On the final episode of Contempt of Court, Elie Mystal is joined by legal experts Nikolas Bowie and Rhiannon Hamam to understand how we might strip the court of its presumed legitimacy.
Nadine Seiler attends a rally for voting rights in front of the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., on December 7, 2022 .(Drew Angerer / Getty)
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This is the eighth and final episode of Contempt of Court, our podcast series about reforming the Supreme Court. On this episode, we’re going to talk about the court’s only true form of power: legitimacy.
To discuss potential paths toward delegitimizing the Court, my first guest on this episode is Harvard Law School professor, Nikolas Bowie. He makes a compelling case that the people, through their representatives, should be the ones in charge, not the Supreme Court.
Afterward, Rhiannon Hamam, host of the fantastic Supreme Court podcast 5-4, has some thoughts on what’s happening on the ground, as people try to take back power from the Court through direct action.
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The Supreme Court’s approval rating is at record lows. A Gallup poll this summer showed that only 40 percent of Americans approve of the job the court is doing. Forty percent is low, but it should be even lower.
This is the eighth and final episode of Contempt of Court, our podcast series about reforming the Supreme Court. On this episode, we’re going to talk about the court’s only true form of power: legitimacy.
The Supreme Court rules over the country based on our consent to be governed by it. It rules over Congress because Congress consents to follow the court’s orders. It rules over the president because the president consents to enforce the court’s orders.
That consent is directly tied to the view, held both by the people and the actors in government with real power, that the random thought bubbles emanating from the asses of nine unelected law clerics are legitimate. It doesn’t have to be this way. Arguably, it shouldn’t be this way.
To discuss potential paths toward delegitimizing the court, my first guest on this episode is Harvard Law School professor, Nikolas Bowie. He makes a compelling case that the people, through their representatives, should be the ones in charge, not the Supreme Court.
Afterward, Rhiannon Hamam, host of the fantastic Supreme Court podcast 5-4, has some thoughts on what’s happening on the ground, as people try to take back power from the court through direct action.
If you’ve listened to this whole series, first of all, thank you. But more importantly, I have bad news for you: you’re like me now. You can never again hear about a Supreme Court ruling and say: “but there’s nothing we can do.” You can never again nod politely when your elected leaders pretend that they are powerless to stop the extremism of the Supreme Court. You can never again comfort yourself with the false belief that the system is working as intended, or the hope that things will naturally work themselves out.
Now you know that the court can be reformed. It can be changed and it can be stopped. And you know that the people who will not reform it or change it or stop it hold those positions because they like—or are willing to live with—the outcomes this Court is producing.
In the words of Yoda: “Pass on what you have learned. Save us, it can.“
Elie MystalTwitterElie Mystal is The Nation’s justice correspondent and the host of its legal podcast, Contempt of Court. He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. His first book is the New York Times bestseller Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution, published by The New Press. Elie can be followed @ElieNYC.