Quote of the Day (Mark Twain, on the Supreme Court and Partisanship)

"It is disgraceful, in Congress, or anybody at all, to question the honor and virtue of the highest tribunal in our country. If we cannot believe in the utter and spotless purity of the Judges of so sacred a tribunal, we ought at least to have the pride to keep such a belief unexpressed. I cannot conceive it possible that a man could occupy so royal a position as a Supreme Judge, and be base enough to let his decisions be tainted by any stain of his political predilections. I hate to hear people say this Judge will vote so and so, because he is a Democrat—and this one so and so because he is a Republican. It is shameful. The Judges have the Constitution for their guidance; they have no right to any politics save the politics of rigid right and justice when they are sitting in judgment upon the great matters that come before them…. When we become capable of believing our Supreme Judges can so belittle themselves and their great office as to read the Constitution of the United States through blurring and distorting spectacles, it will be time for us to put on sackcloth and ashes."—American novelist, humorist, and journalist Mark Twain (1835-1910), Letter to the San Francisco Alta California, Feb. 19, 1868

I never imagined that Mark Twain could be naïve until I read the above dispatch.

Even in his own time—11 years before he wrote this—the Supreme Court had accelerated the notion towards civil war with its Dred Scott decision. A month before the decision was handed down, President-elect James Buchanan worked behind the scenes to influence the outcome. Enslaved African-Americans paid the price, but so, too, did Buchanan’s Democratic Party, which split over the issue.

Partisanship on the Supreme Court is even more virulent today, leading to a near three-decade low in public opinion. That poses a challenge to its legitimacy that will only increase over the next few years. The current president is bent on having his way in everything—and the high court, at least until the tariff case, has been willing to grant him virtually everything he desires.

In other words, it may be, as Twain lamented, "time for us to put on sackcloth and ashes."