“Alito’s subsequent opinion piece within the WSJ is about to be ‘I’m just a little king, really,’” Ocasio-Cortez mentioned.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) has condemned Supreme Court docket Justice Samuel Alito after the conservative primarily claimed that the Supreme Court docket has absolute energy over different branches of presidency, together with Congress.
“What a shock, man who is meant to implement checks and balances thinks checks shouldn’t apply to him,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Friday, in response to a laudatory Wall Street Journal interview with Alito printed earlier that day.
She went on to say that the reality is definitely the alternative of what Alito claimed within the interview. “Corruption and abuse of energy have to be stopped, irrespective of the supply. The truth is, the court docket needs to be *most* topic to scrutiny, as a result of it’s unelected and life appointed,” she mentioned.
Ocasio-Cortez was responding to a very hanging comment by Alito, who has been the topic of scrutiny after experiences have uncovered that Alito has collaborated with right-wing lobbyists associated to Supreme Court docket circumstances and accepted lavish gifts from right-wing billionaires with enterprise earlier than the Court docket and didn’t report them.
In his interview, Alito claimed that Congress has no energy over the Supreme Court docket in any respect. “I do know this can be a controversial view, however I’m prepared to say it,” Alito mentioned. “No provision within the Structure offers them the authority to manage the Supreme Court docket — interval.”
When he was requested if different justices agree, he mentioned: “I don’t know that any of my colleagues have spoken about it publicly, so I don’t suppose I ought to say. However I feel it’s one thing we have now all thought of.”
Authorized consultants have mentioned that this is blatantly false, and that the Constitution actually explicitly offers Congress energy to manage the Supreme Court docket in plain textual content. Consultants were also shocked that Alito would say one thing so flagrant.
Ocasio-Cortez continued on Friday to mock Alito’s petty declare to energy. “Alito’s subsequent opinion piece within the WSJ is about to be ‘I’m just a little king, really. The Structure doesn’t explicitly say I’m not,’” she said. “And it’d be boosted by some billionaire who secretly thinks voting rights ought to solely belong to landed gentry.”
Different lawmakers additionally decried Alito’s declare.
Alito’s comment is “stunningly incorrect,” mentioned Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) in an interview with CNN over the weekend. “It’s Congress that has handed up to now necessities for justices to reveal sure data, and so it’s simply incorrect on the info to say that Congress doesn’t have something to do with the principles guiding the Supreme Court docket.”
Murphy went on to say that it’s clear that Supreme Court docket justices are more and more legislating from the bench, and that it’s “disturbing” that Alito thought he may weigh in on one thing being mentioned by Congress.
“They only see themselves as a second legislative physique that has simply as a lot energy and proper to impose their political will on the nation as Congress does,” he mentioned. “They’ll bend the legislation with the intention to impose their right-wing view of how the nation ought to work on the remainder of us.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) mentioned that Alito’s remark is a transparent escalation of the Supreme Court docket’s present extremist power grab.
“This appears escalatory, and nudges even reluctant court docket watchers and skeptics of statutory reforms in the direction of doing one thing,” mentioned Schatz. “I imply, this can be a fancy approach of telling everybody to pound sand as a result of he’s untouchable.”
Ocasio-Cortez has additionally made comparable warnings. Earlier this month, Ocasio-Cortez identified that Supreme Court docket justices are already “overreaching their authority” in a large swath of choices, including that it’s harmful to permit them to proceed on this path.
“The courts, in the event that they have been to proceed with none test on their energy or stability on their energy, then we’ll begin to see an undemocratic and, frankly, harmful authoritarian enlargement of energy within the Supreme Court docket — which is what we’re seeing now,” she mentioned.