U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

which the current justices will no doubt answer with an elaborately worded "fuck you I won't do what you tell me."

What we need is the appointment of an independent-minded wonk equally versed in policy, optics and Rage Against the Machine. Wait, I know just the person!

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/1e2/658/97214dcde5465d5180e2ff718c8b30060e-1----.rsocial.w1200.jpg

just looked up ryan's post-congressional life, and yeah, he's still one of the 8 people on the board of directors at fox corporation

I might be crazy, but I think we're going to see further ethics requirements imposed upon the SC. All of them were subject to the Code of Conduct for United States Judges before they were elevated to the Supreme Court, so the logical next step is to apply that or portions of that to the Supreme Court: https://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/code-conduct-united-states-judges

dow posted this link over on the us politics thread: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-draws-fire-ethics-inaction-rcna81544

it seems likely that the roberts court will continue to oppose any kind of accountability

What if such imposed ethics requirements were ruled ... unconstitutional?
https://durrellbowman.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/the-piranha-brothers.jpg

Many xps but Blbackwards-hatted buff/swole Ryan memeage will never die.

I am okay with that. That dude needs to be savagely mocked to the grave.

(Sidenote: remember when he said that his music taste ranged from AC/DC to Zeppelin? It was a decently cute line in the moment, granted. But no one really alphabetized their music this way. Led Zeppelin is alphabetized under L, not Z, you fucking psychopath.

It's as bad as shelving "Jane Eyre" under E or "Mrs. Dalloway" under D. Sheesh. Are there literally no Republican librarians?

he's probably so dumb he thought Led Zeppelin was a person.

it seems likely that the roberts court will continue to oppose any kind of accountability

I am shocked at this

This is my shocked face

Nah, never mind, I am not in the least bit shocked

Carry on

Neanderthal: by the way, which one's Pink?

🚨🚨🚨SCOOP: New whistleblower docs show Jane Roberts, who is married to SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts, made $10.3 million placing lawyers at elite firms — https://t.co/uB82RgJ8YC

— Mattathias Schwartz (@Schwartzesque) April 28, 2023

More details on Justice Roberts wife profit taking and he not recusing himself

Click on the story to see the line-item spreadsheet of her commissions.

At least one of the firms that paid Jane Roberts — WilmerHale — later argued before SCOTUS. John Roberts did not recuse, and voted in favor of WH’s client.

— Mattathias Schwartz (@Schwartzesque) April 28, 2023

Seems bad

I have a feeling there is probably a, erm, bipartisan desire to not look to deeply into the court's ethical history

Never thought I'd be into Business Insider but they seem like real muckrakers these days

X-post - you can make generic both sides allegations about ethics issues with no evidence , but the Republicans with a 6-3 majority have no interest in new ethics rules now, and no one in the press has come up with allegations against the 3 Dem nominated Justices. Yes, the 9 Justices signed together, but that may be due to pressure from Chief Justice

Paul Ryan, who thought that the Path to Prosperity should be built on the bones of the sick and the old, is now being presented as the voice of moderation and an independent-minded wonk.

he's probably so dumb he thought Led Zeppelin was a person.

My ... let's see, my wife's cousin's husband? Anyway, my wife's cousin's husband went to college with Paul Ryan. Apparently they were partnered up for some project in I can't remember what class (my wife's cousin's husband might have picked Paul Ryan because he was cute), and as they were gearing up for the final presentation, Paul Ryan came up to him and said (very paraphrasing) "look, you are getting an A in this class because you are a hard worker. In fact, I know you will do all the work necessary to get an A in this class whether I help out or not. Since I'm not as good at this as you are, and probably won't get an A no matter how we do on this project, why don't you just do all the work without me so that I don't get in your way?"

Pretty sure that's Socialism.

being presented as the voice of moderation and an independent-minded wonk

when your peer group is busily endorsing Q-Anon theories, embracing Jan 6 rioters as true patriots, and posing for Xmas cards with all the members of their family gleefully brandishing semi-automatic weapons, then simply by avoiding these activities the media will gladly do the rest of the work for you.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/28/alito-leaker-dobbs-wsj/

good news - the dobbs leaker definitely wasn't alito, says alito

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said in an interview earlier this month that he has a “pretty good idea” who leaked his draft Supreme Court opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade and its constitutional right to abortion last year, but that neither he nor the court can prove it.

