Supreme Incompetents

Plus: Biden's deportations, new(ish) Sun Ra, and more. July 9, 2024 [View in browser]( Hi! I hope you're having a wonderful day! I'm Sean Collins, a news editor at Vox, and I'll be your Today, Explained newsletter host for the next two weeks. (Caroline will be back after that.) On tap for today: Our resident Supreme Court expert Ian Millhiser's here to break down a truly wild and momentous series of cases for us. —Sean Collins, editor of news   [Seen under bright lights in their black robes, Supreme Court justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh.] Shawn Thew/Getty Images The Supreme Court's crisis of incompetence All of the United States’ government’s most important institutions are failing at once. Congress, of course, has long been barely able to function. Every year it [struggles merely to fund the rest of the government](, and the risk that Congress will trigger a debt ceiling breach that would [set the global economy on fire]( is alarmingly high. Congressional dysfunction has only grown worse under a Republican Party that can [barely manage to choose a House speaker](, much less enact legislation. The Republican Party has atrophied into a cult of personality, centered on an authoritarian goon who literally [tried to overthrow the duly elected United States government](. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, may be [unable to dislodge a senescent leader]( who is no longer capable of making the case against his imperious opponent. And then there’s the Supreme Court, perhaps the only branch of the United States government that is capable of speaking in complete sentences right now. Don’t confuse the Court’s relative eloquence for competence, however. The justices are [barely able to manage their own docket](, a docket, by the way, that’s been [shrinking for decades](. They [publish incompetently drafted decisions]( that sow confusion throughout the judiciary, then [refuse to accept responsibility]( when those decisions lead to ridiculous and immoral outcomes. They [take liberties with the facts of their cases](, and they can’t even be trusted to [read the plain text of an unambiguous statute correctly](. In just the last few years, they’ve [overruled]( [so many]( [seminal]( [precedents]( that law professors [no longer know how to teach their classes](. And yet, despite their own incompetence, the justices continue to [claim more and more power]( — even though they simply [do not have the personnel]( they’d need to address every policy question that they’ve added to their own plates. Worse, the United States has a [Dunning-Kruger]( Supreme Court. The justices aren’t just very bad at their jobs, they appear to be blissfully unaware of just how terrible they are at those jobs. How else can one explain, say, their decision to replace all of American Second Amendment law with a novel and impossible-to-apply legal test — one that led to [astonishingly depraved results]( — and then to offer [no new guidance to lower court judges,]( after all but one of the justices realized just how badly they’d screwed up? As the curtain falls on the Supreme Court’s most recent term, no one should think that this particular panel of judges is capable of doing their jobs. I have a fuller article on Vox.com outlining all the travesties of this term ([you can read it here](), but here are two egregious ones. [Under a clear sky, protesters gather in front of the columned facade of the Supreme Court. One holds a spray painted banner reading: ''trump Is NOT Above The LAW''] Drew Angerer/AFP/Getty Images Our justices seem incapable of anticipating the consequences of their decisions The Court’s inability to create sensible legal rules was on full display in its most closely watched decision of the term: [Trump v. United States](, the presidential immunity case. The holding of Trump is truly shocking. One question that loomed over this case is, in the words of a lower court judge who earlier heard the Trump case, whether Trump could be prosecuted if he’d [ordered “SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival.”]( Though the Trump opinion does not answer this question directly, it’s hard to read it to permit such a murderous president to be prosecuted. For starters, Trump holds “the courts have ‘no power to control [the president’s] discretion’ when he acts pursuant to the powers invested exclusively in him by the Constitution.” One of those powers is the ability to give orders to the military — the Constitution provides that the president “[shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States](.” As Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes in dissent, “When [the president] uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. [Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.]( Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.” [Chief Justice John Roberts, smiling broadly with closed lips, smile lines bracketing his eyes, sits in his black robe.] Erin Schaff/Getty Images The