Posted 6/16/2009

THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE JUDICIAL APOCALYPSE

To paraphrase Grantland Rice:

"Outlined against a blue-gray June sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito. They formed the crest of another judicial cyclone which attempted to sweep the Fourteenth Amendment off the Constitution's precipice as a few dozen spectators and reporters peered up upon the bewildering panorama going on in the marbled splendor above."

The case involved the rankest kind of bias.

Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito supported the refusal of acting chief Justice Brent Benjamin to recuse himself from a West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals case involving his buddy, Massey Energy Co. executive Don Blankenship.

By deciding to spare Blankenship from a $50 million jury verdict, Justice Benjamin was in clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of "due process of law." The obviousness of Judge Benjamin's conflict of interest was clear when it was revealed that he was elected a judge with the help of $3 million worth of election contributions from Blankenship.

Fortunately the Four Horsemen of Injustice were defeated by a surge of strength, wisdom and clear thinking from Supreme Court Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg, Breyer and Kennedy.

Writing for the majority, Kennedy said the case amounted to "an extraordinary situation." He emphasized the unusual size of Blankenship's contribution compared with all other monetary gifts to the judge's election campaign. Kennedy also emphasized the fact that Brlankenship's expenditures had apparently affected the outcome of the election.

In less polite terms, Kennedy and the majority apparently felt Blankenship had bought himself a judge for $3 million in order to save himself from paying a judgment of $50 million. A great investment, but one which violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

Justice Roberts, petulant at his loss, wrote, "The cure is worse than the disease" and listed 40 questions about the decision. He felt that there would be a question about how much money it would take to create the bias which would force judicial recusal. He felt that this decision would clog up the courts.

But writing for the majority, Kennedy countered, "The extreme facts of the case raised the probability of actual bias."

In examining the behavior of the Supreme Court's Four Horsemen more closely, certain questions arise:

Would they eat a rotten egg if it smelled only a little bad?

Could they recognize a case being decided on the basis of integrity? If they have trouble seeing the concept of bias, how would they deal with integrity?

Do Chief Justice Roberts and his fellow horsemen really believe it is all right to buy judges for personal gain?

Will the judicial decisions of Roberts and Alito continue to be so bad as to nail their sponsor, former President George Bush, to the Presidential Hall of Shame along with Buchanan and Grant?

We had all better become more alert about the doings of the Supreme Court.

If you got sued over something, would you want the sitting judge to have been elected with money contributed by the guy suing you?

We have already lost Congress and the Senate to the special interests.

As a former Senator said, "We no longer have representative government in America because Washington represents only two classes of people – those who send bushels of votes and those who send bushels of money."

If we lose the justice system to bought-and-paid-for judges, the common man will have little recourse to the benefits of democracy.

As Adam Smith, the founder of capitalism, warned, "You must never allow the reins of government to fall into the hands of the mean and rapacious merchant."

But it appears that Chief Justice Roberts is all too eager to do just that.

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