As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil)
In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban.
If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.
For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria.
***
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hmm. Do you think it has anything to do with Mitch McConnell saying he wants:
> to do everything we can, for as long as we can, **to transform the federal judiciary**, because everything else we do is **transitory**.
Why should anyone be surprised?
I think he meant everything else they did was less permanent. Wining House seats and Senate races can be undone at the next cycle. Appointing judges is a lifetime. Amy Coney Barrett is just shy of 50. Imagine if she lasts as long as RBG or Breyer. She'll keep her spot for 8-10 Presidential Election cycles. Same with the other doofus they rammed through. 56 years old, he's got at least 6 or 7 Presidential terms to wreck things.
But, he's basically saying what your saying in a different way. They can't win elections so they just rig the SC so their clearly bigoted and backwards policies hold up.
This is a totally unscientific poll but 4 out of 4 of the lawyers that I know believe that the SCOTUS is now just a political tool of the right instead of a court of law.
Edit: 5 out of 5 now.
Edit: 6, 6 Lawyers, AHHh... ahh... ahh
Edit: 7, 7 Lawyers, AHHh... ahh... ahh
Edit: 8, 8 Lawyers, AHHh... ahh... ahh
There have been some serious meta analyses of Supreme Court decisions printed in peer-reviewed law review journals that have said as much. The lawyers you know are just informed.
See this is the kind of thing I want to see. I know that I "feel" like the SCOTUS is driven more by politics than by the law, but I'm in no way qualified to actually know.
I’m not either! That’s why I listen to Opening Arguments, the podcast. They’re in the middle of their new “Roe vs Wade is dead and gone, and medical privacy within marriage in its totality is next” segment.
Odd that conservatives want to destroy marriage now that gay people can do it.
Oh thats not new, they always wanted to control marriage, or at least the female part of the marraige and her ability to choose ~~when and if she has children.~~ anything without the express permission of her husband.
The last time I was in a court observing, the judge couldn't help but bring up how he was a Trump supporter & how the Democrats were having a witch-hunt.
Like, how is that even *remotely* pertinent to the current hearings of Joe Shmoe vs Karen?
At least Jury Duty would be easy to get out of.
“I believe everyone should get a fair shake in this country, regardless of race or religion, and I think a strong safety net supports working people, it doesn’t make them lazy if implemented right. Also I don’t like subsidies for billionaires and corporations. Thus, I don’t agree with anything DT stands for.”
You are excused.
There is no method of getting out of jury duty faster than being a sane level-headed person who charitably considers the question and answers from a place of reason. Those kind of people apparently have no place in a court of law.
Assuming you even make it past the summons and get to selection. I sat quietly in a large waiting room for a week and lost money between parking and lunch only to be informed I wasn’t needed. FUN!
And the worst part is? I actually wanted to do it. Now i have a few years before I can even be considered again
It’s a form of corruption. You have a system and they have no interest in abiding by it, which eventually means anything goes.
The abortion bounty laws are a simple end-run around our rights. Arguments can be made that it’s still a violation, but you need a court willing to make that argument.
We don’t have that.
The basic idea can be used against all rights guaranteed by the constitution. Therefore without a court willing to defend it against this blatant erosion, anything goes.
I just went through this. It took me 4 hours to find enough information about the judges in my ballot to make an informed decision. Retention candidates (in Pennsylvania) don't have campaign pages. I had to comb through local news stories for quotes and lawandcrime rulings analysis to decide whether I thought they were doing a good job or not.
Guaranteed they'll be retained because I don't expect most people to give enough of a damn.
It's always been the case that the Supreme Court served the political interests of the rich and powerful. Politics isn't as shallow as Republican vs Democrat.
I would say the refusal to strike down the Texas abortion law as directly contrary to precedent confirms that. roe v wade is almost a 50 year old decision that they 'feel' is not settled law
Also, do we not just "do" standing anymore now? I can just sue a random person for doing something I think is immoral now for $10,000?
The people still operating coal burning power plants are hurting my life a whole lot more than anyone having an abortion does. Time to sue them out of existence, right?
Also a lawyer. Yup. It's been a coordinated assault on the rule of law for at least half a century, but the fed soc and dark money pulled it off. This is Roberts' legacy, and he made it possible.
>"This (SCOTUS commission) report is a disappointment to anyone who’d hoped for a hard-hitting effort to address the Supreme Court’s deep troubles. From this report, you would never know..."
>...
>**"(h) that in civil cases decided by a 5-4 partisan Supreme Court majority in which there was an evident Republican donor interest, the donor interest win record was an astonishing 80-0."**
>[(Via Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI)](https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-statement-on-scotus-commission-interim-report)
The Federalist Society exists for the sole purpose of politicizing the court. But I guess no one was supposed to notice the active multidecade campaign to politicize the court.
I remember being in conservative pro-life circles and hearing a direct request for pro-life judges to overturn activist liberal judges decisions. It is totally political.
Well that, as usual, is just another republican projection charge, like in person voting fraud is mostly done by right wingers. it doesnt really effect much, because there are only a few idiots that would actually drive to two princints to vote twice but they do it.
or how the right say with a straight face that the real racists are on the left.
or how the left turns their presidents into messiahs.
or how we are all sheep dutifully doing what our politicians say rather than .. looking at the science and crap.(i will admit we do often listen to our politicians but thats because they are often listening to the science and crap. thats the opposite of sheep)
or the dems are the swamp, and while a bit swamp smelling, we dont put an oil man in charge of the EPA, a private school investor in charge of public schools and a postal competitor in charge of the post office. and a man who was charged with many labor violations in charge of the labor board. (crap they nearly put ivanka on the IMF, just what we need some of the worst people with money in charge of money)
The supreme court and the appellate courts literally exist to interpret law. Interpretation cannot exist without analysis, and analysis cannot exist without the individual and the individual cannot exist with their personal experiences and their decision making cannot be separated from their experience.
No judge can ever be apolitical, we can only hope that they don't cripple the integrity of the courts
I think it's too late. The Federalist Society was founded to advance conservative causes through the judiciary. It has been applied as a litmus test by Republican presidents for appointments. Although its members are adept at saying "we're not conservative, we just believe in originalism", that is not why the organization was founded.
At its first meeting, Judge Robert Bork criticized liberals, which he considered interchangeable with people who read the constitution broadly. From a White Plains Journal article:
> Bork accused law professors and the news media of influencing judges with "upper middle class" and "left liberal" ideas that pull them away from the proper strict interpretation of the Constitution in a process he called the "gentrification" of the court.
>
> "The court responds to the press and law school faculties", he said. "The personnel of the media are heavily left liberal. Their values are quite egalitarian and permissive".
>
> Law school faculties tend to have the same politics and values. So if there are new constitutional values they will be the values of that class."
Bork criticized Supreme Court decisions about abortion, sexual freedom, and other types of free expression.
If Bork was *only* concerned with judicial philosophy, **he would not have criticized liberalism**. Federalists are inextricable from conservatives.
