This is an effect of media quite literally lying about the nature of the SCOTUS. The vast majority of cases they rule on are settled on apolitical lines. There has been a concerted effort in the past ~5 years to undermine the legitimacy of the court by trying to portray it as some hackneyed partisan legislature. Do some things get decided on political lines? Absolutely, but not any more than the SCOTUS has always handled these things.

Populists, both left and right, benefit from eroding the perceived legitimacy of independent institutions.

And conservatives often make this argument against SCOTUS putting itself into a policy-making role.

I don't think that is the case and in fact I think you are getting it a bit backwards.

The justices have an ideology which forms their view on how to interpret the Constitution and there are some serious questions to be had on the Constitution. Enumerated vs implied powers, incorporation of the bill of rights, etc. Their ideology forms their views on these issues. Once they formed their view on these issues they believe that is the real meaning of the Constitution.

Their interpretation of the Constitution is then used to justify their rulings. It may look like they are doing the opposite, but that is because you don't understand their interpretation of the Constitution. They do tend to be decently consistent when you understand their positions on the Constitution.

What is the basis for this claim?

> believe that their position is not only correct but above debate and above the political and legal process

You seem to be accusing everyone who disagrees with you of malice and abandonment of all principles - more or less evil. I would counter that this kind of argument is only ever made in bad faith in an attempt to demonize those who don't agree with you.

> politics and law are merely vehicles for imposing the moral views of highly educated professionals on the unwashed masses.

And one could likewise say that much of conservative thought is an attempt to force people to adhere to certain religious values using state coercion. But that would just be an opinion, not a fact.

What is fact is that many (possibly most?) conservative policies and doctrines do not enjoy majority support in the United States, yet are being rammed down our throats regardless because those policies are a) supported by those in power and b) convenient wedge issues or rallying cries for a small minority of the voting base - a minority that happens to be highly motivated.

Even the current composition of the court was a blatant power grab to deny Obama's constitutional right to appoint a justice with a made-up rule that it was "too close" to an election. Then immediately discarding that so-called rule when Trump was in the same position. In that sense the current conservative majority is illegitimate. Regardless of how you think any specific SCOTUS decision should go I hope you'd agree that a court that the majority of Americans believe to be illegitimately stacked is not a good thing for the stability of our separation of powers.

For that matter the overall tilt toward conservatives in House representation thanks to gerrymandering along with over-representation of conservative thought in the Senate due to the 2-senators-per-state rule undermines the legitimacy of Congress and the entire government. You can only get away with preventing the majority from being able to enact any significant policies for so long before a representative government collapses. Granted that might take tens or hundreds of years but in the long term it erodes the very foundation of our society. I find that very concerning personally but some people would rather win at any cost (witness Trump's recent loss and the fact that some conservatives attempted to sacrifice free & fair elections for a single win of a single presidential term. How cheaply they were willing to sell out!)

I claim they have never done this. That every ruling has had an eye towards the outcome, whether stated or unstated, and that when they claim to be acting as mechanistic evaluators they are attempting to hide their interest in the effect they're having.

Besides, its a terrible idea. The real effects of their rulings matter much more than the philosophy.

Problem is, parts of the text are maddeningly vague, and they didn't exactly agree in their politics, so a single, simple, objective and provably correct interpretation of those rules is not always possible.

>If you don't think it's an accurate statement of how some judges view the Constitution, make your case.

I do think that's an accurate statement. I disagree with 'people who see, for example, the "living Constitution" jurisprudence as not actually upholding the Constitution, but rather just saying what you want and calling it the law.'

One can disagree with the doctrine of a 'living Constitution' but there is more nuance and thought put behind the rationale than some conservatives want to admit. Both sides believe, in good faith, that what they're doing is upholding the Constitution.

>The former view makes the Constitution the final law; the latter makes policy the master over the Constitution.)

I prefer to see it as the former making the Founding Fathers the master over the Constitution, the latter making the people the master over it. The Constitution is a legal document, not the word of God, and nothing in the Constitution explicitly requires that it be interpreted according to strict originalist intent, so interpreting it either way is equally valid, and equally a matter of politics.

And then you read how some Supreme Court justices make a decision and you’re wondering if they are even reading the same document

No they haven't. That's why it's breaking news when they get discovered.

> In my entire life I have never seen any evidence that for supreme Court justices things influenced their ruling.

How would you possibly know what this looks like when, as you concede, there never have been meaningful investigations into the justices?

> The history of the justices predicts their current rulings and does it amazingly well.

No better than the history of their acceptance of lavish gifts from ideologically motivated rich people.

It sure had me fooled.

In addition to this being widely thought, do you happen to have any evidence that indicates whether or not it is true? My initial inclination is to suspect that it is not.

My personal experience with arguments deriding the constitutional coherence of SCOTUS jurisprudence usually involves people who are bringing their own political/ideological bias into their evaluation of court rulings -- often without even reading the rulings themselves -- and/or applying their own idiosyncratic interpretations of the constitution. See, for example, discussions surrounding the Citizens United ruling, where almost all of the controversy involves incorrect assumptions of both what was at issue in the case and what the ruling concluded.

While there have been breaks with stare decisis in some important cases over the years, by and large, these seem to be exceptions rather than the rule. The idea of the court abandoning the increasingly expansive interpretation of the commerce clause that's been at the basis of a huge amount of federal law for the past century, just to enable Texas to regulate the internet for the entire globe, seems incredibly far-fetched.

You know who has the authority to overturn that decision? Our democratically elected legislature.

Part of the issue seems to be the courts are very proficient in coming up with very interesting interpretations. It feels a lot like a literature or art interpretation class, where everything is BS but a lot of people have a bunch of rules convincing them they aren't. Then again, the founding father's weren't too much different.

Founding fathers: "All men created equally".

Also founding fathers: owns slaves (some at least)

Good luck getting the Supreme Court agreeing with that. That greatest disappointment in the entire American Experiment has to be the US Supreme Court.

That was the founders greatest mistake, vesting soo much power in this single branch

People ruling against what you want is not corruption.

Legislating from the bench is all the Supreme Court does. Their decisions are literally personal interpretations of the Constitution as they wish it was written, because there is no objective interpretation of that document. That's why their decisions include dissenting opinions, and why they undo previous decisions.

I don’t think you appreciate how right wing the Supreme Court has been stacked if you think that this will be a negative in their eyes.

The same Supreme Court with six conservative justices? If Trump couldn’t convince the conservative justices anywhere (let alone at the highest level) that there was widespread fraud, maybe there wasn’t.

I know Scalia fans like to believe this, but you are dead wrong. It would all depend on how the Republican/Conservative establishment feels. If the Republicans agreed with the Feds, you can bet your ass Scalia would side with them.

The man had no principles, he was just an anti-Democrat and anti-Liberal.

I once believed this also.

I would take this view more seriously for any decision that is not the result of a 5-4 vote with the usual suspects on the usual sides.