Court has given itself more power than it can possibly handle The Court’s just-completed term also featured one of the biggest power grabs in the Court’s recent history. [Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo]( makes the Supreme Court the final word on hundreds or even thousands of policy questions that Congress delegated to federal agencies like the EPA or the Department of Labor. These questions concern some big policy disputes, such as [who is entitled to overtime pay]( or [how to reduce greenhouse emissions by power plants](. But they also concern a much broader array of minor and often very technical policy disputes that few people are likely to care about. The Loper Bright case itself, for example, asked whether the government or the vessels themselves must [pay for federal observers who sometimes accompany fishing vessels]( at sea. One bizarre thing about Loper Bright is that the Supreme Court already [gave itself an unchecked veto power]( over anything involving what the Court calls a “major question” — that is, agency actions that involve a matter of “vast ‘economic and political significance.’” So the justices were already the final word on policy questions that sparked meaningful political disagreement. All that Loper Bright does is force the courts to decide many more less significant questions. These are questions like how much residents of Kauai, Hawaii, should [pay for cable television service](, or whether a wastewater treatment plant in Taunton, Massachusetts, [emits too much nitrogen]( — questions, in other words, that are both far beyond the expertise of the justices, and that are so small they aren’t really worth the time of the nine most powerful officials in the most powerful nation that has ever existed. The Supreme Court, moreover, has nine justices, each of whom [typically hires four law clerks to assist them](. That’s nowhere near enough staff to handle the firehose of hypertechnical policy questions the Court just directed at itself. The unmanageable volume of cases headed the Court’s way will be further magnified by the Republican justices’ recent decision in [Corner Post v. Federal Reserve](, which effectively eliminates the six-year statute of limitations that used to apply to lawsuits challenging federal regulations. So thoughts and prayers to the justices, who will now have to deal with the unmanageable workload they’ve created for themselves, even as they are unable to handle the cases already on their docket in a competent manner. — [Ian Millhiser, senior correspondent](   [Listen]( Joe Almighty President Joe Biden says only the “Lord Almighty” can get him to end his reelection campaign, though more and more Democrats are trying to sway him themselves. [Listen now](   MOVEMENT OF THE PEOPLE - A new “deporter-in-chief?”: Biden’s on track to reach deportation levels this year not seen since the Obama administration. [[Reuters](] - Not Rwanda bound: New UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has canned his predecessor’s plan to send migrants to Rwanda, and is letting the last two people waiting to be sent there out of detention. [[BBC](] - Returned to Syria: Syrian refugees are being deported back home, and are facing a rough road ahead. [[Deutsche Welle](] [Amid rolling desert hills, Border Patrol agents, in their olive uniforms, confer with each other as migrants are ushered into a white van behind them.]( Katie McTiernan/Anadolu/Getty Images WATCH AND LISTEN - The first Asian Bachelorette is here: Jenn Tran’s turn as the first Asian American star of ABC’s The Bachelorette starts this week. It’s a big deal for obvious reasons, but also because of what it says about power. [[Vox](] - Being in the News: My Vulture colleague Devon Ivie is back with another installment of her series in which a legendary musician walks her through their discography. This time around, we get to hear from Huey Lewis, frontman of the News. [[Vulture](] - Outer Spaceways, incorporated: Speaking of musical lions, there’s a new record with reinterpretations of Sun Ra’s tracks out, and the musicians behind it have a lot of tales about how it all came together. [[The Fader](] AND WE HOPE YOU'LL CHECK OUT - What if everything is conscious?: Scientists are beginning to wonder whether everything from tiny atoms to towering redwoods are conscious. [[Vox](]   Ad   What India teaches us about liberalism Zack Beauchamp is joined by scholar Pratap Bhanu Mehta to discuss the past and present of Indian liberalism, and what it says about the future of global politics. [Listen now](   Are you enjoying the Today, Explained newsletter? Forward it to a friend; they can [sign up for it right here](. And as always, we want to know what you think. Specifically: If there is a topic you want us to explain or a story you’re curious to learn more about, let us know [by filling out this form]( or just replying to this email. Today's edition was produced and edited by Sean Collins. 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