The Supreme Court was hit by a flurry of damaging new leaks Sunday as a series of confidential memos written by the chief justice were revealed by The New York Times.
The court’s Chief Justice John Roberts was clear to his fellow justices in February: He wanted the court to take up a case weighing Donald Trump’s right to presidential immunity—and he seemed inclined to protect the former president.
“I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently,” Roberts wrote to his Supreme Court peers, according to a private memo obtained by the *Times. *He was referencing the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to allow the case to move forward.
Roberts took an unusual level of involvement in this and other cases that ultimately benefited Trump, according to the Times— his handling of the cases surprised even some other justices on the high court, across ideological lines. As president, Trump appointed three of the members of its current conservative supermajority.
Hey guys I know it’s wild but there might be some corruption going on in the Supreme Court.
The biggest blunder of the framers was assuming we’d never form factions (i.e. parties). The assumption was that the branches would oppose each other, not collude.
I don’t think that’s their fault. They specifically addressed a two party system in multiple writings (they didn’t like it) in addition to explicitly stating that they expected future generations to update the constitution as necessary to protect the republic from those who would seek to undermine or replace it. We didn’t heed their warnings and now here we are.
To be clear, I don’t think the framers were infallible or able to see all possibile challenges that our nation would face. However, they seem to have been pretty damn good at learning from history and that’s something modern Americans are absolutely abysmal at. For all their faults they have a lot to teach us in that respect.
At least one of them (maybe Jackson but I’m probably wrong on who) specifically warned about political parties