Isaac Laquedem

Chief Justice John Roberts indirectly alludes to Ambrose Bierce, lexicographer

John Roberts wrote today's Supreme Court opinion in which a 6-member majority struck down the Biden administration's forgiveness of most of the student loan debt in the country.  Whatever the merits of the court's decision, the Chief Justice included this allusive gem in his opinion:

From a few narrowly delineated situations specified by Congress, the Secretary [of Education] has expanded forgiveness to nearly every borrower in the country.  The Secretary's plan has 'modified' the cited provisions only in the same sense that 'the French Revolution 'modified' the status of the French nobility' - it has abolished them and supplanted them with a new regime entirely.

The Chief Justice is quoting from Antonin Scalia's opinion in MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 512 US 128 (1994), which turned in part on the definition of "modify."  In that case Justice Scalia wrote, "It might be good English to say that the French Revolution 'modified' the status of the French nobility - but only because there is a figure of speech called understatement and a literary device known as sarcasm." 

Justice Scalia did not credit any earlier source for his bon mot.  I suspect he was inspired, perhaps unconsciously, by Ambrose Bierce's work "The Devil's Dictionary," in which he defined "abridge" as "to shorten," attributing this fictive mashup of a sentence from the Declaration of Independence to Oliver Cromwell as an example of "abridge" in use: 

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to abridge their king, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

The Laquedem Plan to Relieve Our Supreme Court Justices from the High Cost of Vacations

The recent scandalous disclosures that Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Virginia vacation not only in their 40-foot motor home but on lavish trips financed by billionaire Harlan Crow that have included flights on Mr. Crow's private jet and cruises on his 161-foot yacht were followed by the equally scandalous revelations that Justice Samuel Alito did not report his 2008 trip by private jet as the guest of hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, to an Alaskan fishing resort where he stayed as the guest of real estate and mortgage servicing billionaire Robin Arkley.  The two stories brought to mind the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016 at a resort in Texas.  "Resort" is a loose term for the 30,000 acre Cibolo Creek Ranch, owned by multimillionaire John B. Poindexter.  (We can't have our justices selecting their friends only from the billionaire class.)  You can book rooms there for $500 to $1200/night, or you can come as the guest of Mr. Poindexter, as Justice Scalia did.  

It's apparent from the examples of Justices Thomas, Alito, and Scalia that the justices of our Supreme Court cannot stretch their salaries, currently $274,200/year, to cover the cost of vacations that befit their status as the nation's senior interpreters of the Constitution and the law.  It's also abhorrent that owners of large corporations with business before the Supreme Court can give the justices over-the-top vacations without the justices thinking it improper to accept the gifts.  Hence the Laquedem Plan to Relieve Our Supreme Court Justices from the High Cost of Vacations.

The LPTROSCJFTHCOV is ridiculously simple, because the mechanism to remove the taint of impropriety already exists.  It's GoFundMe.com.  Let's start a GoFundMe to raise money that the justices and their families can use to pay for their own vacations.   If a million Americans will give just $1/year each, then each justice can spend more than $1 million/year on luxury travel without having to beg for hospitality from their billionaire friends.  If Justice Thomas had $1 million to spend on his vacations, would he still hang out with Harlan Crow?  Or would he and Virginia Thomas buy a larger motor home and hire a driver?  Either way, he could escape his ethical morass.

We already provide public funds to presidential candidates.  Let's offer our Supreme Court a way to escape from the convivial clutches of the kakistocrats.