Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy ConeyBarrett testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the third day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing on October 14, 2020.
Whitehouse says that the Supreme Court is being affected by dark money.
Private groups using anonymous donations to advance their interests at the highest court is referred to by the Rhode Island Democrat.
Whitehouse talked to Insider about his views.
Whitehouse has given a speech for the ninth time this year, and this time he accused right-wing anonymous donors of "captured" the Supreme Court and "built" its current 6-3 conservative majority.
The Rhode Island Democrat said on the Senate floor that the Supreme Court is dominated by dark money. The American people can see that something is rotten across First Street, but they can't see all of the rot.
Whitehouse has steered clear of reform ideas such as adding more seats to the bench or setting term limits for justices. The three-term senator has been pushing for financial transparency in the third branch of government to expose how it's been influenced by a far-right conservative agenda.
Whitehouse, who chairs a key panel on the Senate Judiciary Committee, calls it a three-fold "scheme", which includes private groups using anonymous donations to groom Supreme Court candidates, promote and defend these nominees with political ad campaigns and later try to influence these justices in legal briefs filed without
Whitehouse said in a recent interview with Insider that if the same people who paid for all of it are the same people who are funding politicians, it becomes a problem.
During the tenure of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, at least 80 partisan decisions have been handed down that advance conservative interests, according to the senator's findings.
Whitehouse said it was a terrible record.
'The scheme'
Whitehouse wanted to do research to show how big, special interests were able to exert their power at the Supreme Court, and he had a general sense that things had gone off the rails.
Whitehouse pointed to major Supreme Court decisions that delivered wins to conservatives in his evidence of the dark money trail. The rulings allowed unlimited corporate spending on political campaigns, reversed the rights of labor unions, and weakened voting rights.
The Supreme Court of the U.S. will be in session on September 25, 2021.
Whitehouse says the trend is continuing. The number of legal briefs that are filed without any financial disclosure to convince the justices to rule in a certain way is troubling.
The rule of the court says that you can't hide behind a group. There's almost no other situation in court where a person is allowed to come in and not identify themselves, and yet there is a lack of enforcement of that rule.
Hundreds of briefs have been filed to the Supreme Court in the current term. Dozens of briefs that support or oppose the Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy have attracted attention.
Whitehouse said that the political cases were being presented to the country by a court that was just a rotten site.
The Supreme Court has been ignored by Democrats.
Years in the making, experts say, is how conservatives have come to have greater control over the Supreme Court.
The courts have been eyed by Republicans for decades as a way to uphold their political power and build conservative lawyers and judges. Donald Trump filled more than 200 court seats with conservatives.
"They focused on the least democratic branch, the one that doesn't respond to voters, the one that could impose its will from behind ropes, as the vehicle for getting their ideology imposed on the American people," Whitehouse said.
Whitehouse acknowledges that Democrats just weren't paying enough attention to the strategy that Republicans cultivated.
He said that Democrats are getting a wake-up call because they have been overlooking the Supreme Court for a long time.
The senator claims the court is fueled by conservative dark money groups, but anonymous political donations go both ways. According to OpenSecrets, Democrats received more funding from dark money than Republicans in the 2020 election.
Democrats have control over the judicial confirmation process. 28 federal judges have been appointed by President Joe Biden.
President Donald Trump appointed Justice Amy ConeyBarrett to the Supreme Court three times.
Whitehouse told Insider that "whatever rule we should impose to clean up this mess should apply completely regardless of party or point of view."
Negative impressions of the Supreme Court have been formed by the politics surrounding it. More than 6 in 10 Americans think the Supreme Court is motivated by politics, according to a new survey. The Supreme Court's all-time low public approval ratings came on the heels of some justices speaking publicly in recent months to try and restore the public's faith.
Whitehouse said that the best thing for the country would be for the Supreme Court to stay in its proper lanes. It's important to call out the court because it's actually a captured vehicle for big, special interests, and it becomes obvious that the emperor has no clothes here.
They're trying to stop me.
Whitehouse has been trying to change the system. He's tried to advance legislation that would improve financial transparency in the government and courts, but little progress has been made. The Democrats' voting and elections legislation included a bill he wrote to address the issue, but Republicans blocked it last month.
Whitehouse has called on the White House to look into the role of dark money at the Supreme Court. He and three other Democrats wrote a letter to Biden's Supreme Court commission after they released a draft report that didn't address the topic.
Whitehouse said it doesn't make sense. It was hard to accept that they couldn't even deal with that issue.
The Supreme Court can easily address some areas, including establishing ethics codes for the justices, providing financial disclosures of amicus briefs, and reporting about gifts and hospitality the justices receive, according to Whitehouse.
Whitehouse's views on the nation's highest court have been slammed as disrespectful and mistaken by critics. Whitehouse wants to rewrite the rules because the court is not making decisions that he likes, according to others.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote in March that Whitehouse's quest has been "undermining judicial independence and restricting the First Amendment rights of private citizens to influence their government."
A legal expert testified at Whitehouse's committee hearing that the Supreme Court's recent decisions aren't a consequence of right-wing influence, but a consequence of the justices' judicial philosophy.
Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, said that the Supreme Court's critics prefer to demonize the justices and imply bad motives.
Whitehouse stands firm in his beliefs and vows to continue to promote and fight for them.
Whitehouse said that it's just name-calling that fails to address the problems that he identified. That only confirms my view that they can't defend what they've done. They're trying to stop me.
"If they weren't trying to protect the court that they captured, why would they want to do that?" he asked.
Business Insider has an original article.
