The Real Goal Of The Supreme Court Corruption Machine
They are obsessed with preventing another Warren, Brennan, Stevens or Souter.
Note: I’m publishing some regular musings here. Use this button to subscribe, which will alert you to them and sign you up to The Lever’s free email newsletter.
For decades, conservative operatives have been haunted by the memories of Earl Warren, William Brennan, John Paul Stevens and David Souter. These Republican Supreme Court nominees all ended up refusing to toe the conservative line in their rulings - part of a century-long trend of GOP appointees becoming more liberal as they age.
This has made the American Right very mad — and so the conservative movement built a corruption machine to try to stop this. That corruption machine is on display in all the scandals now engulfing the court.
As you can see in the chart documenting the trend over nearly a century, many Republican nominees given the political freedom of a lifetime appointment have become more liberal in their rulings as they age.
To try to break this trend, conservative operatives didn’t necessarily conjure more compelling jurisprudential arguments in service of their ideology. Instead, they built a corruption machine that creates personal financial incentives for Republican appointees to never deviate from whatever that machine wants in any given case. To make conservatives’ demands extremely clear, that machine files endless amicus briefs, or friend-of-the court filings, at the Supreme Court and throughout the federal judiciary.
The financial incentives are elucidated in the recent spate of scandals at the high court. Indeed, each member of the conservative Supreme Court majority — and all lower court judges aspiring to be the next GOP Supreme Court appointee — knows that if he or she toes the line, there may be big rewards, whether it’s luxury vacations, boarding school tuition and housing for family members, land deals, or lucrative payments to spouses.
Money flowing from billionaires and other interested parties to Supreme Court justices is not just about securing single rulings in particular cases. It is about halting the dynamic of so-called “ideological drift” and preventing the very “independent spirit” that the Founders’ said was crucial for the judiciary.
If you like this post, pitch in to the tip jar for The Lever, an award-winning reader-supported investigative news outlet that holds the powerful accountable.
Really enjoyed Master Plan and would recommend it to anyone who wants to know the full story. I also heard that Drumpf and Leonard Leo are fighting. Sad!