The 'Tea Party' Supreme Court: How Conservatives Turned the Highest Court in the Land to Ideological Extremism

Photo by bloomsberries, Flickr Creative Commons
Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons

Why conservatives on the Supreme Court have become ideologically extreme, rigid and scornful of compromise.

June 21, 2012

However the Supreme Court rules on the Affordable Care Act – or affirmative action and the other pending issues – the decisions are unlikely to do much to enhance the respect the Court receives from the public.  

Three-quarters of the pubic believe that the justices are influenced by their personal or political views and the Court’s overall public approval ratings have fallen significantly over the last quarter-century. The results stem in part from a relentless conservative attack on the legitimacy of the Court. Indeed, 30 percent of the public believes that the Court is “too liberal” while only 24 percent believe it is “too conservative” – despite independent evaluations indicating that this is the most conservative Supreme Court since at least the 1930s.

But the reason this Court can be termed a “Tea Party” Supreme Court does not necessarily turn on the content of the decisions, which like this week’s immigration rulings, are often a complex mix of the justices’ individual approaches.  Instead, the Court merits a “tea party” label because of the efforts to stack the Court with doctrinaire extremists, and to promote a methodology that has much in common with the Tea Party congressmen who threaten to bring government to a standstill.
  READ MORE