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You Can’t MAGA by MAGA
At long last, the country had Robert Mueller’s March 22 report unveiled today in a press conference orchestrated by Attorney General William Barr. I have learned over time that my comments will require an apologia, so please allow me to get that out of the way.
I’ve been told my first career as a judge makes my writing establishmentarian. I used to shrink back and go paranoid when accused of representing the status quo, but Donald John Trump and the stamp he has put on politics have given my views a new lease on life. I prefer to think of myself as an institutionalist.
Chief Justice Earl Warren was acting as an institutionalist when he contrived to produce a unanimous SCOTUS opinion in Brown v. Board of Education. Chief Justice John Roberts did the same when he declined to cast the deciding vote to declare the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.
Warren knew that declaring black people equal would not make them so and the attempts to enforce the order would take generations. Roberts was not prepared to upend a fifth of the U.S. economy overnight. In either case, the decision facing the SCOTUS threatened its standing as an institution, and the Court as an institution is worth more than any case it may be called upon to decide.
My first look at Robert Mueller’s report gives me pride in my institutionalist leanings, because I see…
