U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Nino Edition

that was exceptionally weird

I missed this relevant factoid

FACTOID: Among the myriad possible reasons 15-yr-old Chrissy might’ve been *especially* reluctant to call the Montgomery County prosecutors: Kavanaugh’s mother was apparently among those prosecutors at the time of 17-yr-old Brett’s alleged assault.

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) September 22, 2018

it should be weird that nobody on the Supreme Court is stepping in and saying that nobody with this much dirt hanging over them should be confirmed to the bench.

Fred, there's still a very good chance that Kavanaugh will be seated. It's a political decision. In which case, any justice who spoke up against his confirmation would be working closely with him for (possibly) a decade or more. And because speaking out would have zero real authority, other than whatever moral weight might be assigned to it by the senators who hold genuine authority, it might easily accomplish nothing other than making your colleague hate you. Since coalition building is a necessary component of the SCOTUS, it would be *ahem* kind of stupid to do as you suggested.

>Since coalition building is a necessary component

...is it?

Less than it used to be, but still, yes, it is.

Kavanaugh is not a smart man.

Fred, there's still a very good chance that Kavanaugh will be seated. It's a political decision. In which case, any justice who spoke up against his confirmation would be working closely with him for (possibly) a decade or more. And because speaking out would have zero real authority, other than whatever moral weight might be assigned to it by the senators who hold genuine authority, it might easily accomplish nothing other than making your colleague hate you. Since coalition building is a necessary component of the SCOTUS, it would be *ahem* kind of stupid to do as you suggested.

― A is for (Aimless), 27. september 2018 06:26 (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This calculation might be right, but it's also so very, very weird. I get that you might put a premium on coalition-building, but if you step one step away from the issue at hand, then building coalitions with rapists are a sure way to lose authority and legitimacy anyway. This seems to me to be a crisis of massive proportions for the Supreme Court, as it has become a bigger and bigger story, much larger than what happened to Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas (because he got confirmed on a bi-partisan vote anyway, something that will definitely not happen here) and more comparable to the court-packing bill in 1937 or the whole Madison v Marbury case that I definitely knew about before yesterday, yessir. Without an FBI investigation into Kavanaugh, he will just never be seen as a legitimate judge, and if his colleagues on the Supreme Court tries to pretend otherwise, they will lose legitimacy as well. I think.

If he still gets on the Court, his colleagues will work with him because that's the way it's always worked. The misogynist, anti-Semite, and racist James McReynolds, on every list of the worst justices in SCOTUS history, was loathed by many of his colleagues but they still worked with him. What can Ginsberg, Sotomayor, Kagan, or even Roberts do -- resign in protest? It ain't happening. History suggests comity.

The authority and legitimacy of the Supreme Court come straight from the constitution - if Trump isn't assaulting them, they'll be just fine.

Trump will be gone much sooner than Kavanaugh. It's all about how the next Dem president will react to a rapist striking down her signature policies. And also, times have changed since McReynolds.

Even my hyper-skeptical self thinks Kavanaugh is probably out now. I'm sure they're already doing whatever they can to try to set up an expedited process for Amy Barrett. Although there's probably the concern that she will not be as popular with the base, because people don't fully trust a woman to overturn Roe.

Nah. Kav will be on the Supreme Court. Republicans never back down. 52% of white women voted for Trump. The Republicans will support jamming him through.

Dems need control of Senate, House, & presidency. Then need to make DC and Puerto Rico states ( maybe other territories too) to counter the influence of less populated red states. Then add additional justices to the Supreme Court since there’s no constitutional rule it has to be 9.

“it’s starting to seem like it was an accident that the country worked as long as it did”

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/ford-kavanaugh-hearings-were-a-case-study-in-gop-misogyny.html

yessss, fuck you Khosla: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Supreme-Court-refuses-to-take-up-Martins-Beach-13271592.php?t=ed7559424c

Half the motherfuckers on the court don’t know what a beach is anyway

Oh boy, beach! That's where I'm the ralph king!

omg

"Killer Qs and 151" is quite plausibly a reference to quaaludes and grain alcohol, which Julie Swetnick said were used to drug high school girls. The timing--Beach Week '82--lines up with her allegation. Good thing the FBI is [checks notes] barred from interviewing these folks... https://t.co/ZussrwG4qe

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 1, 2018

Sounds like they may be lifting some of the restrictions to allow the FBI to talk to whoever they deem necessary.

the trick is: necessary to investigate one accusation, necessary to investigate some accusations, necessary to investigate all accusations, or necessary that he did or did not lie preposterously under oath?

I thought this was a good summary of the cases coming to the court this term: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/us/politics/supreme-court-new-term.html But can anyone help me, how can it even be a question whether or not the Bill of Right applies to the states? What good are rights if they don't protect against all levels of government? Anyone have a good article or book on this issue?

Incorporation of the Bill of Rights by way of the Fourteenth Amendement has been a phenomenon since the 1920s.

yeah that’s all i studied in government class in high school. thank god for the 14th

What good are rights if they don't protect against all levels of government?

the central question of the whole america thing imo

This is why I've taken to calling conservatives neo-Confederates. Consider:

1. Minority rule.
2. "States rights"
3. A return to constitutional norms before 1860, i.e. before the passage of the Civil War and Reconstruction amendments.
4. The inferiority of certain classes of people.
5. The imposition of federal taxes as an infringement on liberty.

