The US Supreme Court Thread - Post Roe v. Wade reversal edition

What's the meaning of that? I mean, I dislike 4 of them with all my heart, and I don't have another 2 in high regards, and I'm sure that the sentiment is shared by the majority of the people here.

That the court decisions have been mostly 5-4 for as long as I can remember, and that are now 6-3 should tell you all you need to know about politics and power in the SCOTUS.

 

The meaning is, liberals are tricking themselves if we put too much stock in a strong argument that gets outvoted by the partisans on the USSC. The thinking is, yeah, it's nice and all the Jackson did a terrific job of exposing originalist hypocrisy, but that isn't going to change the fact that 5 of the Supremes are proven, absolute hypocrites, so they always win.

 

The Democrat strategy is logic and reason will prevail, the Republican strategy is the ends justify the means.

Game, set and match to Republicans.

 

Just posted something similar in GOP Failure. Democrats focus on doing things the "right way" (remember Michele saying "when they go low we go high") and the GOP just wants puppets in place for their master schemes.

 

See this:
https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/t...eversal-edition.2121482/page-18#post-40833571

There's a worship of justices for "owning conservatives" with facts and logic, along with an annoying idolatry of certain justices. And in this case, it can get to certain justices heads (RBG).

 

Too many people I think watched the West Wing and thought it was real life.

 

I don't want to speak for Kaz, but I think his criticism is for the cheerleaders saying how awesome it is, when it is, in fact, not awesome to have fantastic opinions lose lose lose. It isn't KBJ that's the problem. The problem is the people taking solace in minority opinions.

I'll admit, I still don't get the hate directed at RBG.

 

Dave and RSLfanboy said it quite well. I mentioned upthread that there are people who have West Wing syndrome as well.

And while I admire Jackson being outspoken and hopefully writing future opinion, it’s little comfort in a court that has a justice citing a lawyer from the 1600s. Or an extreme Catholic not recusing herself when needed.

 

I don’t hate RBG. Nor do I lay most of the blame on her. What it is, is frustration. I think she was wonderful, definitely a trailblazer. But thing is, she had a chance to step down when circumstances were favorable. Instead, she let her pride get the best of her. People can argue “but no one saw the GOP doing their antics”, and just about every other argument under the sun. But they miss the point.

We had a Dem majority and it would’ve been ideal, sensible, to replace her. but even when there were calls for her to step down, she pushed back. And at the very end, that hubris now has things here. It’s set back the progressive movement for generations.

On top of that, her age and health was just such an obvious reason to step down. It’s a shock she lasted as long as she did. Pancreatic cancer is nasty to begin with and then colon cancer on top of that. Nobody would’ve blamed her if she chose to retire and just live her life.

Of course, her not stepping down isn’t the sole factor, there’s various things that got us here, but we are now stuck with with a 6-3 conservative majority for lord knows how long. It will not be a surprise if those three are still on the bench when you and I are in our 50s. The Court is a long game, and we were all hoping that a pancreatic cancer (which I cannot emphasize enough, is nasty) survivor would hold on until Biden was elected. It’s outlandish.

But it’s not just RBG I was frustrated with. It would’ve been nice if Breyer stepped down under Obama with that same majority. I was hoping he would step down when Biden was elected. Thankfully, he has.

 

The Slate article pointed out that with the "liberal" Warren court, the assumption in legal academia was that the SC was a force for good (Brown, Griswold, Miranda, Loving, etc) and a major check on a conservative hellscape run by big corps & the Koch Bros of the world. But the Warren years were really an aberration. We're back to conservative hellscape.

 

11th Cir jJudge Elizabeth Branch joins 5th Cir Judge Ho in saying she will not hire law clerks from Yale. https://t.co/YsJ3UFRzU0

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) October 10, 2022

Not the Supremes but this has become the Judicial catch-all

 

I'm not up to speed here... why are they boycotting Yalies?

 

From Yale to jail.

