Washington, D.C. (May 21, 2026)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Hank Johnson, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet, led subcommittee Democrats in slamming Republicans’ politicization and corruption of the Supreme Court, destroying its legitimacy and trust. The hearing included testimony from Nikolas Bowie, Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Gene Schaerr, Partner, Schaerr Jaffe LLP; Louis Capozzi, Solicitor General, Missouri; and William Ross, Albert P. Brewer Professor of Law and Ethics, Samford University Cumberland School of Law. The Supreme Court is broken. Republicans broke it. Decades of politicizing judicial nominations and reshaping the courts has created a Court that routinely advances the interests of corporations, oligarchs, and far-right extremists at the expense of the American people. - Ranking Member Johnson stated: “In the last several years, the Roberts Court opened the floodgates to unlimited dark money in our political system, empowering billionaires and oligarchs like Elon Musk, the Koch brothers, Leonard Leo, Harlan Crow, and other powerful special interests to reshape the court and drown out the voices of ordinary Americans.” Ranking Member Johnson continued: “This Court has decimated reproductive freedoms that generations of women fought to secure, stripping away rights that millions of Americans relied on for nearly half a century. It has granted Trump vast immunity, placing him virtually above the law. And now, the Court has put the nail in the coffin of the Voting Rights Act, dismantling protections that generations of Americans fought, marched, and died for.”
- Professor Bowie explained: “Many Americans increasingly view the Court as acting less like a neutral judicial body and more like a political institution advancing a particular ideological agenda. When the Court repeatedly invalidates laws enacted through the democratic process to expand voting rights and representation, does that contribute to a crisis of legitimacy of the institution itself? I think it does.”
- Ranking Member Johnson said: “For decades, MAGA Republicans have systematically chipped away at the impartiality of our third branch. They have already delegitimized our judiciary, yet they now stand before the American people pretending to be guardians of judicial integrity.”
The conservative wing of the Court is corrupt, racist, and nakedly political. Conservative Supreme Court Justices have vowed political retribution, accepted millions in undisclosed gifts, and associated with radical and white nationalist causes. Rep. Zoe Lofgren said: “The real crisis is a growing ethics and corruption problem at the Supreme Court, and it is one that Congress can actually do something about. Unfortunately, my time does not allow me to list every undisclosed luxury trip, private jet flight, billionaire-funded vacation, yacht excursion, and lavish gift uncovered so far. But the scale is staggering. According to Fix the Court, Justice Clarence Thomas alone reportedly received more than 100 gifts worth over $2.4 million. [...] Now, Americans watching at home understand that this is wrong. Billionaires should not be getting the kind of undisclosed access and luxury relationship with Supreme Court justices.” Ranking Member Raskin asked: “There’s a $50 gift ban that applies to all of us in Congress, and to the executive branch as well. […] If Justice Thomas or any justice were to get a free recreational vehicle from somebody who has an interest in the work of the Court, do you think that that would be legitimate, or do you think that they should be held to the same standard we are—a $50 gift ban?” Republican witness Mr. Schaerr conceded: “If they have a concrete business interest before the court, then yeah, it would be inappropriate for Justice Thomas to accept that kind of a gift and then sit on a case that involves that.”
Democrats are committed to reforms that will root out corruption and restore the credibility and independence of the Court. The Court’s crisis of credibility with the American public has spurred calls for court reform including term limits, shadow docket reform, and a binding code of ethics, among other proposals. - Ranking Member Raskin said: “We’ve got a complete structural, ethical, jurisprudential crisis in the Supreme Court whose name is in the gutter because of these terrible decisions that they keep issuing, like the overthrow of Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the complete construction out of thin air of immunity of precedence to commit felony crimes while in office, and so on. And I hope that this court will do its best to try to behave like a Supreme Court, but there are things that we can do. And I introduced a bill called the SCCOTUS Act, and the SCCOTUS Act is creating a new way for cert to be granted because this Supreme Court is obviously acting like a legislature. I mean, they set up an agenda where they want this case about the Voting Rights Act. They want to destroy it. Oh, now it’s time for us to overthrow abortion rights. We’re going to take that case.”
- Ranking Member Raskin explains: “When Trump’s policies are challenged, whether it's an attempt to directly nullify the first sentence of the 14th Amendment which establishes birthright citizenship, or his attempt to usurp the spending powers of Congress, he is losing 60% of the time in the district courts. He's lost 57% of the time in the federal circuit courts. Then it gets up to the Supreme Court and its shadow docket, and there he has won 84% of the time. So, he goes from losing 40% of the time to winning more than 80% of the time when it gets up to the Supreme Court. […] What about the shadow docket and how it operates? Nobody's uttered a word about what that does to undermine the legitimacy of the court. We have 100-page opinions, authoritative, magisterial opinions being written by district court judges or panels, circuit court judges that are being overturned with one sentence or one paragraph in the shadow docket.”
- Ranking Member Raskin asked Professor Bowie: “Is the shadow docket legitimate or illegitimate?” Professor Bowie answered: “I don’t think it's legitimate, in part because of the damage it's doing to the Court's credibility as well as to our country. I mean, we have a Court right now that is issuing decisions without the benefit of argument.”
- When pressed by Ranking Member Raskin on the legitimacy of the shadow docket to all witnesses, even Republican witness Professor Ross agreed, “I share your concern about the shadow docket. I’m troubled by it, too.”
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