wheel. On the crew desk at United, we called it the FIFO List. (First In First Out)

Here’s how it works. A case is filed. Let’s say there are 10 district courts in the judicial district. That case is assigned to the name at the top of the list, the one who has gone longest since hearing a case. The next case on the wheel goes to the next name on the list. This ensures impartiality since plaintiffs filing a case have no real idea of who will hear their case. Filing a case in a one court courthouse pretty much ensures that you’re going to get a friendly hearing from that judge. Which of course means an almost automatic appeal to the appellate court, and an eventual Supreme Court hearing.

Which is pissing off the Supreme Court. And not just Chief Justice Roberts, but also the more recent conservative justices such as Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett. They’re already being branded in the public as a far right extremist court, and now they’re being flooded with far right anti abortion and LGBTQ cases that the Roberts court has no interest in hearing or ruling on, simply because they work their way through the system, hoping for a SCOTUS miracle. Which only makes the Supreme Court look more extremist and far right.

Take the Mifepristone case. That case should never even have seen the legal light of day. Simply because none of the plaintiffs had the legal standing to bring the suit in the first place. But Judge Kacsmaryk has never been one to let the law interfere with a good anti abortion case. So he ruled for the plaintiffs, which led to a totally predictable overturn by the appellate court, laying the entire mess at the doorstep of the Supreme Court.

And Roberts and the conservatives on the Supreme Court are sick of this shit. They’re sick of having to either rule as rubber stamps for the far right, or finding legal hooks to hang their hats on to shoot down the far right wingnuts. Trump has turned loose the most insane wing of the Evangelical movement to try to get the Supreme Court to fill in their Christmas wish lists.

But you know what? So what if Roberts’s letter to the judicial council telling them to shut off that loophole was self serving. You know who ultimately wins as a result of his action? We Do! Because closing off that loophole essentially shuts off the far right pipeline of extremist cases from reaching the Supreme Court, and risking a knee jerk terrible decision. Putting those cases into the wheel increases the chances of a district court negative ruling, followed by an appellate court negative ruling, giving the Supreme Court the wiggle room to decline to take up the case. Joy where you find it.

I thank you for the privilege of your time.