Wednesday April 13, 2022

Watch This How to confront microaggressions

This webinar is part of Leaders Forum, a leadership development academy from ChangeLawyers. ​

Say it Louder Finally, women with dark skin and tightly coiled hair on the Supreme Court

On Thursday, Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first Black woman to be confirmed to the Supreme Court.

Her confirmation has widely been hailed as a historic first, a sign, as Sen. Chuck Schumer put it this week, that “the long march of our democracy is towards greater opportunity and representation for all.” No doubt, in a representative democracy, representation matters. For most of the court’s 233-year history, white men have predominantly occupied the bench.

Jackson’s inclusion, as a Black woman, mother, former public defender, and product of a public high school education, is long overdue.

Many nods to the historic nature of her inclusion have focused on the visual significance of having a Black woman on the bench. “Untold millions of kids will open textbooks and see pictures of Justice Jackson and understand, in a new way, what it means to move towards a more Perfect Union,” Schumer said on Tuesday. In an impassioned speech during Jackson’s confirmation hearing, Sen. Cory Booker, moved to tears, spoke about the kinship often engendered between Black people in predominantly white spaces. “It’s hard for me not to look at you and not see my mom, not to see my cousins,” he said. “Nobody is going to steal that joy.”

The notion that kids will “see pictures” of Jackson in a textbook—or learn that she looks like Booker’s mom—has been cold comfort for me at a time when the court’s legitimacy has been eroded by a deeply political and extremely conservative agenda. Jackson’s pictures, undoubtedly, will accompany text explaining how in the span of a few short years the court dismantled the administrative state, gutted voting rights protections, and most likely, catapulted women backwards in time by overturning Roe v. Wade. I have no doubts that Jackson will make a stellar contribution to the court because of her jurisprudence, rigor, and intellect, but the sad reality is that her confirmation, her inclusion, her representation alone, does not shift the court’s balance of power.

That “more Perfect Union” is still far off.

Still, I think the senators are onto something. Jackson’s ascension to the nation’s highest court is a rejection of the idea that there is no place for women with dark skin and tightly coiled hair in halls of power. That her skin is brown and that she wears her hair in shoulder-length sisterlocks matters. This is not simply an aesthetic argument: Generations of Black women have been taught that ascension and success requires conformity to white standards of beauty. We have been told our path might be eased by straight hair and light skin.

Read the Story on Slate

Less of This The Supreme Court’s shadow docket is shadier than it sounds

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead for a business-friendly and anti-environment Trump-era regulation. That this conservative Supreme Court ruled in this way is par for the course. But what was somewhat unusual about the ruling was that the court used what is called its “shadow docket” to do so. This secretive, irregular, and unreasoned ruling from the Supreme Court has unfortunately become more common in the past few years.

To understand the “shadow docket” and what is so problematic about the Supreme Court’s use of it, you have to first think about how the court typically decides its cases. For those cases, after two lower courts have ruled in the case, a party appeals to the Supreme Court. There are briefs from both sides arguing whether the Supreme Court should take the case. Then, if the Supreme Court decides to hear the case, the parties file new briefs asking the court to rule in their favor. Other people and groups can also file what are called “amicus briefs” giving their outside view on the matter. The court then hears oral argument in the case, where the lawyers argue their position to the Justices. Then, after deliberating on the matter and then taking several months to reason through the legal issues, the court renders its ruling accompanied by lengthy opinions explaining the basis of the ruling and any disagreements the Justices might have.

This normal order of things takes time, sometimes multiple years, but that time is the result of a transparent process that allows for reasoned decision-making based on the full participation of the parties and even the public. It is this orderly process that, in theory, gives the court its legitimacy. And it is the court’s legitimacy that makes people in this country follow what the court says and respect its decisions, even if they disagree with them.

The shadow docket runs afoul of everything that gives the Supreme Court its legitimacy in the normal process.

Read the Story on Rolling Stone

Speaking Of… Should Justice Thomas be impeached?

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s actions have invited an impeachment inquiry into what he knew about efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and how he acted upon that knowledge. Thomas has always been a controversial justice. During his more than 30 years on the high court, he has regularly faced criticism for abusing his position. Up to this point, the court’s longest-serving justice has avoided accountability. But Thomas’s scandalous approach to his responsibilities has caught up with him. E-mails reveal that his wife, Ginni Thomas, participated in efforts to overturn the 2020 president election in the weeks leading up to the January 6, 2021, insurrection. That insurrection is the subject of a congressional inquiry that former president Donald Trump has tried at thwart at every turn. In January, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s attempt to block the release of presidential records to the House committee leading that investigation.

There was only one dissenter: Clarence Thomas.

Seen in the context of the revelation that Ginni Thomas hectored members of the Trump administration and Congress to overturn the election result, the prospect that Clarence Thomas’s dissent was motivated by a desire to hide details of inappropriate activity by his wife and others raises sufficient concern to justify an impeachment inquiry. The point of that inquiry should be to answer the essential questions asked last week by veteran broadcaster Dan Rather after the latest revelations about Ginni Thomas’s actions: “What does Clarence Thomas know? And when did he know it?”

Read the story on The Nation