The Rule of the Courts

Adopting a Canadian Style Legislative Override to Reconcile American Judicial Review...

birthright citizenship or gutter independent administrative agencies by firing agency commissioners without cause. 100 Today’s Supreme Court is heedless to this problem and has gone even further to promiscuously and regressively use its judicial review power to worsen the country’s socioeconomic and racial cleavages. The court has used its judicial review powers to invalidate progressive laws that were based on difficult legislative compromises in what is currently the most unequal high-income democracy. An obvious example of this has been the Court’s decisions in the realm of campaign finance. At the very moment when money in U.S. politics began to undermine public trust in politics, the Court, in Buckley v. Valeo (1976), invalidated key components of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to conclude that limits on political expenditures are unconstitutional violations of political speech. 101 More than a generation later, after the superabundance of corporate money in politics led Congress to finally enact the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that purported to regulate corporate spending in elections, the Court, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, concluded that the law violated the First Amendment’s speech clause and that corporations have a right to spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns. 102 The result is that unlimited amounts of money are spent manipulating voters in legislative, judicial, gubernatorial and presidential elections, making it far less likely office seekers will oppose the financial and ideological interests of corporate America. This effects foreign affairs as well and partly explains why the U.S. government has been so reluctant to oppose Israel’s policies of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. After the Obama Administration used an enormous amount of its political capital to enact a health care compromise law known as the 100 Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606 U.S. ___ (2025) and Supreme Court of the United States, Trump v. Slaughter , No. 24-___, Oral Arg. Tr. at ___ (Dec. 8, 2025), https://www.supremecourt. gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2025/25-332_4315.pdf 101 Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976). 102 Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 558 U.S. 310 (2010).

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