Long before he assembled one of the largest far-right anti-government militia groups in U.S. history, before his Oath Keepers stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Stewart Rhodes was a promising Yale Law School graduate.

He secured a clerkship on the Arizona Supreme Court, in part thanks to his unusual life story: a stint as an Army paratrooper cut short by a training accident, followed by marriage, college and an Ivy League law degree.

The clerkship was one more rung up from a hardscrabble beginning. But rather than fitting in, Rhodes came across as angry and aggrieved.

He railed to colleagues about how the Patriot Act, which gave the government greater surveillance powers after the Sept. 11 attacks, would erase civil liberties. He referred to Vice President Dick Cheney as a fascist for supporting the Bush administration’s use of “enemy combatant” status to indefinitely detain prisoners.

“He saw this titanic struggle between people like him who wanted individual liberty and the government that would try to take away that liberty,” said Matt Parry, who worked with Rhodes as a clerk for Arizona Supreme Court Justice Mike Ryan.

Rhodes alienated his moderate Republican boss and eventually left the steppingstone job. Since then he has ordered his life around a thirst for greatness and deep distrust of government.

https://apnews.com/article/oath-keepers-founder-jan-6-trial-4372b311695c401255c6881111ff4f41

 

I'd say open up more clerkships to non-Ivy grads since our elites have a spotty track record.

Once, after Lyndon B. Johnson rattled off the list of experts who were helping fight the Vietnam War, his friend Sam Rayburn replied, “Well, Lyndon, you may be right and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I’d feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once.” The Afghan and Iraq Wars were a consensus policy among both Republican and Democratic elites in the civil service, in the political class, and in the media. The repetition poses an important question: Given that America has been let down, repeatedly, by members of the same expert class, why does it keep relying on them?

The answer lies in the specific nature of Ivy League elitism, which is an aristocracy of networks. Ivy League graduates make up 0.4 percent of the country. They are significantly overrepresented in Fortune 500 C-suites, in the House of Representatives, in the Senate, in academia, and in the media. Biden/Harris was the first presidential ticket in 44 years without an Ivy League alumnus on board. For a decade, the U.S. Supreme Court consisted of nothing but Ivy League graduates. And these entities are exclusive and self-perpetuating. Legacies at Harvard are accepted at a rate of nearly 34 percent, compared with just 5.9 percent of ordinary people. Being born to it isn’t the only way in: Buying admittance is the simplest. (Charles Kushner gave Harvard $250,000 a year for 10 years to guarantee admission for his meritless son.)

Whoever attends has been established in the architecture of power before they have had a chance to do anything, and that is key: The network gives power. The aristocracy of the network provides opportunity and security, both materially and spiritually. The network cradles and protects. None of the politicians or journalists or intellectuals who set in motion the past 70 years of failed wars faced any significant consequences for their failures. Quite the opposite. Those who resisted those wars demonstrated that they weren’t part of the network and therefore remained excluded even after they were proved right, while those who failed showed that they were reliably part of the network and therefore remained inside. The network responds to external threats by tightening. As long as you belong, you’ll be fine.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...ogists-january-6-gop-elitism-populsim/621153/

 

Not sure if I've used my Atlantic freebies or not, but that article probably should mention this book, which is great...



Deresiewicz made me glad to have spent my life in higher education entirely outside of that sphere.

 

Reading that article made me think of the Cambridge Five, mainly one Kim Philby. He once said he got away with what he did because he was upper class.

So no surprise I see similar with the Ivies.

 

It mentioned Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest.

One would think that this is Journalism 101, but Halberstam imparted some wisdom many don't follow today:

Howard Bryant in the Acknowledgments section of Juicing the Game, his 2005 book about steroids in baseball, said of Halberstam's assistance: "He provided me with a succinct road map and the proper mind-set." Bryant went on to quote Halberstam on how to tackle a controversial non-fiction subject: "Think about three or four moments that you believe to be the most important during your time frame. Then think about what the leadership did about it. It doesn't have to be complicated. What happened, and what did the leaders do about it? That's your book."