Doctrinally, the American Supreme Court (SCOTUS) aims to uphold and understand the laws put forth by the US Constitution in any legal context in the most objective way possible. A strict adherence to and multifaceted understanding of the Constitution is thus viewed as the paradigm of legal scholasticism, the epitome of the unparalleled equalizing power of the American justice system. This lofty ideal is placed as what the Supreme Court “should” be, independent of any confounding prejudices or external alterations to the understanding of the law. However, as is the case with all humanistic institutions, the definition of “objective” becomes quite skewed as a result of ideology and its impact on any outwardly conceived reality. Ideology has a determinate role not only in the construction of an individual identity, but also in the notion of a “shared ideology,” a concept that, with regard to landscape of political law, drives understanding of societal-level power dynamics. In the United States at large, it is a concept typically viewed dialectically, mostly through the lenses of “liberal and conservative,” “progressive and traditionalist,” et cetera.
The facilitator in this specific view of ideology has been the oft discussed, yet rarely actually defined “Culture War.” For the purposes of this discussion, the American Culture War can be defined as the metaphorical “fight for the nation’s ethos,” the dialectal clashing of the vague ideologies of “liberalism” and “conservatism” for national sociopolitical dominance. The Culture War was first nationally construed to be the largely policy-based strife revolving around foreign policy in Vietnam; however, its roots actually extend deeper into American history and throughout more of its institutions. Since the beginnings of American political polarization in the early 20th century, the Culture War has expansively grown to eventually permeate all American socioeconomic institutions. Although its prominent color-bearers are the likes of Richard Wolff, Noam Chomsky, Rachel Maddow, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and Tucker Carlson, its intellectual influences spread far beyond its nodes. The continued pervasiveness of this Culture War throughout all aspects of the American Dasein is no further reflected in the methodological gap that so starkly divides the interpretations and decision-making processes of the Supreme Court, what is supposed to be America’s highest and most dignified court, dedicated strictly to the study and interpretation of the Constitution, free of any idea of culture.
Presently, the Supreme Court exists at an ideological impasse between its three “liberal” justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, and its six “conservative” ones, Brent Kavanaugh, John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas. This divide’s relevancy consists in its overt connections to the divisions of the two-party system and the two parties’ respective “sides” in the Culture War. It is the result of various acts of political gamesmanship over the past two decades aimed at advancing vested interests in the Culture War, and it has affected integral American public policies since its cementation. The divide’s very existence lies at the heart of the Culture War dilemma, as it reflects the far-reaching methods its two “combatants” will take to in order to advance their respective national order. The main source of discontent that it creates within the American public is focused on the almost repetitively mechanistic voting lines it produces, as the majority of the court’s contested decisions have played out exclusively along the aforementioned ideological lines. The most notable instance of this phenomenon in the past year was in the Court’s revisiting of affirmative action in June of 2023, when it voted on an exactly ideological basis to reverse the federal sanctioning of Affirmative Action on college campuses, singlehandedly deciding a highly politicized national issue that impacts all Americans. The fear of politicalized blocs within the justice system is one that runs deep through numerous laymen and legal scholars alike, as the SCOTUS directly and explicitly disapproves of such things within its defining doctrine. The court is not designed to conform to the ephemeral cultural, ideological, or even demographic makeup of the nation; rather, it aims to transcendently understand the words of the Constitution and apply them to practical law. The creation of voting lines that function more similarly to the US Congress than any ideal court are thus emblematic of a gap that is definitionally “cultural.” This nationally vilified 6-3 split represents the Supreme Court’s subjugation at the hands of ideology, making it yet another institution that has fallen victim to the vices of the Culture War.
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