Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito slammed the “false and inflammatory” rhetoric that leftists and mainstream media outlets are using to “intimidate” the high court during a speech Thursday at the University of Notre Dame.
Alito and the four other justices who decided not to block the Texas heartbeat law in September have been facing massive criticism, including “sinister” claims about “shadow dockets” and middle-of-the-night rulings – all of which is very misleading, Alito said, according to the Associated Press.
“My complaint concerns all the media and political talk about our sinister shadow docket,” Alito said. “The truth of the matter is that there was nothing new or shadowy about the procedures we followed in those cases. It’s hard to see how we could handle most emergency matters any differently.”
Earlier this week, Senate Democrats criticized the conservative majority on the Supreme Court for using what lawmakers called a “shadow docket,” or an emergency ruling that a court issues before hearing oral arguments about a case.
The Supreme Court did this with the Texas heartbeat law, which prohibits abortions once an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable, about six weeks of pregnancy. Texas is the first state to be allowed to enforce a heartbeat law, and pro-life leaders estimate as many as 100 babies are being saved from abortion every day.
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Alito said critics are just angry that the court did not rule the way that they wanted it to, and the picture that they are painting “is very sinister and threatening, but it is also very misleading,” according to the report.
“The catchy and sinister term ‘shadow docket’ has been used to portray the court as having been captured by a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways,” Alito said, according to The Observer.
He pointed out that the parties in these cases are the ones requesting emergency orders, not the court, and these emergency rulings have been a well-accepted practice for many generations of judges.
“The Supreme Court and the lower federal courts have a lot of power, but here’s the power they do not have: they do not have the power to make the world stand still while litigation takes place,” Alito said.
He also slammed critics’ “rank nonsense” for suggesting the justices secretly ruled on the Texas case in the middle of the night, as well as their “false and inflammatory” claim that the court basically already overturned Roe v. Wade, Reuters reports.
When the court ruled on the Texas pro-life law, the majority stated that their ruling was temporary and should not be interpreted as their final say on its constitutionality. They refused an emergency request to temporarily block the law and sent the case back to the lower courts for consideration.
Alito said the criticism is all part of a larger strategy to undermine and intimidate the court.
“This portrayal feeds unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution,” he said.
Democrat leaders are calling to pack the court with leftist justices. Last year, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer even publicly threatened two Supreme Court justices by name if they decided to restrict abortions. Chief Justice John Roberts later condemned the Democrat leader’s “dangerous” and “threatening statements.”
The billion-dollar abortion industry and its supporters in Congress are afraid the high court will end Roe and allow states to protect unborn babies again. On Dec. 1, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a major abortion case out of Mississippi that challenges the current precedent that prohibits states from banning abortions before an unborn baby is viable.
Since Roe, nearly 63 million unborn babies have been legally aborted in the U.S. Polls consistently show that a strong majority of Americans oppose abortions in the second and third trimesters and many support heartbeat laws that protect unborn babies at their earliest stage of life.
