Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito no doubt intended to shock the political world when he told interviewers for the Wall Street Journal that “No provision in the Constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”
Many observers dismissed his comment out of hand, noting the express language in Article III, establishing the court’s jurisdiction under “such regulations as the Congress shall make.”
But Alito wasn’t bluffing. His recently issued statement, declining to recuse himself in a controversial case, was issued without a single citation or reference to the controlling federal statute. Nor did he mention or adhere to the test for recusal that other justices have acknowledged in similar circumstances. It was as though he declared himself above the law.
Frankly, I don’t. That would make me a dictator. But you’ll notice that history tends to have a pattern of punctuated equilibrium where things stay mostly the same for a really long time, then become very different very quickly, then stay that way for a really long time. Those decades where nothing happens tend to be associated with people forgetting that they can have whatever they want whenever they decide to get it. Then they remember that nothing works unless they do, and that turns into a few weeks where decades happen. Sometimes people just need a hand remembering that they always have and always will run the show.
It’s interesting that your first thought is violence. It’s direct, and it has worked in the past, but I think that even aside from the issue of morality violence is becoming less and less effective as states are more prepared for it. What I would propose if I had the power to make this decision is literally nothing. I think we should all sit on our hands and do absolutely nothing for a couple days. Coordinate with one another so that we can make sure no one goes hungry while we do nothing, and so that we can accurately convey to the master class what it would take from them to get us back to doing something. Then we wait, and I don’t suspect it would take very long. In fact, I honestly believe that if a majority of us did nothing on Monday that we would all have whatever we wanted by Friday. Much more complex to implement than violence, it requires a lot more coordination and cooperation, but I think that it’s both morally superior and more effective if you can pull it off. It’s easy to defeat violence. All you need is superior violence and the state is really good at violence. They could pretty handily stimy violent revolution. But a flat refusal to participate in any manner is a lot harder to deal with.
A nation-wide walk-out is definitely a fun thought experiment. If we could even have meeting of the minds on a state level, I bet having a single state-wide walk-out would shift political discourse quite a bit. I suspect that there would be an overwhelming fear of it happening again.