Supreme Court rules 7-2 that the admin wasn't providing sufficient due process, following up on its April 19 per curiam opinion. Also notable is that the opinion calls out the admin for dishonesty about the timing of the events leading up to that first order. Also throws some shade at the district court and the Fifth Circuit for how they characterized some of the facts. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/su...tion-venezuelans-alien-enemies-act-rcna202094 https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a1007_g2bh.pdf Cross posted in the Immigration thread.
I’m stealing this insight from something I read on the internet… One of the long term background debates here has been, is Trump symptom or cause? I’ve long been on Team Symptom over Team Cause. The “2” here, the 2 most fascist justices, were NOT appointed by Trump, but by Bushes. The Bushes are part of the inner, inner circle of the Republican Party over the last half century. To me, Alito and Thomas’ jurisprudence is a strong piece of evidence for Team Symptom.
They think it's gonna be James Donald Bowman with DJT as an advisor. The scary thing? It's entirely legal.
Unironically, Ol' Clarence has no problem with people being hauled off in chains without due process. Two conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, dissented. Alito wrote that there were no grounds for the court to get involved at such an early stage of the litigation. The court, Alito said, had "no authority to issue any relief."
I read the exact same thing ---- can't recall which Professor or pundit it was on Bluesky but I can probably find it. It's an interesting observation but it relies on a fair bit of hindsight is 20/20, IMHO. What I mean is that it wasn't really until after the Thomas confirmation that we saw a concerted effort by the Federalist Society to be the entity really out front making these picks for Republican admins. The FedSoc definitely was involved before, but not to the degree they would be after this. Remember, one year previous to Thomas, HW appointed Souter, who was viewed as a solid conservative but a bit of a milquetoast pick, which is what the admin wanted with the memory of the Reagan admin's Bork fight still fresh. And arguably, Thomas was even more of a blank slate than Souter given that he hadn't even been a judge for long when he was nominated, and thus had even less of a paper trail. Of course, they assumed he was a solid conservative, but remember, he was also championed by Jack Danforth, who certainly wasn't part of the Jesse Helms wing of the party. The Thomas nomination, IMO, similar to the Souter one, was more of a "needs must" appointment. They knew they'd have a bit of a fight, but it was mostly regarding his qualifications not the fear that he was a right-wing loon. And as an AA from the South, they knew they'd be putting a lot of the Southern Dems on the spot if they failed to support him. Full disclosure: I know this because I was working on the Hill and my boss was one of those Dems. Now obviously, the allegations from Professor Hill threw a giant spanner into those works, but again, that was out of the blue. If they had known about her before the nomination, I'm convinced Thomas wouldn't have been picked, as they were looking for someone more easy to confirm to take Marshall's seat, more so than trying to appoint a far-right jurist. Alito? Completely agree there was a right-wing agenda to nominate him, but I think W was more along for the ride than pushing it. The FedSoc hierarchy knew Alito was far to the right and pushed him for that reason. W at the time (hell, I bet we could go to a lot of old threads around here and see the evidence) was in a weakened position, despite winning reelection. The war was going crappy, Katrina made him look even more incompetent, and he tried and failed to push his buddy Harriet Miers for the opening and got slammed by his own party for the effort. I think he agreed to Alito as a way of throwing a bone to all the conservatives he wanted to assuage. Abridged version: Alito was absolutely an effort to get the jurist we now see on the Supreme Court, even if W was more of a passenger than a driver. Thomas turned out that way---probably much more so than they had even initially hoped. But there was a bit of luck, just as we on the left benefitted (somewhat) from them being wrong on Souter. And please don't construe any of this as an attempt to rehab HW or W.
To add to your point--> I don't think you can look at Clarence Thomas's legacy without considering the effect Scalia had on him. Scalia was very active working with FedSoc. Clarence is 100 percent a product of those efforts, whether recruited or willingly signed on. Given the politics of his wife, I'd imagine it was a little bit of both.
I'm sure Scalia influenced Thomas considerably. But Thomas was already a FedSoc member before he was nominated. Not as notable as Scalia sure, (high bar there) but as I said, he wouldn't have been picked if they didn't feel he'd be a solid vote on the right. But again, I'd bet many of the FedSoc muckety mucks would admit surprise that he turned out to be even more conservative than Scalia.
I’m reading that Alito is citing precedents that actually say the opposite of what he says they do. I can’t judge that myself. Can the real lawyers chime in? Because that seems a pretty serious problem for those of us who aren’t fascists…the whole underpinning of our system is reliance on precedence, and reliance on good faith from judges. If the accusation is correct, Alito shouldn’t be a justice.
He definitely cherry picked only half of a citation relevant to class certification. It's incredibly dishonest and if a litigant did that in a brief they could be sanctioned. See the link below for details. https://bsky.app/profile/kovarsky.bsky.social/post/3lpdozwpxt226
Part of the first Gilded Age was a big increase in how much above the law the elite were. In pretty much any society, the rich and powerful have a lot of protections you and I don’t have, some in law, some in practice. But it’s always there. What was different a century and ahead ago, and today, is that the rich and powerful seem to be wholly beyond the reach of society. The thing is, they’re still not happy. That’s why they keep pushing to limit our ability to even criticize them. That’s behind musk buying twitter, in part. Musk is beyond the law, but he wants to be above criticism too. That’s why Zuck and Bezos and the LA paper act like they do.
He's now become a major hack or he always was? I seem to remember maybe he was a respected jurist at first. Maybe I'm feverdreaming of a normal USSC.
Speculating, but I think he's just been emboldened by being in a solid majority, so he doesn't care about being consistent or disingenuous. He was known to be very conservative when he was on the Third Circuit, but I don't recall him having a reputation for being a complete hack.
I've only been a relatively recent observer of individual justices and their predilections. How much was Thomas a far right Justice from the start versus being influence by Alito (and possibly Scalia before)? And what is your view on the chicken/egg aspect of his conservativeness regarding his corruption (or does that matter at all)?
Thomas was far right from the go----surprisingly so----even before he started taking vacations with Harlan Crow. And he was on the bench for nearly 13 years before Alito was nominated so I don't think Alito has really influenced him. I'm sure Scalia influenced him to a decent extent, although not as much as the trope about him mocks. As I said in a previous post, in many ways, Thomas is more conservative than Scalia, especially with regard to some criminal justice issues.
I suspect a bigger influence on Thomas was the mountain of money and gifts he has gotten from Conservative benefactors.
Based on what yoss just said to me, to question to me is whether his conservatism allowed him to become more easily corrupt, or is his corruption is driving his conservatism. I would tend to lean to the prior.
i think both are true. Thomas was a Conservative before he started taking money from conservative backers, but he became even more likely to rule the direction his backers wanted after he got oaid.
Not to make everyone laugh, but wasn't there talk last year of a SC code of ethics? Like not taking bribes from billionaires being in it.