The Democratic National Convention (DNC) took place in Chicago this week, providing the party with a platform to share its policies and vision for the future. Among the topics discussed was the role of the Supreme Court.
One of the key sessions focused on the Democrats’ views of the High Court system. The party argued that the courts should not function as an independent branch of government following the Constitution. Instead, they suggested that the courts should be more closely aligned with and accountable to the other two branches of government—the Congress and the White House.
CNN commentator and former Joe Biden staffer Ashley Allison was a prominent voice during this discussion. She took to the stage to express her concerns about the current state of the Supreme Court, arguing that it has become too detached from the will of the people and lacks accountability.
“It is dangerous to have a court that is so far away from where the people are,” Allison stated. “And also in the situation that we have right now, it is dangerous to have a court that holds itself not accountable. We’re in a situation where the court is really clearly seeing itself as not accountable to anyone—not accountable to Congress, not accountable to the people, not accountable to the White House. That is a dangerous and very fragile situation.”
Allison also argued that decisions on critical issues such as clean air, healthy medicine, and food safety should be made by experts and agencies, rather than being left to the courts. She criticized the idea that unelected bodies, which often lean left, should be making such decisions instead of the judiciary.
“That’s how you get them deciding, despite the fact that there has been forty years of agreeing that experts and agencies should be the ones to decide what it means to have clean air, what it means to have healthy medicine, food in our stores,” she said. “Rather than those experts and agencies, it should just be the courts.”
In response to this view, political commentator Charles Cooke took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to disagree with Allison’s stance. “No,” he wrote. “While it does restore the judiciary’s role in statutory interpretation, the transfer of power is to Congress, which is now expected to write laws that are clear, rather than to promulgate vague outlines that are then abused by unelected bureaucrats.”
Cooke’s response highlights the ongoing debate over the balance of power within the federal government. The judiciary, according to the Constitution, is intended to serve as a check on the legislative and executive branches by declaring laws or executive actions unconstitutional. It is not meant to be a tool to help other branches yield more power.