...“I personally have a pretty good idea who is responsible, but that’s different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody,” Alito said, according to the story published online Friday. He said he was sure the leak “was a part of an effort to prevent the Dobbs draft … from becoming the decision of the court. And that’s how it was used for those six weeks by people on the outside — as part of the campaign to try to intimidate the court.”

Alito said the theory that the draft was leaked by someone on the right to lock in the five votes necessary to overturn Roe “is infuriating to me.”

“Look, this made us targets of assassination,” Alito told his interviewers. “Would I do that to myself? Would the five of us have done that to ourselves? It’s quite implausible.”

...
Without commenting on Thomas, Alito said he believes that reports about alleged ethical violations by justices are attempts to damage the court’s credibility now that conservatives are firmly in control. “We are being hammered daily, and I think quite unfairly in a lot of instances. And nobody, practically nobody, is defending us,” he said.

“And then those who are attacking us say, ‘Look how unpopular they are. Look how low their approval rating has sunk.’” Alito said. “Well, yeah, what do you expect when you’re — day in and day out, ‘They’re illegitimate. They’re engaging in all sorts of unethical conduct. They’re doing this, they’re doing that’?”

breaking: alito a whiny prick, sucks

The poor quality of his reasoning just rises off those statements like the 'stink waves' off a cartoon of a pile of shit. This man has zero awareness of how he sounds to others, because anyone who disagrees with him is not worthy of his notice.

Yeah, he's so bad and dumb and punchable.

That last paragraph I quoted…jfc. I mean, I am very forgiving of poor reasoning, I do it all the time myself, it’s a very human quality, we all do it sometimes. However he’s a fucking sc justice, he is supposed to be good at things like understanding cause and effect

zach, they're doing this and doing that

Agreed obv. Dude offers an unsubstantiated theory that just so happens to align with his political alliances. That’s the kind of reasoning I’d use but I am not a USSC Justice.

He is bad and deserves to be hated.

i was fine with doing this

it was when they started doing that

Doing this and signing that

In his recent dissent in the abortion pill case, he suggested with no citation or support that the Justice Department was going to refuse to enforce the Trump appointed district judge opinion if the Supreme Court upheld it. Alito’s just a Fox watching conspiracy theorist but with lots of power

I think the more disturbing thing about that to me was that the Justice Department employees quoted in the press gave every inclination that not only would they obey the ruling, but wouldn't use any of the tools they were legally allowed to use, like "non-enforcement discretion notices". one of them saying it'd set a 'bad precedent'. one of the attorneys posted this on Twitter and got thoroughly roasted over the coals.

I'm about 99% sure if SCOTUS had actually refused to issue a stay on Kacsmaryk's ruling, the Biden admin Justice Department and FDA would have just said "aw shucks, well sorry guys, SCOTUS said no and we're all out of options" and just let it happen.

so not only was there no indication that they'd defy a court order, there were actually comments on record that pretty much told Alito and company they wouldn't do that (which, frankly, is surrendering)

Yes , good points.

Was just reading more background re Kacsmaryk who donated to Senator Josh Hawley's campaign and then Hawley's wife brought the abortion pill case to Kacsmaryk

2023: Hawley’s DONOR judge rules in favor of the lawsuit led by Hawley’s WIFE, calling for a near-immediate ban on the abortion drug mifepristone in all 50 states.

And it's the first time a judge has ever tried to unilaterally take a drug off the market against FDA objections.

— Lucas Kunce (@LucasKunceMO) April 20, 2023

yep. frankly the most ridiculous thing about the whole case, how blatant it was.

More on George Mason U’s Scalia Law School:

“The documents show how Scalia Law has offered the justices a safe space in a polarized Washington — an academic cocoon filled with friends and former clerks, where their legal views are celebrated, they are given top pay and treated to teaching trips abroad, and their personal needs are anticipated, from lunch orders to, in Justice Gorsuch’s case, house hunting.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/30/us/supreme-court-scalia-law-school.html

I love this url: https://www.wonkette.com/sam-alito-is-the-pettiest-bitch-alive

xpost They've built a huge infrastructure to prevent Justices from going Souter on them

You mean the Antonin Scalia School of Law?