Are there any texts/rulings that especially explain the conservative neo-conferate position?

it's almost as if.... there's an unbroken history there

Corey Robin's done some good work. Ari Berman wrote an excellent study of the long term conservative project to limit the franchise.

I was more thinking of primary sources, like actual conservative rulings. But I've found 'Reactionary Minds' and will check it out.

I thought this was a good summary of the cases coming to the court this term: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/us/politics/supreme-court-new-term.html But can anyone help me, how can it even be a question whether or not the Bill of Right applies to the states? What good are rights if they don't protect against all levels of government? Anyone have a good article or book on this issue?

― Frederik B, Monday, 8 October 2018 09:38 (three hours ago) Permalink

Start here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights

Also I think to understand it you have to understand that our Constitution was formed out of tension between people who conceived of a union of states with a strong federal government vs a kind of loosely united federation of independent states. That tension is present in the Constitution and has animated a lot of the political discourse in this country since.

I would not recommend enduring Chief Justice Morrison Waite's prose in Cruikshank, but here's a relevant excerpt (c/o Wiki):

There is in our political system a government of each of the several States, and a Government of the United States. Each is distinct from the others, and has citizens of its own who owe it allegiance, and whose rights, within its jurisdiction, it must protect. The same person may be at the same time a citizen of the United States and a citizen of a State, but his rights of citizenship under one of those governments will be different from those he has under the other.

This is to our ears a bizarre conclusion, and even more bizarre given that fifteen years earlier we'd fought a civil war to dismiss the notion that citizens pledge allegiances to their states.

Fundamentally that means that US citizens has no constitutionally given rights, no? State constitutions can change quite easily.

(had, not has. I get that it's been overturned, more or less)

If you want a real mindfuck, look at the way the first amendment is drafted vs the other nine in the Bill of Rights. "Congress shall make no law..." I mean read literally, that's pretty explicitly only about the federal government. Yet if you consider that the rights enumerated in the first amendment are among the most important reasons the colonies supposedly revolted against King George, it would make no sense whatsoever to imply "but your state govt can restrict your freedom of speech, religion, assembly, etc., just not congress." Yet they specifically put that clause in the first amendment and NOT in the other 9 amendments in the bill of rights. I can't even make sense of that really -- I don't know if there's some explanation in the historical record, but to me it just looks like sloppy drafting/constitution by committee.

*tbf the 7th amendment does mention courts of the United States specifically, so that amendment arguably could be read to have a different result in the states.

are you impugning Madison and James Wilson

this is getting shared a lot right now but for good reason

https://progressive.org/op-eds/howard-zinn-despair-supreme-court/

which contains this nice bit of constitutional headfuckery:

If the Constitution is the holy test, then a justice should abide by its provision in Article VI that not only the Constitution itself but "all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land."

If u think about it aren't the borders between states just imaginary lines

I kinda forgot about the Roberts furor. I remember him being lampooned in a Broadway show in 05

Cant wait til 2024, when electoral votes allocated to corporations are considered Constitutional and Amazon decides the election

life begins at the moment of incorporation, when god gives each corporation a soul.

I might have to unbookmark this thread/America

lol Neil Gorsuch is already to Kav's left:

A Supreme Court argument on Wednesday over the detention of immigrants during deportation proceedings seemed to expose a divide between President Trump’s two appointees, Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

The question in the case was whether the federal authorities must detain immigrants who had committed crimes, often minor ones, no matter how long ago they were released from criminal custody. Justice Kavanaugh said a 1996 federal law required detention even years later, without an opportunity for a bail hearing.

“What was really going through Congress’s mind in 1996 was harshness on this topic,” he said.

But Justice Gorsuch suggested that mandatory detentions of immigrants long after they completed their sentences could be problematic. “Is there any limit on the government’s power?” he asked.

…

“Because Congress’s use of the word ‘when’ conveys immediacy,” Jacqueline H. Nguyen wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel, “we conclude that the immigration detention must occur promptly upon the aliens’ release from criminal custody.”

Justice Kavanaugh disagreed, saying the 1996 law put no time limits on the detentions it required.

“That raises a real question for me whether we should be superimposing a time limit into the statute when Congress, at least as I read it, did not itself do so,” he said.

Justice Breyer said the solution was to allow immigrants detained long after release from criminal custody to have bail hearings. He said those would allow immigrants who were not dangerous and who posed no flight risk to return to their communities. “The baddies will be in jail,” he said, “and the ones who are no risk won’t be.”

Justice Kavanaugh disagreed. “The problem is that Congress did not trust those hearings,” he said. “Congress was concerned that those hearings were not working in the way that Congress wanted and, therefore, for a certain class of criminal or terrorist aliens said, ‘No more.’”

Sandra O has news.

After reading those excerpts from her highly articulate letter announcing the news, I find myself wondering if she is currently capable of reading that letter aloud. Not that it matters, really. Bon voyage, Sandra.

Reminds me of the apparently true story that when Reagan was at last persuaded to write the letter announcing his own dementia he sighed, asked for paper and pen, wrote it right then without revision, and within a week had finally let go of the remains of his sanity.

Ugh.

RBG

(fell and broke three ribs)

judge jeanine pirro, your limo is here