Legislative Branch Takes Some Stabs At Doing Something, Anything About The Unchecked Judiciary

Last updated: 2024/07/12 at 5:42 AM

Democratic members of Congress took some steps this week to take as-yet-untried stabs at Supreme Court accountability after this month’s striking immunity ruling, which gave former President Trump, and all future presidents, sweeping criminal immunity.

Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking him to appoint a special counsel to investigate “potential violations of ethics, false statement, and tax laws by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the benefactors who have supplied him with undisclosed gifts.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY), meanwhile, introduced articles of impeachment in the House against Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito for their refusal to recuse themselves from key cases in which they’re credibly accused of having a conflict of interest.

And this afternoon Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced that his panel will hold a hearing in September on “the immediate legal and policy ramifications” of the high court’s immunity ruling. The decision, sweeping and vague, surprised even legal experts who are clear-eyed about the court’s recent, radical lurch to the right, and who are concerned it essentially greenlights a January 6 redo. The dissenting liberals noted that the majority opinion could be read to allow a president to do something as extreme as assassinating a political rival without any accountability.

“During this upcoming hearing, we will examine the breadth of future misconduct that may be immunized from prosecution, consider the unprecedented nature of this immunity in American history, and discuss legislative solutions to the dangers of this decision,” Durbin said in a statement Thursday.

“This dangerous decision immunizes presidents who commit crimes, no matter how serious, as long as they claim their offenses were ‘official acts,’” he continued. “The far-right justices responsible for this decision like to claim that they are guided by ‘textualism’ or ‘originalism,’ but the reality is that they’re engaged in judicial activism unmoored from the text of the Constitution and intentions of our framers.”

While the strong words from Durbin don’t do much of anything in the practical sense of holding the rouge court accountable for the disastrous immunity ruling, a legislative hearing is a start.