Jamelle Bouie: Clarence Thomas can’t undermine the legitimacy of the Supreme Court fast enough

“This assault on Justice Thomas is well beyond ethics,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week on Supreme Court ethics reform. “It’s about trying to delegitimize a conservative court that was appointed through the traditional process.

For their part, Democrats do not seem eager to attack or undermine the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. Just a handful of Democrats in the House of Representatives called for Thomas’ resignation after reports that he accepted lavish trips and gifts from Crow, and Senate Democrats have been careful with the issue.

For the left-of-center of American politics, the Supreme Court has been — over the course of its long history — more hindrance than help. And to the extent that liberals began to trust the court as an institution, it’s because they made a mistake, confusing the exceptional rulings of the court under Chief Justice Earl Warren for the norm. The Supreme Court, as legal scholar Lucas A. Powe Jr. has observed, is “part of a ruling regime doing its bit to implement the regime’s polices.

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