The rush of Republican legislators to condemn the judicial system after the conviction of former President Donald Trump is not the first time that the legitimacy of our judicial system has come under attack.

For decades, white persons accused of crimes against African-Americans in the Jim Crow south were rarely prosecuted, and in those instances that there was an arrest and prosecution, they were invariably acquitted. In contrast, African-Americans accused of violent crimes against white persons never made it to court; they were lynched. In the face of the obvious, politicians criticizing the failings of the judicial system were initially infrequent, and their chorus grew only after years after the empirical evidence could not be disputed.