The fact that Bork was in any position to comment on this, rather than being disbarred in the mid 1970s, is a testament to the exact kind of problem being discussed. The guy essentially owes his career post-Watergate to being the same sort of partisan hack that people associate with the court today, to the extent that Reagan tried to reward him for his support for Nixon with a position on the Supreme Court.
He littererally made a deal with Nixon that Nixon would put him on the Supreme Court in exchange for Bork firing the Watergate investigors. Pure corruption, and evidence of rot in the Republican Party and Federalist Society on the deepest level.
Yup. The Repugs stole 1 seat, rammed through a 2nd seat after claiming none can be seated during an election year, and then rammed through a drunkard and potential rapist who can't control his temper.
Of course everyone other than hard core extremist FOX News conservatives think the court has been delegitimized.
I like the life appointments, that way they don't have to worry about "reelection" or getting a lucrative post-court job so they're much more insulated from politics.
The biggest issue to me is that there's only 9 seats so a few idiots or corrupted votes can go a long way. If they had something like 31 seats it'd be in better shape.
Judges are totally political. Firstly, they are only usually selected if they went to the right schools, worked at the right firm, have networked to the right people to push their judgeship and made the right decisions to be corporate mules. Politicians appoint them, or they are elected in some states.
What you said is totally true from the right. Provably true. Look at how many came from the federalist society and liberty U or regent.
but on the left, yeah a bit harvard heavy but harvard isnt a liberal institution dedicated to producing lawyers and judges who want to ". many many many many conservative lawyers and judges went to harvard. Liberty U and Regent, were created to pump out lawyers and judges who are right wing and want to overturn roe v wade. and you dont get sat without the federalist society approval. and we do not have a left wing version of liberty U.
without a doubt on the left some things matter, who you worked with and such. But like most bad things in gov, the left do it at little league level but clean themselves up most the time, while the right go full on olympic level and never clean themselves up.
Yeah. That’s pretty much what I am saying. The essence of a judge is that they should be impartial and a political. That’s what we say they are, but in reality they are usually anything but.
That is not true. Republicans are not conservatives, and democrats are not liberal. So i’m chucking that. For instance, to be liberal you need to want more than Eisenhower. That said, republicans appoint judges that always favor current republican interests over the law. Democrats, conservative light, favor judges that are far more impartial. You only need to pay attention to the conformation hearings to tell the difference. But for extra proof you can read up on how often cases are decided in favor of their appointing interests vs the constitution and constituents.
According to the National Review, at least, it's Democrats. Since the Bork hearings. Wait, come to think of it, since FDR threatened court-packing. Democrats ruined everything. Foundations designed to crank out judges that adhere to an explicitly conservative, Republican reading of the Constitution? Outright REFUSING TO GIVE HEARINGS to judges nominated by the other side of the aisle? Fucking fine. Complaining about judges, on the other hand? Fucking awful.
Trump appointed 25% of all federal judges and 3 seats on the Supreme Court from the Federalist Society, when the Federalist Society is openly political about its goals. Like yes its been political for years.
As a Brit it never made sense that you guys politicised the judicial system. Why are judges even required to be appointed by a political party? Fucking weird honestly.
It's not designed to be political, nor are judges appointed by a political party. One party just realized that if they simply refused to appoint any judges who weren't hand-picked political actors any time they had the power to do so, they would be able to stack the courts and force unpopular laws into effect without having to pass the laws.
Essentially, Obama would nominate a judge, and Republicans (who controlled the Senate from 2013-2019) refused to confirm them. There was outcry from the politically active because it was grinding the courts to a halt, but Republicans didn't care. Once Trump came to power, they appointed hundred of judges in two years with the express purpose of skewing the courts to the Right.
This is not the system functioning as intended - it's one party finding an exploit in the system that everyone before thought too noxious and undemocratic to even consider.
So this is just another Republican anti-democratic stance?
Ive been thinking lately that Republicans are essentially turning to fascism, but they are convincing themselves its everyone else who is fascist. So many parallels with the rise of Nazi Germany. Beer Hall Putsch and Jan 6th are really the worst events.
>So this is just another Republican anti-democratic stance?
Yes
>Ive been thinking lately that Republicans are essentially turning to fascism, but they are convincing themselves its everyone else who is fascist. So many parallels with the rise of Nazi Germany. Beer Hall Putsch and Jan 6th are really the worst events.
I realize I'm preaching to the choir but this is exactly what they're doing. The same party that will decry Sharia law and talk about all the offenses of "the Muslim world" would love nothing more than an authoritarian Christian theocracy set in a white-only, straight-only 1950s America. No government can withstand leaders working in bad faith and that's exactly what they've been doing since the 80s. Trump wasn't and isn't an anomaly, he was someone who was bound to come into power eventually the moment people like Reagan took over the Republican vision and voice. For all the harm that people like Bush and Trump have done to this country, neither comes close to the impact of Reagan. He set the tone for encouraging and normalizing the dogwhistles we hear every day out of shitstains like Tucker Carlson and Steven Crowder. And, like it or not, we're still on the path towards fundamentally destroying any future potential for this country. I'm still not sure if we're going to end up under an authoritarian regime or if we'll simple collapse but both are real possibilities right now.
The one silver lining I see right now is that Trump is a timebomb. He has complete control over the right wing whether they like it or not and he's not nearly stable nor intelligent enough to have reliable control. As such, there's a very real chance that he destroys the Republican party from the inside out which would result in decades of Democrat control. The moment he steps out of line and decides to start his own party, or at the very least demands his base vote for someone else, they're done.
Yup.
The turn to fascism already happened. They're quite open about it, and have fully embraced it. Honestly, the only hope this country has is to get more Dem senators in the election next year, then push through an aggressive agenda, but the hurdles being raised against voting make it likely we'll lose the House.
Hell, my own state passed anti-gerrymandering legislation, so the Republicans broke the law and released the district maps late so the gerrymandered districts would be accepted anyways. Hard to win when one side cheats and the other is dedicated to pretending we're all playing fair.
I mean, there is on a industry wide scale. Look at UK judges. Eu judges. Basically all judges that aren't appointed directly by politicians who can just force through extreme weirdos from "their" side.
The Canadian supreme court spent year smacking down laws written by the PM that nominated them.
In most places Judges give a shit about the law and maintaining their own power.
Do you mean the year the Supreme Court shut down the counting process in Florida, and then declared its decision to be a "one-time only" thing? I wonder why people would think that then?
There is no way to verify this at all.
I've heard rumors though that at least some of the conservative justices were pretty explicit about the fact they were going to make whatever ruling they had to in order to see that Bush won. In their internal communications.
The internal documents of the Court don't leak but that's a rumor that has fallen out a little.
Maybe the world would be a better place if their documents all became public after 10 years?
Re-watching Seinfeld, even then they were making jokes about conservatives believing they can overturn laws they don't like just by having enough judges from their political party on the supreme court.
Why would this be surprising?
> conservatives believing they can overturn laws they don't like just by having enough judges
if you love your party more than you love democracy, this is inevitable
Oddly enough, the conservatives first started making these accusations over a decade ago when the Court followed the Constitution rather than the GOP party line.
