Invasive rot in the USSC

The six radical right authoritarian judges that dominate the USSC, have made clear their intention to be unprincipled, making things up as they go. They are contemptuous of norms that get in the way of cementing kleptocratic authoritarianism into American law. The moral and legal rot process is well underway. It's rationally not deniable. Litigator Sherrilynn Ifill writes about a norm, adding things to the record without notice, blatantly broken by the deeply corrupt cynic Sam Alito:

I am still enough of an institutionalist that it pains me to hear Supreme Court justices embarrassing themselves on the bench. So as I listened to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito engaging with Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar during oral argument in the case challenging Tennessee’s ban on the provision of gender-affirming drugs for minors earlier this month, I couldn’t help but cringe.

Shuffling through papers that he suggested were studies from various European countries that urged caution in the provision of puberty blockers to teens, Alito engaged in a “gotcha” line of questioning, insisting that Prelogar—the meticulous and unmatched litigator who has masterfully led the solicitor general’s office under President Joe Biden—had somehow misled the court about the accumulated scientific consensus on the effectiveness of puberty blockers for teens experiencing gender dysmorphia. His derisive tone and relentless questioning were typical for Alito and not what concerned me.

It was instead the contempt that Alito showed for the rules that govern the boundaries of litigation in our system. None of the studies he referenced as the basis of his questions to Prelogar had been part of the record in the case. None had been presented before the judge who tried the case. Justice Alito appeared to have, as the saying goes, “done his own research,” which he was now injecting into the case. And this embarrassed me. [embarrassed her, scares and angers me]

What has received too little attention is how this court’s headlong rush toward achieving its [kleptocratic authoritarian] ideological aims is undermining the rules that govern our system of litigation in its wake.

Why do all these rejections of previous norms and rules of litigation matter, one might ask? What difference does it make how the court strips away rights and protections? What matters is that they do it, and that the lives of millions of Americans will be affected, surely? In my view, the way they do it matters because the conservative justices in their haste and stubborn determination are pulling down not only long-standing substantive protections for marginalized people, but also the standards that hold our system of litigation together.   

More and more, the conservative majority’s approach has put the rules and norms that govern our system of litigation in the crosshairs as much as the substantive rights of marginalized groups. (emphasis added)

That speaks for itself. Our democracy, the rule of law and our civil liberties are all under severe, direct attack. That is a fact, not an opinion.