Politics & Power Quote by Vincent Bugliosi

Bugliosi writes like a prosecutor who’s decided the courtroom is too small for the crime. The sentence is deliberately overbuilt, stacked with institutional nouns ("national", "legal organization", "House Judiciary Committee") to give the charge the heft of procedure rather than the heat of opinion. He isn’t just venting about the Supreme Court; he’s trying to launder outrage through legitimacy. The key move is "giving very serious thought" - a phrase that sounds measured while signaling escalation. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of setting down a file folder before you slam the table.

The context is Bugliosi’s broader project in The Betrayal of America: treating contested Supreme Court decisions (most famously Bush v. Gore) not as debatable jurisprudence but as actionable misconduct. Naming "these five justices" matters. He’s carving a moral minority out of an otherwise untouchable institution, collapsing the Court’s aura of collective authority into a lineup. The subtext: legitimacy is conditional, and lifetime tenure doesn’t mean lifetime immunity.

There’s cynicism here, but not the winking kind. Bugliosi’s intent is to make impeachment - usually a theoretical check on judges - feel concrete, even overdue. He frames the book itself as "a legal basis", turning publishing into a form of legal strategy, as if the argument on the page could become a brief, then a hearing, then history. It’s a gamble on the power of narrative to force accountability when the system prefers decorum to consequences.