With attempt on Justice Kavanaugh’s life, leftist rhetoric and Roe protests have gone too far
The last few weeks have demonstrated that throngs of dissenters seem to believe that the Supreme Court is here at the leisure of the people, to entertain and to please them — and if it fails, some will stalk, harass and even plot assassination attempts against said members. This cannot stand.
A California man was arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house in Maryland and charged with attempting or threatening to kidnap or murder a judge. According to the criminal complaint, Nicholas John Roske, 26, had a weapon and told law enforcement he intended to murder “a specific United States Supreme Court Justice.”
He said he wanted to keep Kavanaugh from being the decisive vote on a New York gun rights case and possibly overturning Roe vs. Wade, the FBI said.
An activist group on Twitter called “Ruth Sent Us,” named for the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, tweeted that Kavanagh’s address has been online for months and balked at the claim that Roske went to Kavanaugh’s home with weapons. The group went through with it’s plan to keep “protesting peacefully” at Kavanaugh’s home Wednesday night even after the threat — the home the justice shares with his wife and two daughters.
It was easy to see this coming. In 2020, when the Supreme Court was hearing a Louisiana case about abortion laws, Senator Chuck Schumer stood outside the Supreme Court and called out Kavanaugh (and Justice Neil Gorsuch) saying they had “released the whirlwind” and would “pay the price” for rulings such as one might overturn Roe.
This is the second time in weeks that people disappointed — outraged to the point of derangement, even — protested at the homes of several justices. A few weeks ago, protesters gathered outside the homes of Kavanaugh, Justice Samuel Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts after a leaked draft opinion suggested the court was preparing to overturn Roe.
Unlike the kinds of peaceful protests or marches that often fill crowded city streets during a time of unrest or outrage, it’s clear this kind of harassment is meant to intimidate, threaten, persuade, or coerce justices into changing their opinions on a particular, pivotal, legal matter. Even unto death.
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Protests are fine: The right to petition the government for a redress of grievances is enshrined in the First Amendment. Threatening justices to do a particular bidding is not just unlawful and immoral but shows a common misconception about the Supreme Court that’s been evolving the last few years.
Laws are imperfect but they are important guidelines that attempt to legislate morality: Such is humanity’s need to be persuaded towards the better good. America’s three branches are separate and autonomous and are designed to keep one in another in check — to keep anyone from having too much power. If laws are unconstitutional, the Supreme Court checks this.
Congress has often failed to legislate the hot-button issues that make both sides of America’s political aisle crazy: abortion, guns, marriage, education, gender issues. So, they land in the court’s lap. Its decision is then the law of the land and instead of a swath of Americans being upset with their state or federal lawmakers, or moving to a state where their views prevail, they’re venomously angry with nine justices who are just doing their jobs.
If the Supreme Court continues to be harassed even to the point of near-assassination attempts, it’s possible a member of the Supreme Court would cave in on a pivotal decision, changing the ruling. Could you blame him or her? But this is not how our three branches are meant to work, especially not the Supreme Court.
It is not meant to have the power it does, both politically and legislatively — and now, clearly, in people’s minds. The justices must be able to work independently of threats or persuasion. This is vital for the health of the way our government was designed.
The fact that someone targeted Kavanaugh specifically is even more awful as it was Democrats who designed his confirmation hearing to be a circus of slander and defamation, smearing his good name and legal reputation without a shred of certifiable evidence. Shall he lose his life because his jurisprudence is different from Schumer’s?
The Supreme Court has made mistakes and will make more. That should not subject justices to harassment but should demonstrate just why they should not have any more power over the other two branches and should be left alone and autonomous, to do their job in peace.
The Supreme Court is not there to entertain you. To do your bidding. To deliver your preferred justice. To assuage your guilt. To satiate your political passions. It is there to ensure America’s laws are just and interpret the Constitution.
This story was originally published June 9, 2022 at 10:33 AM with the headline "With attempt on Justice Kavanaugh’s life, leftist rhetoric and Roe protests have gone too far."
