Tag: clarence thomas

Supreme Court of the United States.

The Federal Judiciary Is Broken — But Not for the Reason You Think

Jennifer S. Bard Leave a comment

By Jennifer Bard

Recent events, including the discovery that Justice Thomas has been accepting luxury vacations from and selling real estate to a billionaire, and the Fifth Circuit’s finding in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA that federal courts have the power to modify the conditions under which the FDA can approve a drug, may seem separate. But they’re not. Both involve a threat to our constitutional government and both highlight the need to shield all federal decision makers from entities with billions at stake and a fiduciary interest in increasing the value of their company for the benefit of shareholders. And while issues of influence affecting Supreme Court Justices attract the most attention, the factors that make Justices targets extend across the entire federal judiciary.

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Supreme Court of the United States.

The Bind We’re in — And How the Supreme Court Put Us There

Jennifer S. Bard Leave a comment

By Jennifer Bard

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages into its third year of global death and destruction, the Supreme Court of the United States has effectively thwarted every measure by federal or state government to implement the public health tools that for hundreds of years have been used to stop the spread of contagious disease. They have done so by operationalizing what were previously fringe and relatively harmless academic views in ways that extend their powers beyond any previous boundaries. These include, but are not limited to, extending the protection for religious exercise past any previously imagined, and limiting Congressional authority to respond to emergencies by imposing impossible standards of specificity on its delegation of authority to the agencies which it creates, funds, and directly oversees.

In so doing, the Court has not only undermined the health of the nation, and pushed millions of people into unnecessary long-term disability, which our fragmented health care and social security system is unequipped to handle. It has also threatened our national security by infecting what is already more than half of the children in the country with a virus that has the potential to damage every organ in their bodies, from heart to brain.

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