The arrogance of Jamelle Bouie.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/01/opinion/samuel-alito-ethics-supreme-court.html
Jamelle Antoine Bouie is a journalist, with a B.A. degree from the University of Virginia in political and social thought, and government. For the past four and a half years he has been an opinion columnist for the New York Times. He did not study law. He has no law degree. He is not a lawyer. And he is woefully inadequate at interpreting the U.S. Constitution.
In Bouie’s silly column today, Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alioto is maligned, but not for any particular opinion he has written while sitting on the High Court. Not a single case or decision is cited. Without offering a shred of evidence for the validity of his scurrilous attack, Bouie asserts that Alito is “one of the most right-wing members of a right-wing court…a pivotal figure in the effort to constitutionalize the views of [his] reactionary backers and allies….” This unsubstantiated ad hominem assault on a sitting Supreme Court Justice is unworthy of a New York Times columnist. A well-trained editor should have caught this slur and either deleted it or insisted that Bouie back up his attack with facts, or at least include a link to an article that might substantiate Bouie’s nasty assertion that Alito is nothing more than a mouthpiece for his “reactionary backers and allies.”
What was Alioto’s “offense” that caused Bouie to rip into him today? A Wall Street Journal interview with the SC Justice, published on July 28, included these lines:
“[Alioto] notes that ‘Congress did not create the Supreme Court’—the Constitution did. ‘I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,’ he says. ‘No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.’”
Bouie comments: “Alito’s claim is much bigger than a narrow point about the overall independence of the court; it is a categorical statement of judicial supremacy that also stands as a glimpse into the arrogance of one justice on a court that falsely sees itself as the only and final authority on what the Constitution means.”
That’s a dumb-ass comment! Alito’s assertion is NOT “a categorical statement of judicial supremacy.” If Bouie had studied the law, he might have understood that Alito was arguing for the EQUAL STATUS of the three branches of government, not for “judicial supremacy.”