USA: Asserting that lawmakers should consider impeaching justices for breaking the law, US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) has criticised the Supreme Court for making "authoritarian" decisions on issues like abortion, LGBTQ protections, and race-based college admissions.
She said on CNN on Sunday that lawmakers should consider issuing subpoenas to demand answers if Chief Justice John Roberts refuses to voluntarily testify in a congressional investigation into alleged ethics violations by Supreme Court judges. In order to preserve a proper balance of power among the three branches of government in the country, the New York Democrat also advocated for the imposition of stricter ethics rules.
Impeachment must also be an option, according to Ocasio-Cortez. We have a variety of tools at our disposal to deal with misconduct, overreach, and power abuse.
The congresswoman made her remarks in response to a series of rulings last week in which the nation's top court rejected President Joe Biden's proposal to forgive $400 billion in student loan debt, outlawed colleges from admitting students based on their skin colour, and upheld the free-speech rights of a Christian graphic artist who refused to perform same-sex weddings. She also referred to the ruling last year that overturned Roe v. Wade, a significant 1973 decision that had safeguarded abortion as a constitutional right.
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"The courts, if they were to proceed without any check on their power, without any balance on their power, then we will start to see an undemocratic and, frankly, dangerous authoritarian expansion of power in the Supreme Court, which is what we are seeing now," said Ocasio-Cortez.
For instance, she claimed that the court's decision to deny services for same-sex weddings stripped LGBTQ people of "their full personhood and dignity." "These are the decisions that portend a perilous inclination towards authoritarianism and the concentration of power in the court,"
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Asserting that "democracy is in crisis" because six of the nine current judges were chosen by Republican presidents, Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the far-left "Squad" group of Democratic lawmakers have called for a 15-justice court. In such a case, Biden, who would be able to appoint six left-leaning justices, claimed on Thursday that increasing the court's size would negatively politicise the judicial branch.
