From Clinton To Biden, To Retire Just In Time

STEPHEN BREYER — THE AUTHORITY OF THE COURT AND THE PERIL OF POLITICS — 2021

This little pamphlet — because it is a pamphlet in the good old Enlightenment style in France or Europe, Catherine’s Russia included, in the 18th century, like with Voltaire and a few others — tells in its title the real stuff that you will read. It deals with the concept of authority for the Supreme Court and how it conquered it and how it can be maintained. Then it does speak of the peril of politics as if politics had to be dangerous. He does not realize that politics is the tip of an enormous iceberg which is called social ideology, social awareness, social consciousness, social struggling. It has little to do with class struggle, the old Marxist concept, but it has to do with societal questions like gender, sexuality, the control of one’s body (too often reduced to abortion, though it should be centered on contraception and preventing pregnancy, hence family planning), and a few other fundamental questions like race relations, education, the right to be informed on all subjects and to be able to access all information on all those subjects, and that is a lot more than just the famous freedom of speech. There is no freedom of speech if you do not have access to all the information around the topics you want to speak about, and that’s the real problem. Nowadays with social networks, anyone can say anything on any subject without having access to the necessary information and opinions in order to be able to build, construct, elaborate a seasoned and balanced opinion.

The peril is not in politics but the uninformed “free” expression, and it is no longer free since it is based on some emptiness vastly populated with all sorts of biases. And that makes Stephen Breyer very timid in his approach to history and he contradicts himself very easily and in depth. Page 26 he says very rightly: “Together with the president, civil rights leaders, and a great many ordinary citizens, the Court had won a major victory for constitutional law, for equality, and above all for justice itself.” The Supreme Court is following the wind of public…