Editor’s note: This commentary is by Stuart Graves, of South Burlington, who is a retired physician.
[C]an you imagine the uproar if a newly elected president were to change the title of the office from President to Supreme Leader? Yet we call one branch of our government the Supreme Court. And lately, they’ve been acting like they believe it.
Calling any institution supreme is ill advised. Granting ourselves such an exalted position in the cosmos only encourages us to folly and even behavior blissfully unconcerned with reality while we delight in play with our own words.
Take for example the recent unprecedented 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court to stay EPA regulations limiting coal plant emissions. Prior to that action the regulations had been unanimously upheld by a three-judge panel in federal court, following which West Virginia spearheaded an appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decided to step in and issued a “stay.” In all prior regulatory disputes the Supreme Court has let regulations stand while appeals in the lower courts are exhausted. After that it may then agree to hear the case (the court currently hears about 1.5 percent of petitions). Presuming West Virginia and the 29 states supporting the appeal (18 others are opposed) lose their appeals, and therefore take the case to the Supreme Court, the earliest it would rule is June 2017. In the meantime the EPA cannot act to reduce emissions from coal.
Now, as it turns out, these regulations are necessary for the United States to demonstrate it will act to keep the promises we made in the December 2015 Paris Agreement to reduce climate change. Without the United States taking steps to fulfill its central role it is unlikely others will fulfill theirs. The result? Homo sapiens will have taken one more step on its road to extinction.
The Supreme Court, despite its name, obviously has a paucity of authority here. The case involves not only the laws of man, but also the laws of nature. It is a dispute, if you will, between a culture and nature, and nature will follow its own ways and determine the fate of its “citizens” regardless of any court ruling. Its citizens in this case are the climate of our four and a half billion-year-old planet, and the health of a 200,000-year-old species, us, with 7.4 billion members straddling the globe – not to mention all the other species!
Despite this the Supreme Court would have themselves believe they do have jurisdiction solely on the grounds of a mere 153-year-old figment of our imagination, West Virginia. The state of West Virginia, which exists only in the minds of men, accounts for .025 percent of the world’s population, and .001 percent of the earth’s surface area. The Supreme Court, which also only exists in the minds of men, has jurisdiction over 4.3 percent of the world’s population, 1.9 percent of the Earth’s surface, and not one single law of nature.
Despite the well-known and easily available to all nature of these realities in which we live, and the implications which are obvious to even a school child, the justices, of known sagacity and knowledge, have foolishly moved forward. They act as if either unaware of the realities, or as if bewitched by a culture of no more than a few hundred years into which they were born by happenstance, and through that culture not a single reality of the ways in which nature works can be changed.
Patrick Morrisey, the attorney general of West Virginia, termed the court’s unprecedented action to delay and (given the unusual alacrity of its rush to act) probable eventual attempt to stop our ability to reduce emissions and slow global warming as a, “monumental victory for West Virginia, the country, and the rule of law.” It is hard to understand the meaning of this. Whichever way the court ruled, it would be following the law. If global warming continues West Virginia’s suffering will only increase along with the rest of us. Or the very idea of man-made law achieving “victory” over natural law is nonsensical. It can never happen.
The Supreme Court, which also only exists in the minds of men, has jurisdiction over 4.3 percent of the world’s population, 1.9 percent of the Earth’s surface, and not one single law of nature.
We give a rueful smile of recognition and a little laugh at the story of the king who had the sea’s waters lashed for not obeying him. It is hard when one is supreme to act with common sense.
Or take for example Citizen’s United v. FEC. In this 5-4 ruling the Supreme Court decided that the first amendment meant corporations should be allowed unlimited spending for political purposes, i.e. the purposes of governing humanity.
Never mind that corporations are immortal; never mind that they possess far more resources (money) than any individual citizen can (billionaires now utilize shell corporations to funnel their money into buying officials and political parties); never mind that corporations are amoral and not in the least motivated by love, loyalty, family, fairness, or any sense of the divine; never mind that the only goal of a corporation is profit (acquisition of political power advances potential for profit) whether or not that conflicts with life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, or the survival of the human race!
Any good originalist knows that when the Founding Fathers spoke of freedom “of speech,” freedom “of the press,” and the “right of people to peaceably assemble,” they were thinking of ExxonMobil and super PACs.
The Founding Fathers did not even want political parties! They feared parties would result in rigid positions and a focus on the party’s survival or dominance rather than a focus on the evolving issues we would face over time. Our founders must be rolling over in their graves to think that people aspiring to be elected, elected officials, and the political parties themselves are all now completely dependent upon corporations for their existence. And corporations are one issue entities: profit.
The sad reality today is that we do indeed live in a “marketplace of ideas,” where ideas (complete with puppets to espouse them) are bought and sold by corporations. Whereas truth, being free, independent and therefore not for sale, has no value or place to exist in such a marketplace. This is what it means for a corporation to be an “equal” player in the political arena with a person.
We humans created corporations, and now, simply because we flatter ourselves as being supreme, we become lost in our erudition and enslaved by our own creation. To think that an interpretation of the First Amendment supports this oppression!
At one time the largest buildings in our towns and cities were religious, then these were surpassed by government buildings, and now, of course, the largest buildings across the globe are corporate. Where the power, if left unchecked by us, to control humanity lies is obvious for all to see, and is only common sense, except, of course, to the supreme.
