Here’s a passage from Alistair Cooke’s America written some 40 years ago:
"The Constitution is what the judges say it is."
So it is.
And since a majority of the nine decides everything, the Constitution is what five judges say it is.
Now, this sounds very alarming, but these nine men are human and of various character and there's nothing rigid about the authority of the Constitution.
It bends to the moral winds of the time.
But if the judges are behind the times and if ever their integrity as honourable men is seriously questioned, then the Court and the country are in trouble.
But I've noticed that an odd and impressive thing happens, can happen, when a man is appointed to the Court.
The president may think he has installed a ventriloquist's doll, but suddenly the man is paid for life and can become himself, a quite different character from the one the president ordered up.
And so remarkably often the Court has kept the country on an even keel in the stormiest times.
Believe me, it will be a bad day for Americans if ever the mass of them come to lose faith in this Court as their fair and final protector
Were he still alive, I think that this wonderful man would have on the one hand been mightily saddened by the degree to which the honor of some of the court’s members, and so by extension the integrity of the Court itself, has indeed been put into question, and it is regarded by fewer and fewer of us, even on days when we agree with it’s outcome, as our “fair and final protector” but also if the rumors of Justice Robert’s changing his vote through fear of Scalia’s mounting excesses turn out to be true, at least a degree of validation for his theory of the Court’s moderating mechanism. May John Roberts continue to do the right thing, maybe sometimes even for the right reasons. And I hope Mr. Cooke, wherever he rests in peace, can look down on yesterday’s events with some small degree of satisfaction.
Medicare for all.