Let’s Talk About Impeaching Supreme Court Justices

Huffington Post:  The Blog; by Nathan Newman

With the threat of the Supreme Court striking down the most important progressive domestic initiative in a generation, we should be talking about impeaching Supreme Court Justices who engage in such right-wing judicial activism.

Impeachment?  Many progressives shrink back in horror at such a supposed affront to judicial independence.  For an example, see Ruth Marcus’s tizzy over President Obama’s rather mild (and accurate) statement that unelected judges striking down such a core economic regulation would be unprecedented in the post-1930s legal environment.

But we need to be talking about impeachment if we are not to see every progressive economic regulation struck down by the courts as outside the supposed intent of the Constitution’s Founders — the regular rhetoric of those promoting rightwing legal theory.

What we have been witnessing in recent years is the rising use of anti-democratic means by corporate-backed interests to…