The high court’s 6-3 opinion along ideological lines found the law criminalizes bribes given before an official act, not rewards handed out after.
Eg: it’s ok to give Supreme Court Justices money after they rule in your favor because it’s normal and ok to regularly hand them amounts much larger than their salary. The Democrats on the court were the dissenters.
The Supreme Court basically just ruled that it’s perfectly acceptable for officials to accept and even ask for bribes, just so long as they wait a few weeks after the service for which the bribe is meant to pay.
Seriously. That’s exactly what this ruling in effect says - that bribes are only bribes if they’re paid before the service is rendered, and if they’re paid after, that’s perfectly fine.
And people still wonder why I’m such a cynic…
They actually called it a gratuity. Maybe not the worst ruling of all time but one of the most shameless.
They called it a gratuity to try to divert attention from the bludgeoningly obvious fact that it’s just a postdated bribe.
This is what this country has come to. In the face of an ever-growing failure of the government to represent the will of the people because their influence has been bought and paid for by moneyed interests, the Supreme Court is legalizing bribery.
Of course, it’s certainly not a coincidence that one of the institutions that’s been bought and paid for is the Supreme Court itself.
The dumbest part about this ruling is it treats every bribe as unrelated to every other bribe. The majority ignored the basic trait of every human with a prefrontal cortex, that we judge future planning by past experience.
So even ignoring the “first bribe is free” effect of the decision, what will happen in effect is that legislators and politicians will pass laws they think will gain bribes, be paid by interests that benefit after the fact, and after that without a single word, have an understanding that such back-dated bribes can continue indefinitely. Regular, consistent bribery is legal and easy, under this ruling.
I don’t see any possible way it couldn’t. Every official is going to expect a “gratuity” in exchange for approving a contract, and every contractor who expects to succeed is going to go into every deal with the understanding that they’re going to be expected to pay a “gratuity” after the deal is finalized.
The upshot of it all can only be wholly institutionalized pay-to-play, with only the ultimately entirely meaningless requirement that the payment has to be deferred instead of up front.
Justices that ruled that bribery as “gratuity” is legal:
- John G. Roberts, Jr., Chief Justice of the United States
- Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice
- Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Associate Justice
- Neil M. Gorsuch, Associate Justice
- Brett M. Kavanaugh, Associate Justice
- Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice
Justices that ruled that bribery is illegal:
- Justices Elena Kagan, Associate Justice
- Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice
- Ketanji Brown Jackson, Associate Justice
I am honestly blown away there hasn’t been any assassination attempts on any justices recently. They have record low public approval, never emding corruption scandals, and have been throwing out all these rulings that are blatantly undermining the rule of law.
Its far past time to riot. Blatant corruption at every turn.
The supreme court justices get “gratuities” from decisions conservative magnates want. They are just applying that corrupt standard to every American population.
