Supreme Court

Berkeley City Council voted in favor of allowing the Berkeley Police Department to adopt Automated License Plate Readers, or ALPRs, to help combat crime in the city in a controversial decision at its regular meeting June 25. 

With a series of major decisions overturning decades of precedent, from eroding federal abortion rights to eliminating affirmative action, the U.S. Supreme Court’s legitimacy has been called into question. Among other factors, the perceived politicization of the Supreme Court — whose justices have voted directly along party lines on roughly nine percent of this term’s cases — have led to a sharp downturn in the court’s approval ratings.

The United States has a constitutionally established federal system in which the Constitution, statutes and treaties are the supreme law of the land, according to Kathryn Abrams, Berkeley Law professor and faculty director of the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice. State law controls areas the federal law does not operate in.

The Daily Californian sat down with Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law since 2017, in order to gain insight into the recent Supreme Court rulings. 

Since the passing of the 14th Amendment in 1868, the Supreme Court has used the Equal Protection Clause to prevent discrimination and segregation on the basis of race, sex, and more tentatively, sexual orientation. After the court’s most recent decisions, religion has more closely aligned with such protected classes.

Affirmative action has been a starkly divisive issue, pitting minority groups against each other throughout American history. Many believe that the Supreme Court’s elimination of affirmative action has now further divided minority groups. 

And now we have an answer on what the rules are. It’s an opportunity to go back to the drawing board and work on the issues we care about.

Public confidence in the judiciary has significantly decreased. According to a Gallup poll conducted last year, merely 25% of the public has “a great deal of confidence” in the Supreme Court. Furthermore, confidence in state courts has declined by nearly 20% in the last five years, according to the National Center for State Courts.

After several attacks on the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court reaffirmed last week the Act will continue to hinder acts of racial discrimination during the composition of election districts, leaving several scholars surprised. 

These concerns about the court as an institution should make the justices eager to rid the public of its skepticism. Instead, they dismissed themselves from acknowledging the problem and didn’t even bother to attend the hearing, which tells us what we already know — the Supreme Court is unable and unwilling to keep itself under check.