When the US Supreme Court consisted of civil libertarians such as William Douglas, William Brennan, and Thurgood Marshall, Republicans argued that the Supreme Court was coddling criminals and inventing rights. To prevent legislation from the bench, it was necessary, Republicans said, to elect Republican presidents who would appoint a different court that would respect the Constitution.
Law and Order Conservatives were particularly upset by the Miranda decision. These conservatives were too naive to realize that often police are more interested in “solving” a case than they are in justice. Coerced self-incrimination was an easy way for police to “solve” a crime. Miranda and other rulings reduced the ability of police and prosecutors to “solve” crimes at the expense of the rights of suspects. What the “liberal court” did was to hold accountable the cases brought by police and prosecutors. The liberals’ mistake was they failed to hold the police personally accountable for their misdeeds.
The Republicans did give America a different Supreme Court and also different district and appeal courts. Rulings by Republican judges have stripped the Bill of Rights out of the Constitution and made police unaccountable for murder and robbery. In effect, the Republican jurists have turned the police into a criminal organization that is above the law. John Whitehead lays it out for us here.
Copyright © 2018 Paul Craig Roberts
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.
As Dr. Roberts has often pointed out, our constitution is dead, allowing POTUS and “terrified” policemen to kill without due process, giving constitutional rights denied to citizens to corporations, allowing total surveillance of everyone’s communications in the name of security and allowing open bribery of politicians in the name of free speech. When will we as a nation recognize the hollow husk our government has become? Perhaps when we grow up politically and abandon our pussy hats, racialist politics and never-ending culture wars to form some degree of solidarity to be able to resist the tightening noose.
There ae still people who have not woken up to the fact it is already late. It will be even later when they do.