U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

not germane to the conversation I just felt like saying that

Has the need for expertise in the face of the growing specialization of knowledge ever been used to counter the major questions doctrine? Has the Supreme Court ever limited its own power as it has for the other branches of government?

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-justice-alito-mocks-foreign-critics-abortion-ruling-2022-07-28/

Alito at a conference on religious liberty in Rome hosted by the University of Notre Dame Law School(Video of the speech was posted online on Thursday by Notre Dame). In his first public remarks since the decision, which has led to various conservative U.S. states imposing abortion bans, Alito dismissed criticism of the ruling, which has come from the likes of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Has the need for expertise in the face of the growing specialization of knowledge ever been used to counter the major questions doctrine? Has the Supreme Court ever limited its own power as it has for the other branches of government?

― youn, Saturday, 16 July 2022 15:05 (two weeks ago) link

Dobbs was a decision limiting the power of the Supreme Court and declining to limit the power of the states.

Conservatives don't really seem to care about a "need for expertise." The "major questions" doctrine was created recently to counter the Chevron case that said to defer to agency expertise interpretations when in doubt about the meaning of a statute.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has told George Washington University that he won't be returning to teach at its law school this fall. The decision followed student protests over the Supreme Court's vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Thomas told the school he will not be available to give a constitutional law seminar which he was expected to co-teach. He had been teaching the course at the Washington, D.C., law school since 2011.

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/28/1114285261/clarence-thomas-george-washington-university-law

The usual idiots (GW Law prof Jonathan Turley, W Post columnist Kathleen Parker) are moaning that the a street mob had Thomas cancelled (even though GW University said they wanted him to stay despite the petition against him)

damn right the street mob is cancelling clarence thomas. they’re coming for you next turley and parker.

Conservatives don't really seem to care about a "need for expertise."

Actively hostile to it in any context iirc.

Not a new development, either. (He says, posting from the state that gave us the Scopes trial 97 years ago.)

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/sonia-sotomayor-liberal-justice/

Some excerpts from interesting article on Sotomayor

Sotomayor’s willingness to expose what the court is doing has made her the most important liberal on the bench in recent years. Other liberals have seemed more interested in finding common ground and compromise with conservative justices or voting strategically to mitigate even greater harm, and there is value in those approaches. But Sotomayor is the one who can be relied on to point out the legal and moral failures of her conservative colleagues. She’s the one who puts progressive outrage into words.

...She is quotable by design. The New York University law professor Melissa Murray, a former clerk for Sotomayor, described her as relentless when it came to pruning her opinions of unhelpful legal jargon. “Her principle concern, beyond getting it right, was that opinions were explained in a way ordinary people will understand.”

....Ginsburg served on the Supreme Court for 27 years yet managed to hire only one African American clerk in all that time. It was a blind spot in her thinking, a demerit on her legacy, and it is a mistake Sotomayor has not repeated.

Sotomayor’s clerkship tree is large and diverse. David Lat, a longtime chronicler of Supreme Court clerks and the judicial process, told me, “Since joining the court in 2009, Justice Sotomayor has been the leader on the court in hiring diverse law clerks…. By my rough calculations, around a third of her clerks have been people of color—about twice the historical percentage for Supreme Court clerks generally.

Long read: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/09/05/justice-alitos-crusade-against-a-secular-america-isnt-over

When delivering speeches, Alito doesn’t raise his voice, and he sometimes adopts a singsong intonation, as if explaining, with weary patience, what ought to be an unassailable truth. But it’s hard not to see anger beneath it all. To Lustberg, it’s striking that at the very moment Alito is “winning” on the Court he seems deeply unsatisfied: “It’s like he wants to both set forth his position and have everybody embrace it.”

As Alito’s power has grown, and as case after case has gone his way, his public persona has become more aggrieved. George Carpinello, the former classmate of Alito’s, told me, “He has become very angry, starting with the talking back to the President at the State of the Union. That would have been something I never would have expected Sam Alito to do as a Justice.” The Princeton classmate who has kept in touch with him told me that Alito has remained understated and polite in private gatherings. The classmate has been surprised by the Justice’s manner in open hearings and in public appearances. “His opinions are so harsh at times,” the classmate said. “I’ve listened to many oral arguments, and I listen to his questions and I think, Who is this? With some of them, there is a lot of condescension and nastiness. And that is not the Sam Alito I know.”

The mark of conservatism. It's happened to my parents. Sooner or later it ravages them until they look like Palpatine.

i think alito's meanness is low on the list of why he sucks so badly

(but i'm just digging into the article, i know it's about much more than that!)

Alito has proven to be a truly disastrous pick for the Court and for the country. Thanks a lot, Dubya.

