Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Malek Dudakov
[REGNUM] The United States is in the midst of another round of legal wars. The administration of Joe Biden, who has already become a lame duck, has come out with its last major initiative that can be implemented before the elections.
This is the largest judicial reform in the United States in at least the last 100 years. The struggle for control over the judicial branch of government threatens to destabilize the situation in America on the eve of elections and a turbulent period of transition of power.
The politicization of American courts has been going on for a long time. Judges do not exist in a vacuum: they are representatives of the same American society, which is mired in division and terribly polarized.
Moreover, federal judges are selected by the White House and confirmed by the Senate. Both parties, Republicans and Democrats, are actively practicing appointing as many loyal judges as possible while they can.
There have been periods in U.S. history when the judiciary was dominated by progressive judges, such as during the 1960s.
But since Ronald Reagan and then George H. W. Bush, the pendulum has swung the other way. Conservative judges have come to dominate both the Supreme Court, the nation's top judicial body, and many lower-level appellate courts.
This rightward turn has become especially pronounced during the presidency of Donald Trump. He served only four years in office, but during that time he managed to appoint three of the nine Supreme Court justices.
And at the same time, hundreds of federal judges, close to Trump in views and with conservative convictions, appeared in lower courts.
The result was a series of victories for Republicans on the judicial front.
In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. Now, individual states once again have the right to restrict or even ban abortion. Republicans worked on this issue for 50 years and finally succeeded in overhauling abortion laws.
In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that so-called "positive discrimination" practices in university admissions were unconstitutional. In fact, it allowed applicants to be selected based on skin color or gender. That is, racial and gender quotas were established, and those who did not fit them were discriminated against.
For several years, applicants of Asian descent have been suing Harvard, demanding compensation for all cases of discrimination. During the trial, it was revealed that at Harvard, an Asian applicant, all other things being equal, has a 25% chance of being admitted, a white applicant has a 35% chance, a Hispanic applicant has a 75% chance, and a black applicant has a 95% chance. All for the sake of supporting “oppressed minorities.”
Therefore, many invented fictitious roots for themselves, just to get into the necessary quotas. Since 2023, this has been officially banned.
The Supreme Court has since encroached on the powers of the U.S. government, overturning the 1984 Chevron decision that allowed U.S. officials to interpret how they regulate businesses. Republicans are already hoping to use that to enact massive deregulation of the U.S. economy if they win the upcoming election.
The Supreme Court also played a role in the election wars. It secured the right of the US President to partial immunity from prosecution.
This has allowed Donald Trump's lawyers to effectively freeze all key lawsuits against him. They will seek to dismiss these lawsuits, and the legal debate will take years. And the final verdicts will be announced well after the upcoming November elections.
While Republicans celebrate the Supreme Court's decisions, Democrats are indignant. They have long been campaigning to discredit conservative judges, and at least two of them have already been targeted.
Clarence Thomas was caught accepting gifts from major Republican donors and flying on their private jets.
Another justice, Samuel Alito, was accused of supporting the riots at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. On that day, an inverted US flag was flown over Alito's home - a symbol of those demanding a review of the election results.
And three years later, the Supreme Court began overturning lower court rulings that sent hundreds of Trump supporters to prison for those protests.
Democrats and the White House have been pushing hard to remove both justices, but to no avail. The Supreme Court is a de facto lifelong tenure, with many serving until death or old age. Impeachment procedures for justices exist, but they are difficult to implement.
So, to the Democrats' dismay, they have no control over the fact that of the nine current Supreme Court members, six are Republicans.
Even during Biden's first year in office, there was talk of trying to flood the court with newcomers. They said we won't remove the old ones, but at least add 5-7 liberal judges to offset the advantage of the right.
Roosevelt had similar attempts in the mid-1930s, when conservative judges were holding up his New Deal reforms. But then, as now, these undertakings led to nothing.
Now the White House has officially proposed another reform. It wants to limit the term of Supreme Court members to 18 years. And at the same time, give each president the right to appoint new judges every two years.
Moreover, Biden’s team has also conceived a separate amendment to the US Constitution, which should limit the president’s right to immunity.
It’s odd to see such a sweeping constitutional effort emerging with Biden just four months left in office, but it’s clearly part of the Democratic Party’s 2025 platform if Kamala Harris wins the presidency and Democrats take majorities in both houses of Congress.
They won’t be able to change the US Constitution – the process of adopting amendments is extremely labor-intensive, and in the current conditions of America’s division, it is unrealistic to implement this.
But the Democrats really can try to shovel the Supreme Court. After all, it has now received enormous power against the backdrop of how the political system in Washington has gone to pieces.
It is practically impossible to carry out a major reform in Congress, so the parties are forced to use all opportunities to appoint more of their judges. And they will then make the necessary decisions.
Moreover, if we are talking specifically about the Supreme Court, these decisions will prevail over any law of Congress or decree of the president.
The US is hardly the first country where the judiciary has become overly powerful in a crisis of political order. The same thing is happening in Britain and Germany. Right now, judicial wars are raging in Israel and Poland.
US elections could trigger the collapse of the global liberal system
Wherever a split in society breaks the traditional political system, the courts become the final arbiter through which alone the necessary decisions can be made.
The aftermath of the judicial wars in the United States has seen trust in the Supreme Court plummet to record lows. Only about a quarter of Americans still trust their top judicial body.
And he faces a new challenge: hearing lawsuits challenging the election results on behalf of the losing side. Whatever the judge decides, it will anger half of America.
And if individual states refuse to recognize the Supreme Court's verdicts, this threatens to put the country on the brink of division or even civil war.
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