Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously observed that the highest court in the land is rarely moved by the weather of the day, but it is inevitably shaped by the "climate of the era." Throughout her career, Ginsburg championed a strategy of meticulous, quiet persuasion. She argued that you cannot change minds by walking into a room shouting that everyone else is wrong; you must listen, build unshakeable logical arguments, and show deep respect for structural norms. But she also left us with a vital caveat: when the system fundamentally breaks down and structural avenues fail the public, you have to stand up and shout like hell.
We have officially reached the point where it is time to shout.
The bedrock of American civic education is the promise that our three branches of government are separate but equal, acting as a system of checks and balances to preserve the democratic will. Yet, our current federal judiciary has mutated into something entirely unaccountable to the public. We now watch an unelected tribunal of nine individuals exercise the immense power to alter the legal fabric of American life, often issuing sweeping constitutional decisions that stand in direct opposition to the overwhelming consensus of the citizens. Because these seats are secured for life, they have been transformed into high-stakes partisan prizes, captured by narrow political agendas rather than the democratic choice of the nation.
We do not need to approach this systemic failure with blind fury, but with cold, democratic logic. There is nothing unprecedented about electing a judiciary. In fact, 39 U.S. states—including California—already successfully subject their state supreme court justices to democratic accountability via the ballot box. It is an established American tradition. It is time to bring that exact same accountability to Washington D.C. by implementing strict term limits and allowing the American electorate to vote on who interprets our Constitution.
As a regular citizen in Santa Monica with no institutional platform, I am clear-eyed about the scale of this fight. A single voice cannot rewrite Article III of the U.S. Constitution overnight. But real structural shifts only happen when regular citizens decide to alter the climate of the era from the ground up. We must engage our local state representatives, spark serious conversations in our own neighborhoods, and aggressively demand a judiciary that answers to the people. And if the political gatekeepers refuse to listen to our calm, structured arguments, then we must be prepared to stand together and shout like hell.
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Rebecca McNamara