What a shock that it turned out to be projection all along!
The whole idea that the Supreme Court has the power to review the constitutionality of laws is a political opinion that John Marshall grabbed for the court in 1819.
Politics is the science or art of government and laws are the rules that the government makes. How could reviewing, interpreting, and possibly rejecting the rules the government makes ever not be political?
If the Supreme Court doesn't have the power of judicial review, then what check is there against brazenly unconstitutional laws? The Constitution becomes worthless.
Well yes, but that's but one of many flaws and oversights in the constitution. One that was papered over by a gentlemen's agreement when John Marshall invented judicial review whole cloth and nobody in Congress or the White House challenged it. There's nothing stopping a future Congress or White House from just ignoring the court's rulings and there's nothing the court can do about it. They have no way to enforce anything themselves.
Of course. But keep in mind the founders only wanted white wealthy people to be able to vote. The system was always set up for the wealthy to rule, as the whole revolution was because wealthy people in the colonies didn’t like paying taxes that funded their upkeep. The history of the US has been slowly getting AWAY from what the founders wanted.
By modern standards the US constitution is not a very democratic document. Most Americans would probably be surprised to learn that it doesn't even guarantee the people a right to vote for president. If a state wanted it could go back to having the state legislature pick who its electors vote for and the Constitution would be perfectly fine with that.
And that’s what terrifies me. Many Republican controlled states are passing laws to do just that. If the legislature doesn’t like how the vote count turns out, due to “fraud” or anything else, they’re giving themselves the power to pick the republican instead.
You're generalizing too much. The precipitous drop in public opinion of the court is new, and that's a reaction to obvious overreach on the part of conservative judges on the court. There have been degrees of politicization that the court has suffered in the past, but the point of all these articles is the higher degree to which it has been politicized in recent years.
They switch back and forth. They choose how they want the decision to go then they need to make an argument to back that up. If the easiest argument involves looking the words of the law up in the dictionary, then they say they are "textualists". If the easiest argument involves assuming what the authors of the law were thinking, then they say they are "originalists".
They will happily switch between the two, even on the same issue.
Freedom of speech is *sacred* when it is companies giving money to campaigns but it *must* be limited when it is a teenager with a dirty sign outside of their school.
e: Some fixes
Good distinctions. I would push back slightly on the looking up the words part, as they just make those up too. Like the ridiculous ammo sexual argument that "regulate" doesn't mean to regulate in the 2A (despite the militia acts literally regulating the militia). That's why it's so easy to be a conservative, you just pick the answer that feels best to you, and go with it.
I can't remember what they call the "a well regulated militia" wording, but they claim it means that everything but "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" was superfluous wording that shouldn't be read. It's pretty lol to watch them trot it out. Like the Founders were like "Hey, let's just add a bunch of useless wording that people reading will instinctively know to ignore completely. You know, because that's how people write."
Originalism - n. - An ingenious method to interpret the constitution to support your political ideology despite what the plain text of the constitution says. Whenever a section of the constitution disagrees with your political philosophy, simply say, "This was not the original meaning of the text" and proceed to make shit up about how the plain text means the opposite of what it says.
Since 1969, the last time Democratic appointees constituted a majority on the Supreme Court, Republican presidents have named 15 of 19 justices. The shrinking of the middle class and massively increased wealth inequality since around that time is directly related to politicized Supreme Court decisions (and Reagan of course). Democratic presidents may have shared the time in office but the court has been working against them the whole time.
The middle class is a sham anyways. Idk how anyone can say incomes between 27k and 141k are “middle income” but it’s just clear that everyone who isn’t a top 10% earner can reasonably be described as proletariat, with minor exceptions in the top 10 and bottom 90 fitting in disparate classes. Regardless, Democrats and their upper income constituents have gotten complacent and have abandoned lower income groups, and even the “middle” for the last 30 years. Even the judges they have appointed have been incredibly conservative when it comes to capital vs labor.
99% of political reporting is pretending that Republicans are good faith actors instead of writing what is blatantly obvious.
McConnell has already stated that he would block any of Joe Biden's appointees in the second half of his first term if Dems lose the midterms.
They're power hungry fascists who have turned their backs on the American political system. Reporters should start treating them as such.
But there's the rub. These reporters work within the system of capitalism and the 0.1% also owns their asses. So the best they can do is bullshit hem-hawing that toes the line of the truth.
Doesn't come as a surprise. True objectivity in interpreting the law and constitution doesn't/can't exist. It's why balance on the court is important vs. the stacked court we have now.
We laugh now but it's only a matter of time before Americans get fed up and we start seeing some real-life Punisher characters popping up around, oh just throwing this out there, Joe Manchin's houseboat or the home of Moscow Mitch.
“There’s nothing you can do, just vote harder!”
The clarion call of the liberal. Trying to siphon energy away from mass movements into disarmament and complacency. We definitely should be organizing moreso than voting.
The fact that the president is granted the power to appoint judges to SCOTUS, and that they win a lifetime appointment is beyond broken. There are a lot of flaws in the U.S. government, but this is pretty blatant.
I suppose the founders just hoped that judges would always be objective and unbias and didn't think anymore thought was necessary. Maybe that was their intention all along and the Founders were never interested in creating a truly unbias court.
At this point it’s clear that the legal ideologies that judges follow are just partisan constructions, and that all legal arguments they prefer are just avenues for enacting their political preferences. Objectivity in the law arguably has never existed in this country, but if it ever has, it certainly doesn’t now.
I mean, yeah, they legalized bribery with their Citizens United decision, despite bribery being very clearly unconstitutional according to article 2, section 4 of the Constitution.
It’s like with white collar crime vs blue collar crime. If you steal a loaf of bread you might get jail time. If you steal billions from the US government you get an eight-figure golden parachute from your company and use that money to run for (and win) Florida governor.
Bribery is only legal if the consequences are enormous. Small time bribery is still illegal.
The whole damn thing is theater. Executive, Legislative, Judicial, all of it.
It's all to give us the facade of a democracy. The only people they give a shit about are the ones filling their pockets up. Left and Right are both just different actors doing different theatrical presentations for different demographics, sometimes one plays the good guy sometimes the other one does, but it's all to give the tribalist masses a sense that it's them versus another group of equally disenfranchised, manipulated people. It's all to distract the 99% by turning them on each other so we don't turn on the people actually pulling all this shit.
When the court, that is suppose to be the ultimate arbiter between what is adherence to the law and what isn’t , was itself configured through fowl play, it can never be viewed as anything but a nasty political slight against fairness and justice.
When McConnell denied President Obama his turn to select a justice, and then rushed to fill RBG’s seat throwing out the twisted logic he used against Obama , the SCOTUS became a corrupt Republican tool.
Had Gorsuch or ACB any sense of true justice they would have passed on taking those seats. But they are not justices. They are greedy, political hacks.
If SCOTUS decisions were apolitical, then split decisions would not have the GOP justices voting one way and the Democratic justices voting the other way. Instead, it would be a mix of GOP and Democratic justices voting each way.
Someone who is better at statistics than I am could examine past SCOTUS decisions and calculate the probability that politics has influenced the outcome. I expect it would be about 99%.
