I know judicial fact-finding sounds boring, team, but I want to take a moment to explain how it’s another aspect of the corruption of this Supreme Court.
I recently published a law review article highlighting how this captured Supreme Court often simply makes up false facts to arrive at decisions that ultimately benefit partisan Republican special interests.
Take Citizens United v. FEC as an example. Remember when the Federalist Society justices said that all the unlimited political spending they were unleashing would be “transparent”? Well, we’ve seen dark money in politics prove them wrong several billion times over. The Roberts Court ignored factual records that Congress and the lower courts compiled, and it refused to go back and correct its own error. The error is the law of the land.
Our system is designed to leave fact-finding to the lower courts that hear testimony, make credibility determinations, and review evidence. The Supreme Court is then supposed to defer to – and not alter – factual records in its decisions. Think about it: if the Highest Court in the Land makes up phony facts, there is nowhere else the parties can appeal to.
The captured Roberts Court has done a lot of this phony fact-finding in big decisions that have fundamentally changed life in America. The Dobbs decision that ended a fundamental freedom for women is another one that was built on made-up history. How are the American people supposed to trust a Court that makes up its own rules to concoct decisions that suit right-wing special interests?
Americans deserve a Court that plays by the rules.
- Sheldon Whitehouse
