This is part of Amicus and Slate’s “By the People” series, which explores how the American people can reclaim the Constitution—and the law—from this monarchical Supreme Court.

It has often occurred to me that if you were a visiting alien—or even, say, a visiting Norwegian—it might strike you as profoundly odd that many, if not most, Americans now mark the close of the Supreme Court term in the last two weeks of June by feeling abject horror that an unelected, life-tenured juristocracy has yet again made it harder to be a free, equal, and independent American. And then that same country immediately turns around on July Fourth and fetes itself as the best, freest democracy in the world.

After Citizens United came down in 2010, Americans were stunned that the high court had opened the spigot to pour big money into elections under the guise of free speech. They talked about reforming the court. Nothing happened. After Shelby County in 2013, Americans were shocked that the court had eviscerated the (recently reauthorized) Voting Rights Act on a dubious claim of state “dignity,” and vowed to do something about the overturning of popular statutes. They talked about court reform. Nothing happened. After Heller rewrote the entire scope of the Second Amendment from historical vapors; after Mitch McConnell stole a seat to lock in a conservative majority; after Clarence Thomas accepted endless bottomless glittering gifts from donors with interests in matters before the court, we had loud conversations about what might be done. Some sort of court reform, surely, it was discussed. Nothing happened. After Dobbs overturned 50 years of precedent and ended women’s legal right to abortion, there sure was talk of court reform. At least, people said, overturning Roe would have some consequences for this court, and the Republican Party that made it so. Nothing happened. After the murder of the Chevron doctrine, after the “major questions doctrine” was invented to block President Joe Biden’s agenda; after the Jan. 6 immunity decision and the demise of affirmative action; after the ethics violations, the leaks, and the shadow docket, Americans again came together and somehow agreed again that something should be done. And then Americans did nothing.

The Supreme Court as currently constituted is the United States’ abusive boyfriend, constantly asserting the power to control every aspect of our lives while ignoring the actual rules governing its own conduct. If this court were your partner, making it forever more difficult to express your own preferences as it persistently intoned that it’s you that was the problem, you would pack a go bag and find a motel room.

Listen to the first episode of the Amicus........

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