Rep. Cori Bush, D-MO, tweeted last Wednesday. “I would love to see a Black woman who will insist on racial, environmental, social, disability, and economic justice named to the Supreme Court.”

Commenting on that statement, one of America’s foremost presidential scholars, Dr. Tim Blessing, Professor of History and Political Science at Alvernia University, had this to say, “I note the quote: ‘I would love to see a [nominee] who will insist on racial, environmental, social, disability, and economic justice named to the Supreme Court.’ It is a well-accepted rule that the Supreme Court decides what the Constitution means. Although the court does overturn past decisions, the key to Anglo-American law is ‘stare decisis’ based on precedent and the text of the constitution as past decisions have determined it to be or interpreted it (the law in general) to be. While the court does legislate in its own way, its legislation is restrained by the Magna Carta, article 45, injunction: ‘We will appoint as justices, constables, sheriffs, or other officials, only men that know the law [which presupposes that there is a law already in existence and not being initiated by the decision of one officer] of the realm and are minded to keep it well.’ The law descends to the court from the interaction of the Executive and the Legislative branch. The call for a court member to BEGIN with the finding already in mind, i.e., a ‘justice’ that arises from other than constitutional means, is a ‘justice’ that deprives the legislature and the Executive of their functions as representatives of the realm and its people (or, in our instance, the republic). It is, in short, profoundly anti-democratic, profoundly aristocratic, and is so in a way that violates the most fundamental bases of the Anglo-American rule of law. It is, in short, a call to a society where ‘justice’ is only the ‘justice’ of the victors.”

Constitutionally the high court is charged with interpretation and review, it is not supposed to legislate to any ends, left or right. It is thus designed to be independent of ideology, party, or partisan factors. Thus Bush’s wish above shows a profound misunderstanding of the Constitution or a willful defiance of it.

Judicial review in the US was established by the case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803. From the Encyclopedia Britannica, “Marbury v. Madison was a legal case in which, on February 24, 1803, the U.S. Supreme Court first declared an act of Congress unconstitutional, thus establishing the doctrine of judicial review. The court’s opinion, written by Chief Justice John Marshall, is considered one of the foundations of U.S. constitutional law.”

If there is only one thing to know about the Supreme Court it is Marbury v Madison. It defines the court’s role as one of review. Not ideological, not legislative, not overtly political or partisan, but one of review and only constitutional review. Many these days would be well served by remembering that.