Supreme Court Secrecy: Who Needs it?

When Supreme Court member Sam Alito’s secret plan for canceling the constitutional right of women to end their pregnancies leaked out to the public – Republican politicos went ballistic! Over the leak, that is. The Court’s Republican Chief Justice, John Roberts, called the unauthorized disclosure an “affront” to the majesty of the Supremes. Likewise, Republican congressional leaders have furiously demanded to know who dunnit and why! Way beyond their political screeching and posturing, however, a Pennsylvania woman quietly wrote a letter to the New York Times that calmly posed a couple of honest, more-fundamental questions: “Why are Supreme Court votes and processes so hidden in the first place?” And “How did this grip on secrecy become so sacrosanct?” After all, as important and enormously-powerful as this tiny body is, it’s still a governmental agency doing public business that affects every American. So the legal work that the nine members of this ultimate judicial authority do – including their internal machinations to reach such awesome decisions as nullifying fundamental human rights – ought to be transparent to all who will be affected. The ugly truth is that today’s Third Branch of government has needlessly, dangerously, and rather ludicrously become a black-robed autocracy. Bear in mind that these nine individuals are enrobed for life, choose the cases they consider, make up their own rules of ethical conduct, operate almost entirely behind closed doors, can conspire to issue decrees – and the bare majority of only five of them can arbitrarily overrule president’s, congresses, states, other courts, voters… and your own personal life-decisions. And now comes a six-person GOP majority of supreme justices determined to entrench corporate plutocracy, right-wing theocracy, and Republican sovereignty over all of us. That’s why we must finally lift the medieval level of secrecy the partisan judges are using to shroud their actions.