Retired judge David Tatel, who served for decades on the , has some strong words for the current United States Supreme Court.
As reported by the Washington Post, Tatel writes in a new memoir that the current SCOTUS influenced his decision to retire because he did not believe they would give any of his opinions a good-faith hearing.
Specifically, the 81-year-old Tatel says that he had grown tired of having his work reviewed "by a Supreme Court that seemed to hold in such low regard the principles to which I’ve dedicated my life."
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Among other things, Tatel is critical of the court's decision to overturn decades of precedent by overturning Roe v. Wade and overturning affirmative action at colleges.
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He emphasizes that it was not merely the conclusions that the Supreme Court reached that he disagreed with but the methods that they used to arrive at them.
“It was one thing to follow rulings I believed were wrong when they resulted from a judicial process I respected. It was quite another to be bound by the decisions of an institution I barely recognized.”
Tatel also expresses support for some remedies to the politicization of the court, as he believes fixed term limits of 18 years would reduce the concern of justices getting lifetime appointments where they face no accountability.
"Eighteen years on our highest court is long enough," he argues.
The court in recent years has become controversial not just for making unpopular decisions such as the overturning of abortion rights, but also when it comes to ethics, as when it was revealed that in gifts from right-wing billionaires that he initially failed to disclose.