Who Will Stand Up to the Supreme Court Justices?

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/opinion/supreme-court-voting-rights-act.html

https://archive.ph/LhoGz

Ruling by Ruling, the Supreme Court Is Undoing the Civil Rights Movement
May 2, 2026
By Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan

...

If Congress does not respond, we know how this story will end. But just as we can learn from the consequences of acquiescing to the Supreme Court’s constitutional interpretation, we can also draw upon the tools past Congresses have offered for how to build a more democratic constitutionalism. In that version, constitutional meaning is determined not by unelected judges but by we the people and our representatives through federal lawmaking.

Rejecting the court’s supremacy, Congress should reaffirm its own interpretation of the Reconstruction amendments by statute — as the 1862 Congress did after Dred Scott and the 1982 Congress after Bolden. Congress could declare, for example, that constitutional democracy demands a new Voting Rights Act that deploys proportional representation to end partisan gerrymandering or that rejects the unrestricted flow of money in politics. To make its interpretations stick, Congress should enact measures like those suggested by its predecessors.

As the founding generation of Republicans understood, the Constitution explicitly empowers Congress to regulate the court. By contrast, the document says nothing about the court’s claimed authority to regulate Congress. Instead, the court’s alleged authority to defy and second-guess acts of Congress has been sustained only because the American public has so far been willing to tolerate this judicial rule — a choice that can be unmade.

Lincoln understood the stakes of this choice when he warned at his inauguration in 1861 that if “vital questions affecting the whole people” are to be “irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court,” then “the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.”

We must not cease to govern ourselves.

...

[boston bean]

1. The people will demand our representatives do. So, us, the people.

[dem4decades]

2. Unfortunately red states are full of idiots, will we ever have the power?

[-misanthroptimist]

3. If talking to an idiot...

...simplify your message until the idiot can understand it.

Distracting them with something shiny also works.

[displacedvermoter]

6. Probably not for another generation, not in my lifetime.

If Trump gets to appoint two more Christofascists, not till 22nd Century.

Unless....

Democrats take action next year and then: end filibuster, make DC (and perhaps Puerto Rico) a state, expand Supreme Court to 13 - 15, impeach and remove sitting Justices who perjured themselves in their confirmation hearings, AND take the necessary steps to overturn Citizens United and try to return sanity to campaign financing.

But unlikely to happen, so see above.

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Maybe they need to set limits

on the age and duration of judges, min and max, and the number any president is permitted to appoint. One each term for example. 45 and 80 years old. There's too much clerking, and not enough musical chairs going on.

[LeftInTX]

5. Right now we don't have the right type of President, Senate and House that they had in the 1860s

Lincoln was able to pass legislation because many of the opposing party had left the union.

In 1862, Congress and President Abraham Lincoln enacted legislation that banned slavery in places the Dred Scott decision had protected.

It went downhill under Andrew Johnson.

In the 1870s, the court re-emerged to finish what it had started. Seizing for itself the power to decide the meaning of the amendments Congress had just drafted, the court announced that it was not “appropriate” for Congress to ban lynching, racial discrimination by businesses or widespread disenfranchisement. A century-long era of Jim Crow emerged.

We need people on our side running the show, not their side.

This is all fine and good, but pretty much a pie in the sky.

We would pretty much need a constitutional amendment to limit their powers.

[Wednesdays]

7. I was about to say...

We need two-thirds majority in both houses to override any Trump veto. And at least that many to enact any bullet-proof legislation, even with a Democratic president. That's a really high bar to climb, even with a blue tsunami.

[PhylliPretzel]

8. To any civil rights and voting rights the Congress can pass:

Add the sentence to the effect that the Supreme Court may not review this legislation. If one reads the constitution, there is no provision for the Court to rule on congressional actions, i.e., "judicial review.". That was a power the court took unto themselves in the Marbury vs. Madison decision in 1803.

[dave99]

9. A man with a six shooter, only need 6

[popsdenver]

10. Question......

I seem to remember talk that Biden could have increased the number of Justices in the Supreme Court and this mess in the Supreme Court would have never happened, or at least been postponed......

Anyone out there???????

[no_hypocrisy]

11. I've been waiting for the American Bar Association and an assortment of TENURED

law professors to make strong statements.

Nada.

Niente.

Nichts.

Lawrence Tribe can't do this by himself.

[bluestarone]

12. The decision has been made by THIS supreme court and CONGRESS to attack and change everything American.

November is our ONLY chance to stop this. Even at that it's a SLIM chance, i feel!!