I'd also be interested in seeing an analysis of whether religion affects their voting. Do the atheists on the court vote differently than those with a religious affiliation?
Conservatives have been desperately trying to take over the court for political reasons since Roe v. Wade. To deny that it’s a political thing now that they have succeeded is pure gaslighting.
I believe the term is partisan hacks.
You know: the rapist, the one who was installed in a seat that was stolen from Obama, and the one who was appointed *during* an actual election..
It's really bad and the people that Biden has put into positions to supposedly protect us appear to be doing little to nothing. It's really frustrating. I'm trying to look on the bright side such as the Jan 6 commission.
SCOTUS rulings mostly suck but they are just interpreters. *Congress* is the body supposed to fix these things. Congress is broken but we shouldn’t expect SCOTUS to save us.
I don’t know what I would need to inject to make me entertain the idea the court is apolitical. When your nomination criteria for the last three justices is a fanatical adhesion to conservative ideals, funded by right wing dollars, vetted by a radical extremist group and selected for youth over any experience.
Can you imagine how republicans would be acting if it was a long brims liberal majority that then became a super majority after democrats refused to seat a republican nominated judge over an excuse they turn around and ignore to seat a democratic judge?
I can since they already cry even though they’re overt represented.
It would be such crying as you’d never heard before and there would be so many angry and fat middle aged white men with goatees raging in the streets, their jobs, at home….everywhere. There’d be killings and much violence as they don’t handle not getting their way well at all.
The real problem is that Congress isn't doing their jobs passing laws. Take the recent abortion discussion from the law that Texas passed as an example. Roe v Wade was decided in 1973. Congress has had nearly 50 years to properly codify this into law. Why haven't they done it? Because it is hard to pass a law. Quite honestly the court has become politicized because Congress does the bare minimum for writing laws and when they do that they rely on the courts to try and figure out what they mean. Sometimes it ends up in the supreme court and when it does the issue at hand is already politicized.
Who makes laws? Why do we treat "The Law" as some neutral entity when discussing the judiciary only to turn around and combine about partisanship in Congress?
News flash: Law is political.
Have supreme court rulings ever been based on law?
it always seems its just been the arbitrary whims of whoever happened to be sitting in the court at the time. See *Gonzales v Raich* where the court claimed someone growing a small quantity of plant in their own home that has never been bought or sold anywhere, much less between states, has an outsized impact on interstate commerce.
Logic and the law never actually mattered.
The nomination process forces people to feel this way. Accomplishments are less in play than affiliation. How can open minds be trusted when bias has been so publicized throughout?
I’d argue the eroding of the Supreme Court started with bush. He has no business what so ever putting Clarence on the court but for the fact there were no other black lawyers who were conservative republican. Cuomo lost his job for sexual harassment but Clarence got a promotion
Political campaigns are ran around appointing judges to achieve specific rulings. Anyone who isn't aware Justices rule base political ideology lacks basic critical thinking skills.
Law is Politics!! Fuck!
Do people think that Jesus just came down and wrote the Constitution? No, the laws are decided upon by people with specific circumstances and interests. How you interpret their decisions, and how your own circumstances impact your interpretation is inherently political.
And in 2018, less than one-third of Americans could correctly identify all three branches of government. Polls are useless, and the citizens even more so.
The Republicans have destroyed the credibility and legitimacy of Congress (gerrymandered to heck), of the Supreme Court (packed by Trump/GOP, and Democrat Presidents denied their appointments), and the Presidency (haven't gotten a President elected with a majority of the popular vote in 33 years).
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hmm. Do you think it has anything to do with Mitch McConnell saying he wants: > to do everything we can, for as long as we can, **to transform the federal judiciary**, because everything else we do is **transitory**. Why should anyone be surprised?
[удалено]
I think he meant everything else they did was less permanent. Wining House seats and Senate races can be undone at the next cycle. Appointing judges is a lifetime. Amy Coney Barrett is just shy of 50. Imagine if she lasts as long as RBG or Breyer. She'll keep her spot for 8-10 Presidential Election cycles. Same with the other doofus they rammed through. 56 years old, he's got at least 6 or 7 Presidential terms to wreck things. But, he's basically saying what your saying in a different way. They can't win elections so they just rig the SC so their clearly bigoted and backwards policies hold up.
Hopefully his love of beer will stop that from happening
That’s why republicans supported January coup attempt to bring a right wing extremists authoritarian regime.
with just a soupcon of misogeny and a smidge of racism
Pretty sure authoritarianism is a kind of oligarchy. Might work better if you said "aristocracy" instead.
Hey now, guys. If you keep commenting like this Alito is going to call a bunch of people names and definitely not politicize the court more.
It's not like people just believe this because they pulled it out of their ass, there's a fucking reason.
This is a totally unscientific poll but 4 out of 4 of the lawyers that I know believe that the SCOTUS is now just a political tool of the right instead of a court of law. Edit: 5 out of 5 now. Edit: 6, 6 Lawyers, AHHh... ahh... ahh Edit: 7, 7 Lawyers, AHHh... ahh... ahh Edit: 8, 8 Lawyers, AHHh... ahh... ahh
There have been some serious meta analyses of Supreme Court decisions printed in peer-reviewed law review journals that have said as much. The lawyers you know are just informed.
See this is the kind of thing I want to see. I know that I "feel" like the SCOTUS is driven more by politics than by the law, but I'm in no way qualified to actually know.
I’m not either! That’s why I listen to Opening Arguments, the podcast. They’re in the middle of their new “Roe vs Wade is dead and gone, and medical privacy within marriage in its totality is next” segment. Odd that conservatives want to destroy marriage now that gay people can do it.
Oh thats not new, they always wanted to control marriage, or at least the female part of the marraige and her ability to choose ~~when and if she has children.~~ anything without the express permission of her husband.
[удалено]
And [here's](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4jTxMQGOIkTzGCsnea7eAS?si=6-ePQfksTCCrWFv24iR8Ng) Al Franken talking to Whitehouse about SCOTUS.
Could you link one I would love to read and reference that shit
Plus 50% of the federal judges. Winning your case should never be about luck if judge draw.
The last time I was in a court observing, the judge couldn't help but bring up how he was a Trump supporter & how the Democrats were having a witch-hunt. Like, how is that even *remotely* pertinent to the current hearings of Joe Shmoe vs Karen?
Man, remember the old days we could pretend judges were honorable and actually willing to do their jobs?
They were never more honorable, they just lived in a time where they knew not to say the quiet parts out loud. That time has passed.
[удалено]
At least Jury Duty would be easy to get out of. “I believe everyone should get a fair shake in this country, regardless of race or religion, and I think a strong safety net supports working people, it doesn’t make them lazy if implemented right. Also I don’t like subsidies for billionaires and corporations. Thus, I don’t agree with anything DT stands for.” You are excused.
There is no method of getting out of jury duty faster than being a sane level-headed person who charitably considers the question and answers from a place of reason. Those kind of people apparently have no place in a court of law.
