White supremacist behind dragging death of James Byrd Jr. scheduled to be executed this week thehill.com/blogs/...
Posner is the man. He and my old boss were kinda pals. Super unique guy but I respect the hell out of him
yeah i'm kinda unclear where bwi2 gets his conception of the supreme court when you have things like the federalist society in existence
Anyone that had any faith in the Supreme Court to rise above partisanship should have been disabused of that notion when a guy who claimed to be the target of a left wing conspiracy and promised “what goes around comes around” was proudly seated by Republicans on it.
not to mention that kavanaugh did a complete about face in his view of executive power in the most blatantly partisan way possible
Posner speaks about this an interview. Basically, politicians don't care about getting good judges and they get to pick them and the people who want to be judges need to align with political interests to become them. Further, the proliferation of elite and career law clerks have made it so that judges don't need to do much actual work. The people at the top went to the top schools and mostly got top grades and they only like to hire people from top schools who got top grades. It's lead to a judiciary full of law school nerds and professional test takers who have never actually tried cases. Trump tried to appoint a federal judge with elite academical credentials who did not know what a motion in limine was and had absolutely no clue about basic trial procedure.
PSA: if you honestly believe being gay is a choice you’re probably attracted to men and fighting that urge to fuck them on a daily basis.
Problems with the current makeup of the Supreme Court and the recent appointments to it don't undue the historical significance, and positive effectiveness, of the branch of government. Saying it has done more harm than good was absurd.
Are we just ignoring all the terrible scotus decisions like plessy, Scott, citizens etc? How are we randomly aasigning the court doing good? Maybe for white people
LOL @ this being a current makeup issue. Dred Scott, Buck v. Bell, Plessy, Korematsu, Citizens United, Bush v. Gore, Shelby All fucking awful decisions that had long-term negative impacts on the country.
And then they've taken 50-100 years to fix their mistakes, if they fix them. Sounds like it works great
Powell v. Alabama, Brown v. BOE, Cooper v. Aaron, Gideon v.Wainwright, Miranda v. Arizona, U.S. v. Nixon, Loving v. Virginia, Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas, Obergefell v. Hodges, Heart of Atlanta Motel v. U.S., etc. -- all good decisions that checked opposing federal branches of government or state legislatures, often against the democratic will.
ya, I mean I could list good decisions for hours. getting the court back in order is imperative, however. Otherwise there will be a bunch of bad decisions coming down the pipeline
Sure, but the legal precedents that came from many of those cases are getting clawed back slowly but surely as we speak...by the Supreme Court. The argument wasn't that the court hasn't done good along the way. It's just that they've really done some horrible shit too and it isn't just tied to this current iteration of the court. There's a history of absolutely shittastic opinions that have done decades worth of damage to minorities, women, and the entire country.
The inherent flaw in the branch is that its very nature is politicism dressed in the guise of jurisprudence and impartiality.
There is no way anyone could explain what a bot is to him. None. He’d assume it’s an actual robot typing on a keyboard.
Not really. They're being clawed back by the legislature. Obviously, you can argue that the Supreme Court isn't fulfilling its duty of preventing that claw back, but the issues don't even get in front of them until legislatures write laws to challenge them or the executive enforces in a way that does. Absolutely true. But, again, those decisions weren't made in a vacuum. They were made within a legislative and executive framework that was already hellbent on disenfranchising minorities, women, and holding back the entire country.
Even assuming that is the very nature of the branch (which I would argue it isn't and is more a symptom of flaws in the other two), how is that more flawed than prima facie politicism?
Sure, if you want to get technical. The court has always ruled on the cases presented to them, so they aren't unilaterally clawing them back themselves. My point was tied to your second sentence. They aren't fulfilling their duty precisely because the veil of being non-political has just been fully pulled back at this point.
Without the Court, you get all of these bad outcomes and none of the positive decisions that overturned political bodies. So yes, dumb to say that it has done more harm than good. I don’t have any misconceptions about the political valence of the Court. That’s why I’m not surprised when that body renders a political answer to a political question, and why it shouldn’t ever be relied upon to fix a political problem.
The others are transparent about their naked partisanship. The Supreme Court still pretends that it isn’t and has lifelong partisan appointments.
i'll be sure to read these posts into the record when bwi2 and wes come to the floor regarding their judicial noms
i get that lawyers have self interest in protecting the sanctity of judges, elite institutions/universities, etc but it's still fun to see the sleight of hand to defend an institution thats only upside is that its PR has done a better job than most country would work better if everyone understood we have a branch of government that basically depends on sliding doors and a roll of the dice among the most privileged and protected elites about what ideologues and partisans have final say on many of the most important battles
don't worry, you've already been dq'd under lord bricktops reign for inclusion in the OP of the republican thread you'll be defending yourself from the press
But, no one has done that here. I think that the past election proves that people know that the court is partisan. Most have no fucking clue what it does, but they all firmly believe it to be partisan. Also, I completely disagree with the "final say on many of the most important battles" portion of your post. The Court never has a "final say." Its history has proven that repeatedly.
I think the GOP at least understands its a partisan court that has been rallied on their side around abortion, maybe Dem voters understand that now post Garland and Kavanaugh but I haven't seen solid evidence of it. They have final say for many peoples lives, yes they've turned boats around but often its decades later after untold destruction. It'd be nice if everyone stopped pretending they're basically the high clergy of american constitutionality. Or that they're anything but another deteriorating institution as the elite structures in America fail due to their own inbreeding.
Who is doing that? And, FWIW, I'm on the record that we don't need anymore HLS bwi2 types on the Court, let alone two justices from the same fucking high school. The made-up credentialling is a huge problem, but again, I think that's a product of faux meritocracy that exists across all three branches.
I’m not sure I understand what this means, but I don’t know what else I’m doing when I say don’t rely on the Court to resolve what are at their heart political disputes. I think this criticism applies more to, say, the ACLU, which responds to various Trump outrages - and the financial windfall for the ACLU accompanying those outraged - with a “see you in court” tweet and a lawsuit instead of trying to make said outrageous positions politically untenable.
Will respond to both at once I guess. If you don't think both parties with an assist from the media treat the Supreme Court like a very unique branch with extremeeeeeeeely generous reporting on we're just in different worlds regarding the general publics deference to the SC above all other reactions to political actions. All disputes are political and the SC has a very vital role in maneuvering through them. Not to mention the "politically untenable" bar is ever moving and by design and evolution able to be blunted by those in power.
Those positions are only politically tenable because they are outrageous. The animating principle of Republican voters is to outrage decent people for having the audacity to care about the wellbeing of others. An entire political party has created a platform based on “liberal tears.” The ACLU can’t fix that. The only thing they can do is enlist the court system to aggressively oppose that outrage. The ACLU can’t get twitter and Facebook to fix their problems in propagating hate. They can’t get the major news media to abandon horse race punditry and revert to fact based reporting and informing the public. All they can do is work to stem the tide of that bullshit becoming entrenched public policy.
Agree to disagree on the public perception of the Court. Totally disagree that all disputes are political. The vast majority of supreme court decisions aren't 5-4 votes. Even on some seemingly "political" issues, they rule with the law: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2752516/VLvEL.pdf
The reporting around pretty much every awful thing the trump administration does reverts to “we’ll eventually have to see what the Supreme Court says about this.” It’s normalizing the outrage people should feel at the objectively awful shit he does and disrespect he has for the rule of law because “the Supreme Court will rule on the legality of this eventually.”
But I think as has been pointed out by others, the Court has never been the instrument by which an outrage has been aggressively opposed (certainly not the sole instrument). It is an available venue, but a far less effective one than the voting booth.