Supreme Court’s conservatives have let down democracy, Justice Kagan says

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Two weeks before the midterm elections, liberal Justice Elena Kagan bluntly sized up the Supreme Court handling of election and voting-related cases, saying, “The court has kind of blinded itself to the very deleterious effects of their rulings on how the political system works.”

The court “has created a democracy that does not work as well as it should,” Kagan added, as she took advantage of provocative questions posed at a Catholic University law event Tuesday.

Kagan, one of the three liberals on the nine-member bench, has dissented as the conservative majority has gutted voting rights protections over more than a decade. But her criticisms were especially timely, as the midterms near and against the backdrop of ongoing challenges to democratic norms in the era of President Donald Trump.

“I do think it’s just about the most important thing that the court does,” Kagan said of election law.

Describing voting rights as “foundational,” she said, “If you basically get democracy down, if you get a well-functioning, healthy political system then you can count on that political system for a wide range of outcomes.”

Kagan’s remarks came in a conversation with Catholic University law professor J. Joel Alicea, who was a law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, solidly in the majority of the cases Kagan condemned.

The school’s Center for the Constitution and Catholic Intellectual Tradition, which Alicea directs, had previously hosted several of the conservative justices. This was Kagan’s first time on the campus as a speaker.

Alicea opened the hour-long session by allowing Kagan to expound on her dissenting views in an area that he acknowledged was plainly important to her. Last session, Kagan protested the majority’s retrenchment on the 1965 Voting Rights Act ( Louisiana v. Callais ) and its rejection of campaign finance restrictions ( National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission ).

Kagan was especially dismayed in the Louisiana case handed down in April. She read portions of her dissent from the bench – losing her voice soon after – as the majority gave state legislators greater latitude to draw maps that may dilute the political power of Black and Latino voters. Several southern states quickly began redistricting after the ruling in ways designed to give White Republican candidates an advantage.

Alicea also referred to an especially forceful 2019 Kagan dissent in Rucho v. Common Cause , when she condemned the court’s decision forbidding federal judges from reviewing and preventing partisan gerrymanders in congressional maps.

The problem, Kagan said, was that the justices in the majority of those cases showed “a lack of appropriate concern or understanding of the consequences of their decisions.”

“If there’s like any place where you should think about consequences, it is where your mission is to think about, ‘Is this political system going to operate as intended by the Constitution and is intended by Congress?’”

Kagan is likely to remain on the downside in this area of the law for the near future.

She added, someone dejectedly, “I have found myself in dissent in this area more than I would like.”

伊芙琳·霍克斯坦/路透社

在中期选举前两周，自由派大法官埃琳娜·卡根直言不讳地评价了最高法院处理选举和投票相关案件的方式，她说：“法院似乎对自己的裁决对政治制度运作方式造成的非常有害的影响视而不见。”

卡根在周二天主教大学法律活动上利用一些挑衅性问题发表讲话时补充说，法院“创造了一个运作得不如预期好的民主制度”。

卡根是九名大法官中仅有的三位自由派大法官之一，在过去十多年里，保守派多数派削弱投票权保护的行径令她一直持反对意见。但随着中期选举临近，以及在特朗普总统时代民主规范不断受到挑战的背景下，她的批评显得尤为及时。

“我认为这几乎是法院最重要的职责，”卡根在谈到选举法时说道。

她将投票权描述为“基础性的”，并表示：“如果你基本上建立了民主制度，如果你建立了一个运转良好、健康的政治体系，那么你就可以指望这个政治体系带来各种各样的结果。”

卡根发表这番言论时，正与天主教大学法学教授 J. Joel Alicea 交谈。Alicea 曾担任塞缪尔·阿利托大法官的法律助理，而卡根谴责的大多数案件中，阿利托大法官都担任过他的助理。

该校宪法与天主教知识传统中心（由艾丽西亚担任主任）此前曾接待过几位保守派大法官。这是卡根大法官首次以演讲者的身份来到该校。

在长达一小时的会议开始时，艾丽西亚允许卡根详细阐述她在一个她显然非常重视的领域中的异议观点。上届会议中，卡根抗议多数派对1965年《投票权法案》（路易斯安那州诉卡莱斯案）的倒退，以及对竞选资金限制的拒绝（全国共和党参议员委员会诉联邦选举委员会案）。

卡根对四月份路易斯安那州的判决尤其感到失望。她当庭宣读了部分异议意见——不久后便失声——因为多数派赋予州议员更大的权力来绘制选区地图，而这些地图可能会削弱黑人和拉丁裔选民的政治影响力。判决之后，几个南方州迅速开始重新划分选区，其方式旨在让白人共和党候选人获得优势。

艾丽西亚还提到了卡根大法官在 2019 年“鲁乔诉共同事业”一案中特别强烈的异议，当时她谴责法院禁止联邦法官审查和阻止国会选区划分中的党派划分。

卡根表示，问题在于大多数案件中的大法官们“缺乏对他们所作决定的后果应有的关注或理解”。

“如果说有什么地方需要你考虑后果，那就是当你肩负着‘这个政治体系是否会按照宪法和国会的意愿运作？’的使命时。”

在不久的将来，卡根在这一法律领域可能仍将处于劣势。

她沮丧地补充道：“我发现自己在这一领域与他人意见相左的程度比我希望的要多。”