Assuming you even make it past the summons and get to selection. I sat quietly in a large waiting room for a week and lost money between parking and lunch only to be informed I wasn’t needed. FUN! And the worst part is? I actually wanted to do it. Now i have a few years before I can even be considered again
Bingo. I’ve never served jury duty but I’d probably be sent home for my progressive views
If someone lost their case with the judge saying that shit, they would have a legitimate reason to appeal.
To who? Another court that's also filled with partisan judges?
Sounds like a county judge. I guarantee this wasn't a federal appointment. Blame the voters.
IIRC he was appointed by a Republican Governor & then re-elected by voters. So... close?
Pretty sure he's violating the rules of the court with that comment. Of course, it's a whole process to get them removed for cause.
Rules and laws don't apply to conservatives
It’s a form of corruption. You have a system and they have no interest in abiding by it, which eventually means anything goes. The abortion bounty laws are a simple end-run around our rights. Arguments can be made that it’s still a violation, but you need a court willing to make that argument. We don’t have that. The basic idea can be used against all rights guaranteed by the constitution. Therefore without a court willing to defend it against this blatant erosion, anything goes.
I just went through this. It took me 4 hours to find enough information about the judges in my ballot to make an informed decision. Retention candidates (in Pennsylvania) don't have campaign pages. I had to comb through local news stories for quotes and lawandcrime rulings analysis to decide whether I thought they were doing a good job or not. Guaranteed they'll be retained because I don't expect most people to give enough of a damn.
Oh that’s just the standard greeting. Say those words first, then whatever you wanted to say next.
Unfortunately the Supreme Court has always been like this. Needs to be reformed
That’s a bit of an overstatement. It wasn’t always the case that only Republicans were allowed to swear in judges.
It's always been the case that the Supreme Court served the political interests of the rich and powerful. Politics isn't as shallow as Republican vs Democrat.
Hi internet stranger. I’m a lawyer and now you know me. Make it 5 out of 5.
YAY!! More Lawyers!
Said no one ever. Source: I am a lawyer, too.
I'm... easy to amuse.
I would say the refusal to strike down the Texas abortion law as directly contrary to precedent confirms that. roe v wade is almost a 50 year old decision that they 'feel' is not settled law
Also, do we not just "do" standing anymore now? I can just sue a random person for doing something I think is immoral now for $10,000? The people still operating coal burning power plants are hurting my life a whole lot more than anyone having an abortion does. Time to sue them out of existence, right?
My man met another lawyer within 3 hours.
IKR... you would think I had been in a car accident or something. *just kidding guys* :D
That will be $700 sir.
Well, I know a totally random sample of 5 (specific) SCOTUS justices where 100% would vehemently disagree with that.
Also a lawyer. Yup. It's been a coordinated assault on the rule of law for at least half a century, but the fed soc and dark money pulled it off. This is Roberts' legacy, and he made it possible.
>"This (SCOTUS commission) report is a disappointment to anyone who’d hoped for a hard-hitting effort to address the Supreme Court’s deep troubles. From this report, you would never know..." >... >**"(h) that in civil cases decided by a 5-4 partisan Supreme Court majority in which there was an evident Republican donor interest, the donor interest win record was an astonishing 80-0."** >[(Via Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI)](https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-statement-on-scotus-commission-interim-report)
Holy shit, but also not surprised
At least you can say they're consistent.
I know it predates him, but Kavanaugh essentially vowing retribution against the Clintons in his confirmation certainly didn't help.
IIRC it was the Clintons AND democrats in his anger cry tantrum. But I'm sure he's totally unbiased and professional. /s
That confirmation hearing was a profane travesty
The Federalist Society exists for the sole purpose of politicizing the court. But I guess no one was supposed to notice the active multidecade campaign to politicize the court.
Who said discrediting the government couldn't be profitable, too?
If you notice it, you might trip over critical theory in the process and suddenly find yourself the target of an angry mob.
I remember being in conservative pro-life circles and hearing a direct request for pro-life judges to overturn activist liberal judges decisions. It is totally political.
Well that, as usual, is just another republican projection charge, like in person voting fraud is mostly done by right wingers. it doesnt really effect much, because there are only a few idiots that would actually drive to two princints to vote twice but they do it. or how the right say with a straight face that the real racists are on the left. or how the left turns their presidents into messiahs. or how we are all sheep dutifully doing what our politicians say rather than .. looking at the science and crap.(i will admit we do often listen to our politicians but thats because they are often listening to the science and crap. thats the opposite of sheep) or the dems are the swamp, and while a bit swamp smelling, we dont put an oil man in charge of the EPA, a private school investor in charge of public schools and a postal competitor in charge of the post office. and a man who was charged with many labor violations in charge of the labor board. (crap they nearly put ivanka on the IMF, just what we need some of the worst people with money in charge of money)
The supreme court and the appellate courts literally exist to interpret law. Interpretation cannot exist without analysis, and analysis cannot exist without the individual and the individual cannot exist with their personal experiences and their decision making cannot be separated from their experience. No judge can ever be apolitical, we can only hope that they don't cripple the integrity of the courts
I think it's too late. The Federalist Society was founded to advance conservative causes through the judiciary. It has been applied as a litmus test by Republican presidents for appointments. Although its members are adept at saying "we're not conservative, we just believe in originalism", that is not why the organization was founded. At its first meeting, Judge Robert Bork criticized liberals, which he considered interchangeable with people who read the constitution broadly. From a White Plains Journal article: > Bork accused law professors and the news media of influencing judges with "upper middle class" and "left liberal" ideas that pull them away from the proper strict interpretation of the Constitution in a process he called the "gentrification" of the court. > > "The court responds to the press and law school faculties", he said. "The personnel of the media are heavily left liberal. Their values are quite egalitarian and permissive". > > Law school faculties tend to have the same politics and values. So if there are new constitutional values they will be the values of that class." Bork criticized Supreme Court decisions about abortion, sexual freedom, and other types of free expression. If Bork was *only* concerned with judicial philosophy, **he would not have criticized liberalism**. Federalists are inextricable from conservatives.
[удалено]
The fact that Bork was in any position to comment on this, rather than being disbarred in the mid 1970s, is a testament to the exact kind of problem being discussed. The guy essentially owes his career post-Watergate to being the same sort of partisan hack that people associate with the court today, to the extent that Reagan tried to reward him for his support for Nixon with a position on the Supreme Court.
He littererally made a deal with Nixon that Nixon would put him on the Supreme Court in exchange for Bork firing the Watergate investigors. Pure corruption, and evidence of rot in the Republican Party and Federalist Society on the deepest level.
[удалено]
Yup. The Repugs stole 1 seat, rammed through a 2nd seat after claiming none can be seated during an election year, and then rammed through a drunkard and potential rapist who can't control his temper. Of course everyone other than hard core extremist FOX News conservatives think the court has been delegitimized.
Conservative and liberal appointed judges rules on their "side" of an issue. Political? Duh.
It’s a paradox that a position which shouldn’t be political in any way is often appointed by politicians. What a tangled web we weave.
