The problem with the courts is the same as the problem with many of our other institutions. Called the Skinsuit Phenomenon, after the great @Iowahawk’s famous tweet that perfectly sums up the leftist approach to marching through our society: “1. Identify a respected institution. 2. Kill it. 3. Gut it. 4. Wear its carcass as a skinsuit, while demanding respect. #lefties.” The courts are supposed to have respect because they’re supposed to do their job, but, as is so common these days, they’re not doing the job, yet they still expect the respect. That’s just not in the cards. Things are going to change. It’s just a matter of how they change. They could change back to when the courts acted like courts, or they could change to where the courts get kicked to the curb.
The courts fulfill several functions. Courts resolve disputes between individuals and entities – we call that “civil law,” which I did for about 30 years. Courts also resolve criminal disputes, where the government charges that someone committed a crime and the accused denies it. These are the most common things that courts do, the routine work that allows society to function. However, there is another role that courts play. Courts determine limitations on government power, and that’s where we have problems. In the first two roles, courts certainly screw up on a regular basis, but it’s not a systematic problem. With some exceptions – hello, family law in general, insane plaintiffs’ verdicts, and government persecutions like the J6 pogrom – the courts generally function adequately. You can be fairly certain you will be heard and fairly certain that the courts will apply something that is at least somewhat similar to the law to your case.
But then you get to political cases, and everything goes crazy. Take it from a lawyer – the kind of antics that go on in political cases have nothing to do with the normal law that goes on day-to-day in other courts. Procedurally, you don’t have crazy things like ex parte motions to certify a class filed at 3 a.m. on a Saturday morning and granted within 15 minutes without allowing opposition. This doesn’t happen. And substantively, you don’t have courts ruling on matters where their jurisdiction has been expressly removed by legislation or otherwise ignoring the clear text of the Constitution and the applicable statutes. In normal cases, judges hate to be reversed by the courts of appeal. In political cases, lower court judges seem to wear reversal like a medal and run hog wild.
The courts have stopped doing what the courts are supposed to do as an institution. The courts are now doing what the employees of those institutions want to do, following their own (leftist) political agenda instead of the law. It’s the Skinsuit Phenomenon. They’re not doing their job, but we’re supposed to keep respecting them, and respecting them, I mean, allowing them to exercise power.
Where should the courts get their power? From doing their job. They don’t have any other power. They have no police to send out to arrest anybody, nor any Army to go conquer the defiant. They have the power we give them, and they’re supposed to earn it by performing their function adequately. Remember, these folks are not elected. In the federal system, they serve for life, so they’re not accountable to the voters. But even though they’re not doing the job they were appointed to do – apply the law neutrally – they still expect to have the power they would have if they were actually doing the job they were appointed to do and applying the law neutrally.
But that doesn’t work. What they’ve done is convert the courts from a branch that is not political into one that is, without adding the critical characteristic of accountability. In other words, we can’t vote them out of office like we can other politicians. Congress is a political branch. If you don’t like what your current representative or senator is doing, you can vote for someone else – and you should in 2026. And if you don’t like what our current president is doing – in which case, you’re a dork – you can vote for whichever communist weirdo the Democrats nominate in 2028.
But you don’t get to vote on federal judges even when they act like politicians. If a branch is going to be political, it has to be accountable. Today, we have courts that want to be political but not accountable like politicians are. What use are the courts for resolving disputes over government power if they are just going to act like politicians but not have the limitations put on politicians in the form of having to face the voters?
What’s the moral argument for compelling obedience to a bunch of people who you will never get to vote for or against in the future? Why do we even need a third political branch? I keep hearing about how important “Our Democracy” is, so how does that work when the people who are making the decisions are outside of our democratic processes? Well, it doesn’t. It’s just a power grab. It’s a skin suit. Why must we obey the courts as if they’re neutral arbiters who only care about the law even when they are manifestly not neutral arbiters and do not care only about the law?
The left killed the courts, gutted them, and is wearing the resulting skin suit around town demanding respect. That might’ve worked for a while, but that’s not going to happen anymore. We’re hip to the scam, and we’re getting more and more angry. The current configuration of the courts just isn’t working for us. We’re getting tired of the status quo.
Just look at what happened earlier this week. The Supreme Court had the chance to take on two Second Amendment cases, one where a bunch of communists imposed magazine capacity limitations and another where the pinkos tried to ban AR-15s. The argument for doing the latter was, seriously, that the most common rifle in America does not fall within the category of “arms,” as in the right to keep and bear the same. The Supreme Court decided not to hear the case, with Brett Kavanaugh saying that the Court might get around to hearing the matter in a year or two. Hey, what’s the hurry? It’s only a key enumerated right under the Constitution?
Sure glad we had Kegger’s back, huh?
But when a bunch of illegal alien Third World gang members might get shipped back to where they belong, suddenly the Court has got to act right now, right away, no time to wait, immediately, to protect the fair rights of those scumbags. Normal Americans having their actual rights violated? No biggie. Maybe we’ll find time to take care of that in a couple of years. Maybe.
The left has spent years trying to undermine the authority of the Supreme Court to stop the lower courts from their skin-suiting. John Roberts thinks he can play footsie with these people, while they will gut him and wear his pelt like his skin suit the second they get the chance. His problem is he thinks he can cleverly play off the left and the right and preserve his institution and that he can do it by making political rulings. But that’s not so. The only way for the Court to restore its reputation for neutral application of the law is by neutrally applying the law. No, that’s too easy. No, John Roberts has to be clever. And in doing so, he’s alienated the only faction in American politics that might have supported him.
You have probably heard of the Federalist Society. That is a group of law nerds that was generally associated with the right because it wasn’t actively leftist. It believes in originalism, the idea that you should apply the original understanding of the Constitution and the laws instead of filling in legal Mad Libs like the living Constitution leftists. Basically, it was an argument between what the law was meant to say, associated with conservatives, and what the law needed to say to reach a policy goal, associated with liberals.
Trump famously appointed Federalist Society judges in his first term. We ended up with Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Coney Barrett. None of them are reliably conservative. That’s what we want: reliable conservative votes. Why? Because the judiciary has become a political branch, and you can’t shut your eyes real tight and try real hard as you continue to apply your arcane legal theory while the other side’s judges are doing whatever they need to do to get the result they want. It doesn’t work.
As usual, the Fredocons are out in force, telling us to ignore reality and pretend that the norms are still in effect. That’s not a skin suit – that’s a real pelt! But we’re not playing that anymore. We’ve accepted that the judiciary has become a political branch, and we’re going to deal with it on those terms. This means no more Federalist Society judges who, through a faulty application of their academic ideology, might end up supporting the left. Since it’s now a political branch, we want judges who were going to get us our preferred political result. Hey, prospective judge, I don’t want to hear about your ideology. I want you to vote my way every time because that’s what the courts do now.
Of course, this raises the question of why we need courts at all to resolve questions about government powers. If it’s going to be just another political branch, that’s superfluous when we already have a legislature and an executive. What function does having a third branch, consisting of unelected people in funny clothes pretending to read legal briefs, provide? None. There’s no reason for it, and it deserves no moral deference. It’s just another set of politicians, and we ought to consider getting rid of the courts’ participation in such issues if we are not going to return it to its proper role. But in the meantime, we should accept things as they are. That means no more Federalist Society sissies, only hard-core conservatives. If the courts are just another political arena, I say we go full Maximus and fight to win.
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The courts need to take back their legitimacy by doing their jobs. If the judiciary becomes another political branch, one that is unaccountable to the American people, we're going to run into serious problems.
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