LIP-SYNCH, JUDICIAL STYLE

Public school 221, located on Empire Boulevard in Brooklyn, provided elementary education from grades K-6. As 6th grade “seniors“ we were obliged to make a choral presentation to the entire student body.  Our  leader was the unforgettable Mrs. Miano, who took the project so seriously, she developed the Miano Method of presentation: line up the entire class in four ranks, and have us sing a song from the program. While that was going on, she would  move in front of each student, listening carefully to the musical product. When my turn came, she listened for some thirty seconds, tapped me on the shoulder gently and said, “Martin, don’t sing. Just move your lips.“

The Miano Method became an entertainment staple. Who doesn’t remember the hit musical duo Milli Vanilli, who in 1989, ran from the stage in a mid performance panic when the recording they were lip synching jumped a groove, over and over again? And it wasn’t even their own voices on the recording!

And it is not just the entertainers who have taken to the Miano Method. Next month, when the chorus will consist of 100 United States senators who are obliged to take an impeachment-trial oath to do “equal justice according to the Constitution and the laws,” how many of them will, literally or figuratively, be following Mrs. Miano’s instructions? Quite clearly Senate Majority Leader McConnell and the Senator formally known as Lindsey Graham will be among that group of deceivers. 

We have come to expect that kind of conduct from that group, but not from the Supreme Court.

We are accustomed to the Supreme Court of the United States publishing its decisions. Most of the time when they do so, they identify themselves. We know which Justice was on which side of the decision, and why. But not always. In its recent decision to stay enforcement of the subpoenas issued by Congress and District Attorney Vance seeking financial records and tax returns of candidate Donald Trump, the court simply issued an unsigned order. We have no idea which justices voted to take up the cases, and which justices just moved their lips. (It takes only four votes to grant review, but they didn’t tell us how many actually voted to take the cases, and which justices did so.  WHY?

There are several things we do know, and they don’t make us feel any better. We know the Supremes’ action froze three cases in which three circuit courts voted to enforce the subpoenas. In one of the congressional subpoena-cases, the court ordered a review of the circuit court decision even though Trump had not yet filed an application seeking that review.

While many legal analysts expected the court to deny review because, on careful analysis, there were no Constitutional issues to be decided at this time, I suggest the court’s greatest political “tell”was its scheduling order, also anonymous.

Let’s face it, by the time the Trump team sought Supreme Court review, both sides had thoroughly reviewed the facts and law and had presented extensive briefs first to the District Court, and then again to the respective circuit courts. There could be no new arguments, no new facts, no startling new principles to be applied. The case was literally ready for argument on December 13! But instead of  a short briefing and argument schedule, this Supreme Court put the hearing off until March!

  

The result is that a decision from the court will, at best, come in June, more than one year after the district court decision enforcing the subpoena is the Deutsche Bank case.  In the 1974 Nixon case, the Supreme Court heard argument five weeks after the District Court decision, and issued its decision seven weeks later!

Why did the court put the cases down for argument in March, not January? We are talking here about a total of two hours of argument. What, the court couldn’t squeeze that in? Contrast again please the unanimous Nixon court that had already recessed for the term in June. The court, a majority of whom had been appointed by Republican Presidents, led by a Chief Justice appointed by President Nixon, reconvened  to hear argument on July 8 and published it’s unanimous decision on July 24 — written by the Chief Justice!

The Roberts court is well on its way to ignominy. If Democrats cannot win the Presidency and both houses in the 2020 election, and address this situation, we are Venezuela.