The System Knows How to Run Away

The Supreme Court has been asked to overturn an $83 million jury verdict in favor of E. Jean Carroll. The Trump administration and the Department of Justice want to erase what a jury of Americans decided. Okay. Sure. Let's talk about what that means.

This is a procedural question, technically. One level of appeal asking another level to reverse. Happens all the time. Totally normal. Except it isn't normal anymore, and we've stopped pretending it is, which means we can stop kidding ourselves about what this really is.

This is about whether verdicts *mean anything*. Whether twelve people in a room can say "we believe this" and have that belief *matter*. Whether the justice system is a system or just a suggestion with paperwork. And if verdicts don't mean anything—if the executive branch can petition the highest court in the land to make an inconvenient jury decision disappear—then what, exactly, *do* we have?

I'm asking you this calmly. I'm taking a breath. I'm not raising my voice.

Who decides when the people's judgment gets deleted? Who gets to ask? If the executive branch can petition *this* court for *this* reversal, which executive can't petition which court for which reversal? What's the limit? When do we hit the wall? Are we already through it?

This isn't about one verdict, though God knows that matters. This is about what happens when the people who lose in court just... ask the court to lose differently. This is about institutions that were supposed to protect something being asked, politely, to *delete their own work*. And we're all supposed to treat this like business as usual because technically it's procedurally regular.

Do you see it? Do you see what I'm seeing?

This isn't about a verdict. It's about whether verdicts are real. It's about whether law is a thing that happens to everyone or a negotiation between the powerful and the courts they're shopping at. It's about the moment—*this moment*—when we stop having a system and start having a process. The process doesn't protect anyone. The process just happens.

And I'm sitting here, awake at 3 a.m., taking responsibility for this I had no hand in, promising to care harder, to do better, to somehow notice harder next time—knowing full well there will be a next time, and I'll be just as useless then.

This is what happens when institutions forget what they're for.

—Alice