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The New and Hopefully Bug-Free [SCOTUS] Thread
silence1186
Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered User regular
Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered User regular
All rise, the new SCOTUS thread is back in session. It was an eventful almost 3 years 13 months ~20 months. The country is still reeling from the long dreaded overturning of Roe v. Wade, the longstanding desire of the conservative movement they spent almost 50 years attempting to turn back, as far back as the initial ruling in 1973.
A few ground rules, as previously noted:
scotusblog.com is the go to place for things relevant to what's going on.
The court has been releasing a bunch of decisions for the term recently. Still outstanding are whether or not Chevron Deference lives, allowing agencies regulatory discretion, and whether the President (or one specific ex-president) is above the law. https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-discard-chevron/
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-trump-immunity-capitol-attack-acebc079bdaa6257bfd70a90a71a2ca0
The court has a legitimacy problem. Feeling empowered and unassailable, the conservatives wing of the court is writing baseless rulings to explicitly push culture war issues and enable their own party's behavior. For the first time, less than half of the country has a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the judicial branch of the US government headed by the Supreme Court.
In case you've never heard of the Shadow Docket, which sounds spooky like something out of Yugioh, I've left the explanation I tagged two threads ago. Briefly: Shadow Docket explained.
Last thread. Not sure I have the energy to pun the title of a thread that is increasingly dire to read, but I'm always accepting suggestions.
I know it's infuriating at times, but there's a lot of high effort in the weeds discussion in here, so I hope it can continue.
A few ground rules, as previously noted:
Expectations for this thread
1. This is not the general politics or lol this party sucks thread.
2. This is a thread about the US Supreme Court, if it doesn't have anything to do with SCOTUS, it doesn't belong here.
3. Not all things about SCOTUS belong here. Some cases dealing with certain issues, already have a thread or their own gosh darn separate thread that is more appropriate to discuss a certain SCOTUS rulings or cases.
4. In the event that a tangent regarding something involving SCOTUS has it's own thread created after the discussion starts in this thread, then move the discussion over to the new thread. (Also appreciated if people link to the new thread to help others out).
5. In the event that we get a SCOTUS vacancy in the lifetime of this thread, this would probably be the best place to discuss such an appointment given how low traffic this thread is likely to be. (leaving this for posterity and lols - SIG)
5a. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett are seated. My feelings on the matter can be found here. I don't know if there's much ground for meaningful discussion in screaming into the void at the injustice of it all, or having the same multi-page arguments with the few posters who do approve of the Federalist Society Robots. Probably for the best to stick to just the facts, and discuss new things going forward.
scotusblog.com is the go to place for things relevant to what's going on.
The court has been releasing a bunch of decisions for the term recently. Still outstanding are whether or not Chevron Deference lives, allowing agencies regulatory discretion, and whether the President (or one specific ex-president) is above the law. https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-discard-chevron/
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-trump-immunity-capitol-attack-acebc079bdaa6257bfd70a90a71a2ca0
The court has a legitimacy problem. Feeling empowered and unassailable, the conservatives wing of the court is writing baseless rulings to explicitly push culture war issues and enable their own party's behavior. For the first time, less than half of the country has a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the judicial branch of the US government headed by the Supreme Court.
In case you've never heard of the Shadow Docket, which sounds spooky like something out of Yugioh, I've left the explanation I tagged two threads ago. Briefly: Shadow Docket explained.
Last thread. Not sure I have the energy to pun the title of a thread that is increasingly dire to read, but I'm always accepting suggestions.
I know it's infuriating at times, but there's a lot of high effort in the weeds discussion in here, so I hope it can continue.
+3
Posts
Cockroaches specifically.
I would hope we wouldn't impugn the character of the cockroach with a comparison to a supreme court justice. Cockroaches simply want to eat and fuck in peace. And are easier to get rid of.
I just had to argue in my head over whether to say Thomas or Alito. Damn me.
Like hissing cockroaches some people pay to keep them as pets.
-John Stuart Mill
Bed bugs would the appropriate comparison. They're resilient little shits.
They're really not unless an infestation is allowed to get to absurd levels.
The protocol for getting rid of them isn't particularly difficult. It's just time consuming and thus annoying as hell because it may take a few passes.
For the insect world I'd probably go with a severe termite/carpenter ant infestation in that the only real solution is tenting the property which is kind of the nuclear option ala a constitutional amendment. Though tenting a property is like a trillion times easier than passing an amendment.
Only because the ants don't get a vote.
I wonder if the WSJ op ed page will come running to defend their hero again? (The court continues to be noticeably silent still.) This story also puts the Trump immunity case in a very clear light, showing just how extreme and out of normal procedures it was.
Go fuck yourself Mitch. Hit dog will holler and all that.
So of course they have to pull him out of cold storage and have him give the same tired recriminations, and make claims about how this is all DOA in the Senate.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/justice-neil-gorsuch-warns-biden-careful-supreme-court-reforms-rcna165085
Full context for his quote:
Which just boggles the mind. Popular things don't need to be defended? But uh.. popular things are what the Court is currently striking down? Based on some very, very unpopular ideas.
