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Coordinated attacks on SCOTUS’s integrity, led by Democrats and their allies in the corporate media, try to deceive Americans into believing partisans hijacked the highest court in the land and ideologically fractured it into near-dysfunction. The prominence of unanimous opinions and even more unanimous judgments not only discredits this notion but suggests a far more concerning narrative about the politicization of lower courts.
Since its inception, the Supreme Court has wielded its authority to deliver decisions rooted in bench agreement. In recent years, especially, justices “defied critics” with “historic unanimity” on cases that circuit, appeals, and state supreme courts decided in defiance of the Constitution. Of the 32 cases already decided in the 2023 term, 21 of the judgments were agreed upon by all of the presiding justices. Many of them signaled justices’ concern that lower courts abused their ruling power to violate the Constitution.
In the unanimous ruling on former President Donald Trump’s ballot eligibility in Colorado, Justice Amy Coney Barrett signaled that “the message Americans should take home” was the justices’ undivided conclusion.
“For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine justices agree on the outcome of this case,” she wrote.
Scoldings like these are not are not uncommon. Nor are reminders that lower courts do not have unrestricted authority to rule as they please.
In the unanimously decided National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo, Justice Neil Gorsuch warned in his concurring opinion that benches like