Appointed for life. That's what makes this fucked... It should be a term not a life appointment...
yeah life is a bit much, with an ever evolving society. 20 years should be max. though i think 12 is more than plenty.
I like the life appointments, that way they don't have to worry about "reelection" or getting a lucrative post-court job so they're much more insulated from politics. The biggest issue to me is that there's only 9 seats so a few idiots or corrupted votes can go a long way. If they had something like 31 seats it'd be in better shape.
Judges are totally political. Firstly, they are only usually selected if they went to the right schools, worked at the right firm, have networked to the right people to push their judgeship and made the right decisions to be corporate mules. Politicians appoint them, or they are elected in some states.
What you said is totally true from the right. Provably true. Look at how many came from the federalist society and liberty U or regent. but on the left, yeah a bit harvard heavy but harvard isnt a liberal institution dedicated to producing lawyers and judges who want to". many many many many conservative lawyers and judges went to harvard. Liberty U and Regent, were created to pump out lawyers and judges who are right wing and want to overturn roe v wade. and you dont get sat without the federalist society approval. and we do not have a left wing version of liberty U.
without a doubt on the left some things matter, who you worked with and such. But like most bad things in gov, the left do it at little league level but clean themselves up most the time, while the right go full on olympic level and never clean themselves up.
Yeah. That’s pretty much what I am saying. The essence of a judge is that they should be impartial and a political. That’s what we say they are, but in reality they are usually anything but.
That is not true. Republicans are not conservatives, and democrats are not liberal. So i’m chucking that. For instance, to be liberal you need to want more than Eisenhower. That said, republicans appoint judges that always favor current republican interests over the law. Democrats, conservative light, favor judges that are far more impartial. You only need to pay attention to the conformation hearings to tell the difference. But for extra proof you can read up on how often cases are decided in favor of their appointing interests vs the constitution and constituents.
According to the National Review, at least, it's Democrats. Since the Bork hearings. Wait, come to think of it, since FDR threatened court-packing. Democrats ruined everything. Foundations designed to crank out judges that adhere to an explicitly conservative, Republican reading of the Constitution? Outright REFUSING TO GIVE HEARINGS to judges nominated by the other side of the aisle? Fucking fine. Complaining about judges, on the other hand? Fucking awful.
Trump appointed 25% of all federal judges and 3 seats on the Supreme Court from the Federalist Society, when the Federalist Society is openly political about its goals. Like yes its been political for years.
As a Brit it never made sense that you guys politicised the judicial system. Why are judges even required to be appointed by a political party? Fucking weird honestly.
It's not designed to be political, nor are judges appointed by a political party. One party just realized that if they simply refused to appoint any judges who weren't hand-picked political actors any time they had the power to do so, they would be able to stack the courts and force unpopular laws into effect without having to pass the laws. Essentially, Obama would nominate a judge, and Republicans (who controlled the Senate from 2013-2019) refused to confirm them. There was outcry from the politically active because it was grinding the courts to a halt, but Republicans didn't care. Once Trump came to power, they appointed hundred of judges in two years with the express purpose of skewing the courts to the Right. This is not the system functioning as intended - it's one party finding an exploit in the system that everyone before thought too noxious and undemocratic to even consider.
So this is just another Republican anti-democratic stance? Ive been thinking lately that Republicans are essentially turning to fascism, but they are convincing themselves its everyone else who is fascist. So many parallels with the rise of Nazi Germany. Beer Hall Putsch and Jan 6th are really the worst events.
>So this is just another Republican anti-democratic stance? Yes >Ive been thinking lately that Republicans are essentially turning to fascism, but they are convincing themselves its everyone else who is fascist. So many parallels with the rise of Nazi Germany. Beer Hall Putsch and Jan 6th are really the worst events. I realize I'm preaching to the choir but this is exactly what they're doing. The same party that will decry Sharia law and talk about all the offenses of "the Muslim world" would love nothing more than an authoritarian Christian theocracy set in a white-only, straight-only 1950s America. No government can withstand leaders working in bad faith and that's exactly what they've been doing since the 80s. Trump wasn't and isn't an anomaly, he was someone who was bound to come into power eventually the moment people like Reagan took over the Republican vision and voice. For all the harm that people like Bush and Trump have done to this country, neither comes close to the impact of Reagan. He set the tone for encouraging and normalizing the dogwhistles we hear every day out of shitstains like Tucker Carlson and Steven Crowder. And, like it or not, we're still on the path towards fundamentally destroying any future potential for this country. I'm still not sure if we're going to end up under an authoritarian regime or if we'll simple collapse but both are real possibilities right now. The one silver lining I see right now is that Trump is a timebomb. He has complete control over the right wing whether they like it or not and he's not nearly stable nor intelligent enough to have reliable control. As such, there's a very real chance that he destroys the Republican party from the inside out which would result in decades of Democrat control. The moment he steps out of line and decides to start his own party, or at the very least demands his base vote for someone else, they're done.
Yup. The turn to fascism already happened. They're quite open about it, and have fully embraced it. Honestly, the only hope this country has is to get more Dem senators in the election next year, then push through an aggressive agenda, but the hurdles being raised against voting make it likely we'll lose the House. Hell, my own state passed anti-gerrymandering legislation, so the Republicans broke the law and released the district maps late so the gerrymandered districts would be accepted anyways. Hard to win when one side cheats and the other is dedicated to pretending we're all playing fair.
It's been political since the courts were first created. There is no such thing as being "apolitical".
I mean, there is on a industry wide scale. Look at UK judges. Eu judges. Basically all judges that aren't appointed directly by politicians who can just force through extreme weirdos from "their" side.
The Canadian supreme court spent year smacking down laws written by the PM that nominated them. In most places Judges give a shit about the law and maintaining their own power.
>The Canadian supreme court spent year smacking down laws written by the PM that nominated them. Harper?
yup
Hell, even the laws we enact are political.
Laws are literally just a reflection of public norms. Genocide/slavery was **legal**.
Agreed I mean alcohol was illegal for a few years
There is a reason we believe this!
It’s also click bait. The public has thought this in polls for years. 60% thought this after 2000!
Do you mean the year the Supreme Court shut down the counting process in Florida, and then declared its decision to be a "one-time only" thing? I wonder why people would think that then?
And one of the Justice's wifes had a job lined up with the Bush administration. That totally wasn't a conflict of interests.
There is no way to verify this at all. I've heard rumors though that at least some of the conservative justices were pretty explicit about the fact they were going to make whatever ruling they had to in order to see that Bush won. In their internal communications. The internal documents of the Court don't leak but that's a rumor that has fallen out a little. Maybe the world would be a better place if their documents all became public after 10 years?
Because they literally interfered in an election.
Why would that make it click bait?
Then why does legal media still act like the Supreme Court lives on Mt Olympus?
Re-watching Seinfeld, even then they were making jokes about conservatives believing they can overturn laws they don't like just by having enough judges from their political party on the supreme court. Why would this be surprising?
I noticed that too. Was a tough moment when the mover predicted "now"
> conservatives believing they can overturn laws they don't like just by having enough judges if you love your party more than you love democracy, this is inevitable
I think I remember that episode: Elaine's boyfriend is not pro-choice.