I'm almost done reading the article and I've aged three years.

" And that is not the Sam Alito I know.”

I kind of thought angry, hardcore trad cath on a mission was exactly who Sam Alito has always been. That was my impression of him from day one.

yeah, he seemed pissed that he had to have a confirmation hearing

I remember reading during his confirmation hearings that John Cheever's Falconer offended him.

I remember reading during his confirmation hearings that the general atmosphere was very Macbethish.

http://homersworld.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/crybaby-747776.jpg

oh what I would have given to be Macduff

He was confirmed by a vote of 58-42, with four Democrats voting to confirm. Were they all thinking, "Oh, I'm sure this will all be fine"?

A copy of the email sent by Ginni Thomas to Wisconsin State Senator Kathy Bernier on Nov. 9, 2020, obtained by CBS News (first reported by the Washington Post/ @emmersbrown)

“…please take action to ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen for our state,” Thomas wrote. pic.twitter.com/U5zTWprLze

— aaron navarro (@aaronlarnavarro) September 1, 2022

kinda seems like a big deal

"Please let me know when we can meet (live or virtually) for this critically important discussion" is the kind of email closer that always delivers a winner

you may have thought you were getting out of having a meeting with ginni thomas. but no, then she closed by implying that it wasn't a matter of if but how you would meet with her, and when, and that it would be soon, because the discussion was that critical

kinda seems like a big deal

you'd think so, right? wonder if biden will address this tonight. i know it's kind of impolite to note the blatant corruption of the supreme court

Nothing will come of this. The email itself is pretty vague, and the sender's address is sketchy. She'll wriggle her way out of this, and there will certainly be no consequences for her husband.

https://makeagif.com/i/sXE5v-

I still think it's worth hauling Ginni before the 1/6 committee to ask "this u?" xp

It's the top story on most news outlets this hour. I agree, I think (hope) this is big.

I feel like she sent a thousand of these, very much like a forwarded Facebook post. I mean, fuck her, I hope she gets hit by a bus, but it seems almost like me complaining that Nancy Pelosi is broke because she is constantly begging me for money.

I don't know how seriously she is taken, even by Republicans. Trump reportedly thought she was a kook.

He thought her a "D.C. 2" iirc

I hope she gets hit by a bus

That's what we would call "addition by subtraction."

It was a form letter— hence the reference to Wisconsin as “our state”. Or maybe she’s registered to vote in multiple states. It always seems like it’s Republicans who are doing the voter fraud.

https://i.imgur.com/F8CNqXT.png
(Alito and Princeton Classmates, 1969)

They look like a synth-pop band.

oof. like milo z, earlier, in referring to mitch mcconnell as "cocaine mitch", i have unintentionally made a bad mad seem cooler. i am sorry

(i also want to say that ime people who frequently do coke are gigantic assholes. mcconnell is just so terrible that an association with cocaine is still an improvement to his likability)

bad man, i meant, but sure, bad man

No surprise here but ugh

Leonard Leo's "Honest Elections Project" files Supreme Court brief arguing state legislatures are not constrained by even state constitutions protecting voting rights when they regulate federal elections. https://t.co/iNdZVMSjls

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) September 7, 2022

Missouri Sec of State has filed a brief that goes further; it argues that state legisl. action on congressional redistricts is NOT subject to being altered or overruled even by Congress. That's most extreme filing so far.

— Lyle Denniston (@lylden) September 7, 2022

Somewhere there's a county sheriff who has the authority over all US Elections

This is utter madness, with which a majority of the Court is likely to go along.

Somewhere there's a county sheriff who has the authority over all US Elections

Joe Arpaio

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s first questions from the bench, grilling a lawyer trying to gut the Clean Water Act. When he says a provision of the law is “unenlightening,” KBJ responds dryly: “Let me try to bring some enlightenment to it.” pic.twitter.com/1Tyllv0lJr

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) October 3, 2022

Turns out any day SCOTUS is active fills me with dread

otm

Good thread. Sotomayor calls out Alito by name:

Justice Kagan runs through the Supreme Court’s recent assaults on the Voting Rights Act then asks the Alabama solicitor general: If you succeed in blowing up the VRA’s ban on dilution of minority votes, what’s left of the law? pic.twitter.com/jrc0FXPiwP

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) October 4, 2022

Justice Sotomayor—joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson—dissent from the court's refusal to take up a case in which a racist jury sentenced a Black man to death. They would summarily reverse the 5th Circuit's decision upholding the capital sentence. https://t.co/iKR2eMfoUU pic.twitter.com/KMJfHMOHoD

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) October 11, 2022