It is impossible to watch certain current events unfold and not respond to them, immediately, with outrage.
The Supreme Court’s decision in the South Carolina redistricting case is such an example.
The state legislature created through gerrymandering a safe white district in Charleston, by moving largely black populations around. Precisely the kind of legislative action the Voting Rights Act was adopted to prevent.
Yet the Court, in an opinion authored by Justice Alito, upheld the action, on the theory that gerrymandering is OK as long as it is done on the basis of politics and not race.
To begin with: this is a slippery slope distinction. Politics – i.e. the political party composition of districts – and race are often highly correlated.
In this case, the lower court – which actually considered the evidence and heard the witnesses – simply did not believe their protestations that their action was not racist.
Yet the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, with the three Trump appointees joining the other conservatives, reversed those factual findings. Alito said in his opinion that it was outrageous to assume bad i.e. racist intent on the part of state legislators.
With all this as background, we turn to recent verified reports about Alito – and his wife! – flying the American flag upside down, and another flag reciting an early American revolutionary phrase – both of which were adopted by those perpetrating the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol – on their properties.
So to conclude – we have an outrageous decision authored by a compromised justice.
This is not the disinterested rule of law at work.
This is very difficult for those who believe deeply in the rule of law. There can be no higher authority in civil society – no religious creed, not even science until it has been enfolded into law.
It is incumbent upon those of us who so embrace the law, to fight against its fracture by those who do not.
Col Owens is a retired attorney and a law professor. He is author of the Bending the Arc Toward Justice.