Tribe: SCOTUS Denying Access to Justice Because It’s an “Anti-court Court”

Arthur Bryant writes about Laurence Tribe's new book, Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution, which I want to read.

Tribe: SCOTUS Denying Access to Justice Because It’s an “Anti-court Court”

"Tribe documents the Roberts Court’s “dramatic rewriting” of procedural rules to “unmistakably” favor big business, including an “assault on class actions” and rulings that make it “virtually impossible to escape arbitration agreements.” He writes:

With each passing day, public courts more permanently disappear as a real option for many Americans in their dealings with big business – when we seek employment, buy phones, sign up for nursing homes and open bank accounts... The proceedings are secret, arbitrators aren’t always bound by the law, there is no jury or right to appeal and companies sometimes pick their own arbitration firms.

The Court’s majority, moreover, isn’t just limiting access to justice to end the ability to hold businesses accountable:

Since 2005, the Roberts Court has issued a string of decisions that make it harder to hold the government accountable in court when it violates the Constitution…. The result is a shrinking judicial role in enforcing the Constitution and protecting our liberty.

Why is this happening? Most fundamentally, because the Roberts Court is “far more sensitive to the substantial burdens of litigation than to the potential benefits of lawsuits.” Tribe writes:

Whereas the midcentury Court saw itself as a protector of the powerless… the Roberts Court is mostly uninterested in that role…. It has dealt critical legal rules a death of a thousand cuts – leaving many of our rights intact but making them effectively impossible to enforce in any court…. It is an anti-court Court."