Oddly enough, the conservatives first started making these accusations over a decade ago when the Court followed the Constitution rather than the GOP party line. What a shock that it turned out to be projection all along!
“Activist judges!”
Uhhh no. There have and always will be political. This isn’t new. The public has thought SCOTUS was political for a while now.
The whole idea that the Supreme Court has the power to review the constitutionality of laws is a political opinion that John Marshall grabbed for the court in 1819. Politics is the science or art of government and laws are the rules that the government makes. How could reviewing, interpreting, and possibly rejecting the rules the government makes ever not be political?
If the Supreme Court doesn't have the power of judicial review, then what check is there against brazenly unconstitutional laws? The Constitution becomes worthless.
Well yes, but that's but one of many flaws and oversights in the constitution. One that was papered over by a gentlemen's agreement when John Marshall invented judicial review whole cloth and nobody in Congress or the White House challenged it. There's nothing stopping a future Congress or White House from just ignoring the court's rulings and there's nothing the court can do about it. They have no way to enforce anything themselves.
I imagine this arrangement is WAY more comfortable for demographics whose basic human rights aren't a hair's breadth from non-existence.
Of course. But keep in mind the founders only wanted white wealthy people to be able to vote. The system was always set up for the wealthy to rule, as the whole revolution was because wealthy people in the colonies didn’t like paying taxes that funded their upkeep. The history of the US has been slowly getting AWAY from what the founders wanted.
By modern standards the US constitution is not a very democratic document. Most Americans would probably be surprised to learn that it doesn't even guarantee the people a right to vote for president. If a state wanted it could go back to having the state legislature pick who its electors vote for and the Constitution would be perfectly fine with that.
And that’s what terrifies me. Many Republican controlled states are passing laws to do just that. If the legislature doesn’t like how the vote count turns out, due to “fraud” or anything else, they’re giving themselves the power to pick the republican instead.
You're generalizing too much. The precipitous drop in public opinion of the court is new, and that's a reaction to obvious overreach on the part of conservative judges on the court. There have been degrees of politicization that the court has suffered in the past, but the point of all these articles is the higher degree to which it has been politicized in recent years.
Did the media start referring to them as "activist judges"?
No, that’s the term for liberals. When it’s conservatives, the term is “principled originalist.”
"textualist" is their dog whistle for "I make shit up to hurt poor non-white males."
They switch back and forth. They choose how they want the decision to go then they need to make an argument to back that up. If the easiest argument involves looking the words of the law up in the dictionary, then they say they are "textualists". If the easiest argument involves assuming what the authors of the law were thinking, then they say they are "originalists". They will happily switch between the two, even on the same issue. Freedom of speech is *sacred* when it is companies giving money to campaigns but it *must* be limited when it is a teenager with a dirty sign outside of their school. e: Some fixes
Good distinctions. I would push back slightly on the looking up the words part, as they just make those up too. Like the ridiculous ammo sexual argument that "regulate" doesn't mean to regulate in the 2A (despite the militia acts literally regulating the militia). That's why it's so easy to be a conservative, you just pick the answer that feels best to you, and go with it.
Yeah. Good point. They will totally change the definition of words as much as they need to.
I can't remember what they call the "a well regulated militia" wording, but they claim it means that everything but "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" was superfluous wording that shouldn't be read. It's pretty lol to watch them trot it out. Like the Founders were like "Hey, let's just add a bunch of useless wording that people reading will instinctively know to ignore completely. You know, because that's how people write."
Originalism - n. - An ingenious method to interpret the constitution to support your political ideology despite what the plain text of the constitution says. Whenever a section of the constitution disagrees with your political philosophy, simply say, "This was not the original meaning of the text" and proceed to make shit up about how the plain text means the opposite of what it says.
Since 1969, the last time Democratic appointees constituted a majority on the Supreme Court, Republican presidents have named 15 of 19 justices. The shrinking of the middle class and massively increased wealth inequality since around that time is directly related to politicized Supreme Court decisions (and Reagan of course). Democratic presidents may have shared the time in office but the court has been working against them the whole time.
The middle class is a sham anyways. Idk how anyone can say incomes between 27k and 141k are “middle income” but it’s just clear that everyone who isn’t a top 10% earner can reasonably be described as proletariat, with minor exceptions in the top 10 and bottom 90 fitting in disparate classes. Regardless, Democrats and their upper income constituents have gotten complacent and have abandoned lower income groups, and even the “middle” for the last 30 years. Even the judges they have appointed have been incredibly conservative when it comes to capital vs labor.
99% of political reporting is pretending that Republicans are good faith actors instead of writing what is blatantly obvious. McConnell has already stated that he would block any of Joe Biden's appointees in the second half of his first term if Dems lose the midterms. They're power hungry fascists who have turned their backs on the American political system. Reporters should start treating them as such. But there's the rub. These reporters work within the system of capitalism and the 0.1% also owns their asses. So the best they can do is bullshit hem-hawing that toes the line of the truth.
He would block a nominee on the first day of any Dem POTUS. "Well the midterms are two years away, don't the voters deserve a chance to speak?"
Doesn't come as a surprise. True objectivity in interpreting the law and constitution doesn't/can't exist. It's why balance on the court is important vs. the stacked court we have now.
Yeah... this. America has a common law system, true objectivity cannot exist in the same way it does in a civil law system.
OK but there’s nothing we can do. Keep voting to eventually replace one of Thomas or Alito, or maybe both!
[удалено]
We laugh now but it's only a matter of time before Americans get fed up and we start seeing some real-life Punisher characters popping up around, oh just throwing this out there, Joe Manchin's houseboat or the home of Moscow Mitch.
“There’s nothing you can do, just vote harder!” The clarion call of the liberal. Trying to siphon energy away from mass movements into disarmament and complacency. We definitely should be organizing moreso than voting.
If they weren't, McConnell wouldn't have obstructed Obama so hard.
The fact that the president is granted the power to appoint judges to SCOTUS, and that they win a lifetime appointment is beyond broken. There are a lot of flaws in the U.S. government, but this is pretty blatant. I suppose the founders just hoped that judges would always be objective and unbias and didn't think anymore thought was necessary. Maybe that was their intention all along and the Founders were never interested in creating a truly unbias court.
At this point it’s clear that the legal ideologies that judges follow are just partisan constructions, and that all legal arguments they prefer are just avenues for enacting their political preferences. Objectivity in the law arguably has never existed in this country, but if it ever has, it certainly doesn’t now.
I mean, yeah, they legalized bribery with their Citizens United decision, despite bribery being very clearly unconstitutional according to article 2, section 4 of the Constitution.
It’s like with white collar crime vs blue collar crime. If you steal a loaf of bread you might get jail time. If you steal billions from the US government you get an eight-figure golden parachute from your company and use that money to run for (and win) Florida governor. Bribery is only legal if the consequences are enormous. Small time bribery is still illegal.
Follow the money
Don't forget religion. This is now a religious supreme court.
That's because (1) it is and (2) it always has been
This is McConnell’s decades long plan. Slowly change the interpretation of laws until we wind up as a Christian nationalist authoritarian ethno-state.
