{"id":448,"date":"2026-07-20T11:35:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T11:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=448"},"modified":"2026-07-20T11:35:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T11:35:28","slug":"taking-back-your-democracy-for-dummies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=448","title":{"rendered":"Taking Back Your Democracy for Dummies"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

This is part of Amicus and Slate\u2019s \u201c<\/em>By the People<\/em>\u201d series, which explores how the American people can reclaim the Constitution\u2014and the law\u2014from this monarchical Supreme Court.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more How the Supreme Court Swiped the Constitution From We the People<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Supreme Court justices disagree about many things: whether the Constitution protects the right to abortion care, for example, or reifies your God-given right to carry a handgun, or empowers Donald Trump to commit crimes with impunity for so long as he remains president of the United States. Because the court is currently controlled by six Republican appointees, the answers to these questions have been (in order) no, of course, and almost certainly yes.<\/p>\n

One thing about which the justices do not disagree, though, is that their institution alone holds the power to make these decisions in the first place. In its unanimous 1958 opinion in Cooper v. Aaron<\/em>, the court described the federal judiciary\u2019s \u201csupreme\u201d position \u201cin the exposition of the law of the Constitution\u201d as a \u201cpermanent and indispensable feature\u201d of American governance. On its official website, the court advertises itself to visitors as the \u201cfinal arbiter of the law,\u201d and thus the Constitution\u2019s \u201cguardian and interpreter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

This conception of the court\u2019s role is both self-serving and an ambitious overstatement. By its terms, the Constitution is \u201cordained and established\u201d by \u201cthe People,\u201d who for most of this country\u2019s history played a far more prominent role in the process of deciding what its promises mean. As the law professor Larry Kramer writes in his book The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review<\/em>, the Framers were not judicial supremacists; they were both familiar and comfortable with \u201cimprovising institutional and intellectual solutions to preserve popular control over the course of constitutional law,\u201d irrespective of what nine life-tenured justices thought about the result.<\/p>\n

Listen to the first episode of the Amicus podcast miniseries By the People here:<\/em><\/p>\n

\n