When Kavanaugh and ACB are way less vile and political as you, you should just shut the fuck up
Again, it's the whole myth of judicial independence, that the courts need to be "insulated" so that they can make unpopular but just rulings. Which sounds great in theory, but in practice results in the judiciary ignoring how popular opinion has shifted on matters in order to force ideological rulings down the public's throat. And the reality is that the courts (like the rest of the government) derives its legitimacy and authority ultimately from "the consent of the governed", and that while there is value in some degree of independence, the courts were never meant to be completely unanswerable to anyone.
It's just that their definition of "just" is "end democracy and solidify power in the hands of the aristocracy".
Even though he's not saying hardly anything here, the word choice is descriptive. Clearly conservatives like Gorsuch see themselves as crusaders for the stepped on*, risking sitting at the cool kids table in the name of protecting us all from the big mean government! Of course what they actually are, are products of, and proxies for, the rich. Nor are these conservative justices anything close to ferociously independent. Everything they do is derived from a rotten political framework that is never questioned.
*This is real rich coming from a dude who ruled a truck driver should freeze to death in order to protect company property.
Anyways fuck that dude
To be fair they are coming for a lot of rights the other two have refused to grant.
The problem is the judiciary is not independent. It's explicitly politicized. It's very obviously not insulated at all from the political movement that appointed the conservative justices.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/05/us/politics/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-private-jet.html
Really is a nonstop well of corruption.
Honestly, it still bugs me how insular the court is when it comes to how their decisions are created, let alone debated amongst themselves.
We get a pretty full view of what congress does. Their individual itineraries are available to peruse online. Their voting schedule likewise public info. It may be delayed some but eventually we get an idea of who contributed what to their campaigns. Or did before everything secreted away into Superpacs and the like.
Same for the President. Or mostly. Trump didn't seem all that interested in keep track of that. The law is there, but it doesn't look like it was free of being gamed. Bonus points if you remember VP Dick Chaney's go around in the courts to get access to his "Energy Task-Force" guest list. Clearly improvement could be made, but openness is the default.
The SCotUS is a different matter. The public can witness, but that's been gamed to keep people out by paying others to stand in line on important days. No cameras are allowed but a certain number of journalists are given preferential treatment to get in. I think they allow recordings, but I have no idea how publicly available those are. And no behind the scenes information. This is about as closed an information system we get these days. It's bad. Very bad. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. The court, all courts, need to be far more publicly scrutinized.
The problem currently is that one side has figured out they can use the appointment process to bend the court completely away from the national consensus regardless of who theoretically should be making the appointments
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Here's the thing - "unpopular" is one of those weaselly euphemisms that can hide that positions are unpopular for good reason. We saw this with the whole Aaron Persky fiasco a decade back, where you had the legal community try to argue that softpedaling sexual assault, abuse, and rape were overall good things, and thus the recall was horrible and would harm the cause of justice (while viciously attacking a rape victim in the process.) And again, part of the problem with the Court now is that it is taking "unpopular" positions that are so because the populace likes things like checks on corporations and a clean environment, among others.
And is doing a pretty good job.
-Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch
Please eliminate three of them. I am not a crackpot.
Unpopular also means unpopular but correct though. Like judgements around the rights of persecuted minorities. Or if felons. Or the homeless. And so on.
MWO: Adamski
And while I do understand that in a professional setting it is important to be able to have off the record conversations where you may have to play devils advocate, chase an argument's tail all the way out to see what might happen, etc., this court has burned any allowances in my mind for that kind of thing as a professional courtesy Americans owe the court system. It should all be in full public view.
Jesus christ, it's a just a laundry list of pet conservative topics that I wouldn't be surprised if they were sourced directly from google searches. And nearly all of the first half of it is brain dead arguments that make sense just about as long as it takes you think about them. Did you you know 100 years ago we had way less laws? Wouldn't it be nice to go back to 1 page laws and sunday church, and sitting on the porch talking to the neighbors?? There's an extra 200 million people in the US vs a100 years ago you muppet. This is a fucking embarrassment coming from a supposed top legal mind in the field.
Pulling 5 feet of channel depth out of a working waterway is no simple feat. Especially when you can't just stick a crew of chinese immigrants on the job and who cares if a bunch of them die? And who gives a fuck about the watershed anyway? Or how changes to the channel depth will affect water flow and erosion? Going on and on about the success of the WPA is too fucking funny though, given the rest of the content.
Like this essay? is bad enough that he ethically shouldn't be sitting on single case in the future involving a regulatory body. I don't disagree legal reform is needed. But Neil Gorsuch ain't the guy for it.
There are good examples though, for instance the ASCE wind requirements are kind of ridiculous compared to the older way wind loads were calculated, and by and large, I'm not sure building owners, contractors, or engineers have gotten any real value out of the (far more detailed and hard to parse) way it's done now.
They literally made regulation through litigation the only path with repealing Chevron and also functionally eliminated the Statute of Limitations for the Administrative Procedures Act. This isn't even protesting too much, it's driving a hot dog car through the window in a hot dog suit and complaining about all the corpses slowing your commute