How Ronald Reagan Turned the Supreme Court Into a Partisan Timebomb

The Federalist Society is now choosing the Republican party’s Supreme Court nominees, making sure that the pool the president selects from consists of partisan activists who deliver, not even-handed justice, but minority rule by a radical right coterie.

Judicial review has come to be a tool of reactionary power which can prevent any democratically enacted law from taking effect, so that there is no longer separation of powers, but kritarchy: rule by judges. Unelected judges. Democracy dies.

All democracy is inherently liberal, all justice is liberal, all genuine intellectuality is liberal, and all science is liberal. In the past, even justices selected by Republican presidents — "William Brennan, Harry Blackmun, David Souter, Earl Warren, and John Paul Stevens" — "drifted" to the impartial center, because they were even-handed jurists, not ideologues.

The Federalist Society is engineering a radical transformation so that the Supreme Court no longer embodies high principles, but will become a squalid entourage of cynical, debased operatives dispensing supreme bigotry and avarice.

Documentation: The URL below (or listen to the podcast). Example:

"Despite President Donald Trump’s high disapproval rating, it’s almost a certainty that his U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, will be confirmed to the high court. And it’s no surprise—former President Ronald Reagan took steps to make the court a major issue for Republican voters, something that led to the rise of the conservative Federalist Society, which has spent years sourcing and grooming potential justices. In all practical senses, the 40th president laid the groundwork for blocking Merrick Garland, and getting Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court."

"[Kavanaugh] is moved around by the political winds. He’s not just a jurist off in some ivory tower, thinking dispassionately about the law."

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/08/brett-kavanagh-has-ronald-reagan-to-thank-for-twisting-the-supreme-court.html

[A transcription of The Political Gabfest podcast for Wednesday, August 22, 2018, “The Eight-Count Edition”]