Have the Justices Been Captured by the Journalists?

Today’s Supreme Court is seen as an outsider institution in Washington: either a bastion of limiting government in a government town or a rogue assaulter of what Washington insiders like to call “the common good.”  But this perception may be increasingly obsolete, thanks to a trend which the justices seem unable to combat and sometimes even encourage: their growing perception of dependency on an aggressive “fourth estate” of establishment journalists.

As a result, the Court increasingly looks like a partisan hothouse of “personalities” -- or, in the recent description of a sympathetic interviewer of two sitting justices, “a really good preschool.” The fallout from this perception affects not just the justices but also the country, denying citizens a clear view of the body responsible for adjudicating the powers of government.

The media’s heightened scrutiny of the Court started in earnest in 2018 with the nomination to the bench of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, rightly seen as a new vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.  Since then, no aspect of the justices’ lives has been off-limits -- whether RV purchases or publishing strategies, spousal employment or house sales.

It’s difficult to judge the effect of this heightened scrutiny, especially in light of the uncertain influence on public opinion of the Court’s decision to overturn Roe.  Still, whatever the reality, some of the justices think this coverage is having an effect.  For instance, liberal justices in the Court’s minority have begun using the media to try to arrest what they see as the Court’s self-harming conservative momentum -- diminishing the legitimacy of the institution itself.

Read more at The American Thinker.