Supremes Go All Out For Injustice

The court that has stood on the side of business and rightwing interests against public interest has denied the right to seek justice to those seized illegally after September 11, 2001.

The Supreme Court ruled today that former attorney general John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller may not be sued by Arab Muslims who were seized in this country after the 2001 terrorist attacks and allege harsh treatment because of their religion and ethnicity.

The court ruled 5 to 4 that the top officials are not liable for the actions of their subordinates absent evidence that they ordered the allegedly discriminatory activity. The decision followed the court's ideological split between conservatives and liberals, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy siding with the conservatives and writing the opinion.
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Justice David H. Souter wrote for the dissenters. He said the conservative majority went further to insulate public officials from civil liability than Ashcroft and Mueller had even asked for.

"The court denied Iqbal a fair chance to be heard," Souter wrote.

Will the avoidance of responsibility for crimes while acting under orders be used to combat the 'bad apples' talking point that the war criminals have used to fight charges that the WH is criminally responsible for torture... when the Supremes stand poised to defend their instigators, not likely.

The upcoming appointment is a chance to start returning the severely suborned highest court to justice. That return is sadly overdue.

Led by a grandstanding wingnut, the Supremes have denied justice in most of the cases they have taken.

His jurisprudence as Chief Justice, Roberts said, would be characterized by “modesty and humility.” After four years on the Court, however, Roberts’s record is not that of a humble moderate but, rather, that of a doctrinaire conservative. The kind of humility that Roberts favors reflects a view that the Court should almost always defer to the existing power relationships in society. In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.

The court has been yet another obstacle to justice in the past eight+ years of politicized right wing government. It is piling up a record of injustices that will take a long time to set right.