The Democracy Fix: How to Win the Fight for Fair Rules, Fair Courts, and Fair Elections by Caroline Fredrickson

Author:Caroline Fredrickson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Campaigns & Elections, Political Advocacy, Political Parties, Political Process, Political Science, United States
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2019-04-23T03:00:00+00:00

THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

Feeling burned by earlier Supreme Court justices who had shown insufficient adherence to the conservative dogma, the Right was ready when Sandra Day O’Connor retired in 2006. Swearing that her replacement would toe the line, a prominent group of lawyers organized a plan to ensure a safe choice. Dubbed the “four horsemen,” Leo, former attorney general Ed Meese, White House counsel in the first Bush administration C. Boyden Gray,and Jay Sekulow, from Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice, brought together a broad swath of conservatives to fight for the nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, not to mention a large number of lower-court judges named by George W. Bush. These judges espoused a firmly conservative—and pro-corporate—ideology.47 The funders who supported these efforts, including lawyer Ann Corkery, real estate magnate Robin Arkley II, the Koch brothers, and the Mercer family, no doubt found the investment profitable as the current Supreme Court has provided a safe harbor for corporate interests and promoted a social agenda that’s far to the right, prompting Southern Baptist head Richard Land to call Bush’s justices “the gifts that keep on giving” for religious conservatives.48 From high-profile cases like Citizens United to those that fly under the radar, such as Comcast v. Behrend,49 which threw out a class action antitrust suit, the court has reliably ruled for companies over employees, consumers, and government regulators.50

The four horsemen were bolstered by a political strategy to pressure senators to support the nominees. In late 2004, Justice Antonin Scalia joined Leonard Leo and several wealthy conservative donors to celebrate the founding of a new organization, the Judicial Confirmation Network (JCN), which could be described as the political arm of the Federalist Society.51 News reports credit Sekulow, who would later serve as President Trump’s lawyer, with the idea to create the JCN.52 Immediately jumping into the fight for Bush’s Supreme Court nominees, the JCN helped secure victories for the two new extremely conservative justices, Roberts and Alito.

Then, with the election of Barack Obama, the Judicial Confirmation Network became the Judicial Crisis Network.53 Obama’s election was a windfall for the JCN as its funders doubled down in the interest of limiting the Democratic president’s impact on the courts. Obama’s first nominee to a federal appeals court, David Hamilton, got the first taste of the JCN in attack mode. Despite his quite moderate record, Hamilton was painted as a “hard-left political activist,” and somehow his nomination was cast as Obama’s way of thanking ACORN for services rendered. Hamilton had spent one summer in college in the 1970s canvassing for that organization, which was accused by the Right of having tipped the election illegally to Obama in 2008.54

Citizens United, decided in 2010, provided rocket fuel for the JCN. Like other 501(c)(4)s, the JCN is not required by law to disclose its donors, but investigative journalists have tracked the organization’s money to the shady Wellspring Committee, another 501(c)(4) group, which even shares an address and overlapping officers with the JCN.

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