Home of the mighty ASSOLs?

The Supreme Court takes up a case asking it to overrule Chevron deference to administrative agencies. Review limited to the second question presented. Justice Jackson is recused. https://t.co/GmraMlo2rK pic.twitter.com/Em7nh3KIWM

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) May 1, 2023

Good morning!☕️

The Senate Judiciary Committee is about to begin its post-Clarence-Thomas-ethics-scandal hearing on Supreme Court ethics reform.

Dick Durbin really wants bipartisan action.

Only one GOP senator has proposed doing anything at all. https://t.co/Ngdu6o3odd

— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) May 2, 2023

Does that "anything at all" involve deer?

In the headlights. Murkowski is only Republican who is willing to do talk about doing anything. Apparently at the hearing Republicans alleged things about Dem appointed judges, but they just want to both sides the issues at the hearing and not actually do anything. Plus the want to claim that its all sour grapes from Dems because of the current make up of the court and the decisions

Scalia should've died in 2021.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor provided the early framework that steered the outcome in the dispute over the 2000 presidential election and ensured George W. Bush would win the White House over Al Gore, Supreme Court documents released on Tuesday show.

Memos found in the newly opened files of the late Justice John Paul Stevens offer a first-ever view of the behind-the-scenes negotiations on Bush v. Gore at the court. They also demonstrate the tension among the nine justices being asked to decide a presidential election on short deadlines.

The documents opened at the Library of Congress help reveal how the now-retired O’Connor, the first woman on the high court and a justice steeped in politics from her early days in the Arizona legislature, partnered with Justice Anthony Kennedy, effectively squeezing out an argument advanced by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

And we have Rehnquist to thank for the "independent legislature" bullshit that Trump's lawyers used in 2020 and that SCOTUS is reviewing now.

Rehnquist even worse than I thought and of course Scalia, and Thomas all in on that nonsense.

Someone should really get a Go Fund Me going for Thomas. I guess maybe they already have.

I live in a world where even if it didn’t involve massive ethics violations at the highest levels of government, I’d hang my head in shame if I, a grown ass man earning a 6-figure salary, let another grown ass man pay for my mama’s house and my child’s education.

— curtis marshall (@wxcurtis) May 4, 2023

Thinking about Alito's whining about how people are now "attacking" the Court, I think he has something of a point, he just misunderstands it. I do think the hard-right court's activism has attracted more scrutiny, from the media and the public at large — but that's because when you assert power over other people's lives in ways that negatively affects them and that are actually unpopular with people in general, there is a natural and laudable tendency for people to say, "Well just who the hell are YOU?"

Really I think this is the kind of thing Roberts has had in mind when he has rightly worried about radical ideological decisions undermining the Court's legitimacy.

John Roberts as a Reagan hack devoted himself to limiting the reach of the VRA, so he can fuck himself into a sewer.

loling at the galaxy brain blue check idiots with their "now do Sotomayor's book deal" takes. yes, because that is exactly the same thing.

Oh yeah, Roberts is definitely part architect of the current Court. That he seems to have at least mild misgivings about its rapaciousness doesn't in any way excuse him. I just think he's right to worry about its perceived legitimacy, because once they've lost it — which in a lot of ways they have already — it's hard to get back.

I understand why a chief justice would worry about the legitimacy of a court he has wanted to lead for decades, but Roberts is maybe the least corrupt of a rotten bunch (I write this even as we know now what we do about his wife).

This isn't just about gifts, or perks, or trips--it's about a decades-long effort by the Right to create a separate universe in which Conservative Justices don't have to care about how their decisions are received by law professors or the legal world, but only how they are received by the Federalist Society and rich donors. It's all been done to keep Justices from "growing" (i.e. moving to the center) as had happened with Republican appointees like John Paul Stevens.

We've now reached the point that even regular people are catching on to this shit and no longer see the Court as an elevated priesthood in American life but just another set of partisan crazies.

I mean

Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work just over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the documents show. The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case.

Leo, a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25K,” the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course.”

Ginni's got expensive habits, poor Justice Thomas needs all the help he can get with his nephew's schooling and mother's housing, he's living paycheck to paycheck