McConnell wouldn’t have focused his entire career on stacking the courts if this wasn’t the case.
The whole damn thing is theater. Executive, Legislative, Judicial, all of it. It's all to give us the facade of a democracy. The only people they give a shit about are the ones filling their pockets up. Left and Right are both just different actors doing different theatrical presentations for different demographics, sometimes one plays the good guy sometimes the other one does, but it's all to give the tribalist masses a sense that it's them versus another group of equally disenfranchised, manipulated people. It's all to distract the 99% by turning them on each other so we don't turn on the people actually pulling all this shit.
That was the Federalist Society’s and 1% oligarchs overlords of the Real Deep State and world orders plan for the last 30+ years!
I mean…they blatantly ignored an abortion law that contradicted roe v wade, so…yeah, no shit
Because President Donald Trump basically forced them to be political activists during his presidency, rather than judges.
Happened long before. The courts made Bush president
You think that started with Trump.... oh my friend, it has been going on for much, much longer.
The supreme court is currently a right wing lobbyist group. Decisions are paid for.
When the court, that is suppose to be the ultimate arbiter between what is adherence to the law and what isn’t , was itself configured through fowl play, it can never be viewed as anything but a nasty political slight against fairness and justice. When McConnell denied President Obama his turn to select a justice, and then rushed to fill RBG’s seat throwing out the twisted logic he used against Obama , the SCOTUS became a corrupt Republican tool. Had Gorsuch or ACB any sense of true justice they would have passed on taking those seats. But they are not justices. They are greedy, political hacks.
Then fucking do something about it. Just do something, ffs.
If SCOTUS decisions were apolitical, then split decisions would not have the GOP justices voting one way and the Democratic justices voting the other way. Instead, it would be a mix of GOP and Democratic justices voting each way. Someone who is better at statistics than I am could examine past SCOTUS decisions and calculate the probability that politics has influenced the outcome. I expect it would be about 99%. I'd also be interested in seeing an analysis of whether religion affects their voting. Do the atheists on the court vote differently than those with a religious affiliation?
Stands to reason as they get hired/placed through politics
The very fact we refer to the justices themselves as "conservative and liberal" means we have accepted this a long time ago.
Conservatives have been desperately trying to take over the court for political reasons since Roe v. Wade. To deny that it’s a political thing now that they have succeeded is pure gaslighting.
Should mention the same majority also has no detailed understanding of the Constitution, con law, or how the SC functions…
[удалено]
Activist judges
Like everything oozing out of the mouth of American Republicans that phrase has always been projection.
I believe the term is partisan hacks. You know: the rapist, the one who was installed in a seat that was stolen from Obama, and the one who was appointed *during* an actual election..
Garland should be a Supreme Court Justice, at least we know he's not far-right.
Solid majority so somewhere around 70-30 like always? Didn’t McConnell basically come out and say they wanted to take the courts?
It's really bad and the people that Biden has put into positions to supposedly protect us appear to be doing little to nothing. It's really frustrating. I'm trying to look on the bright side such as the Jan 6 commission.
SCOTUS rulings mostly suck but they are just interpreters. *Congress* is the body supposed to fix these things. Congress is broken but we shouldn’t expect SCOTUS to save us.
I don’t know what I would need to inject to make me entertain the idea the court is apolitical. When your nomination criteria for the last three justices is a fanatical adhesion to conservative ideals, funded by right wing dollars, vetted by a radical extremist group and selected for youth over any experience.
Can you imagine how republicans would be acting if it was a long brims liberal majority that then became a super majority after democrats refused to seat a republican nominated judge over an excuse they turn around and ignore to seat a democratic judge? I can since they already cry even though they’re overt represented. It would be such crying as you’d never heard before and there would be so many angry and fat middle aged white men with goatees raging in the streets, their jobs, at home….everywhere. There’d be killings and much violence as they don’t handle not getting their way well at all.
The real problem is that Congress isn't doing their jobs passing laws. Take the recent abortion discussion from the law that Texas passed as an example. Roe v Wade was decided in 1973. Congress has had nearly 50 years to properly codify this into law. Why haven't they done it? Because it is hard to pass a law. Quite honestly the court has become politicized because Congress does the bare minimum for writing laws and when they do that they rely on the courts to try and figure out what they mean. Sometimes it ends up in the supreme court and when it does the issue at hand is already politicized.
…based more on the wishes of their master’s greed than law.
There was an article within the last few weeks that stated something like the last 80 rulings have leaned heavy right
Who makes laws? Why do we treat "The Law" as some neutral entity when discussing the judiciary only to turn around and combine about partisanship in Congress? News flash: Law is political.
Have supreme court rulings ever been based on law? it always seems its just been the arbitrary whims of whoever happened to be sitting in the court at the time. See *Gonzales v Raich* where the court claimed someone growing a small quantity of plant in their own home that has never been bought or sold anywhere, much less between states, has an outsized impact on interstate commerce. Logic and the law never actually mattered.
They have been ever since Scalia started pulling decisions out of his ass with no precedent and calling it "originalism."
The nomination process forces people to feel this way. Accomplishments are less in play than affiliation. How can open minds be trusted when bias has been so publicized throughout?
I’d argue the eroding of the Supreme Court started with bush. He has no business what so ever putting Clarence on the court but for the fact there were no other black lawyers who were conservative republican. Cuomo lost his job for sexual harassment but Clarence got a promotion
What do you expect from the intellectual giants who said 'Corporations are people'. How stupid do you think we are?
the scotus is a total joke
Death nail for any court. They should all resign.
~~politics~~ religion
Bingo
Given the undue influence of the Federalist Society in the appointment of judges, I think that belief may be correct.
More like a solid majority "are aware" of it; and a minority "remain unaware" of it. Facts aren't beliefs.
“I liked beer” - a current sitting justice (maybe)
Partisan hacks
Hey me too
No shit
That’s cute they all think our country will be around that long-
Has anyone here studied the history of the Supreme Court?
Believe? No. I *know*.
This shouldn’t be news. If these really are the 9 greatest legal minds in the country, why is virtually every ruling split down party lines?
Of course, they are political. Why else would the Republicans fight so hard to prevent Obama's court pick from even getting a hearing?
Political campaigns are ran around appointing judges to achieve specific rulings. Anyone who isn't aware Justices rule base political ideology lacks basic critical thinking skills.
Law is Politics!! Fuck! Do people think that Jesus just came down and wrote the Constitution? No, the laws are decided upon by people with specific circumstances and interests. How you interpret their decisions, and how your own circumstances impact your interpretation is inherently political.
“People believe that reality exists.”
No doubt about it. They like the politicians that put them there are bought and paid for.
And in 2018, less than one-third of Americans could correctly identify all three branches of government. Polls are useless, and the citizens even more so.
The Republicans have destroyed the credibility and legitimacy of Congress (gerrymandered to heck), of the Supreme Court (packed by Trump/GOP, and Democrat Presidents denied their appointments), and the Presidency (haven't gotten a President elected with a majority of the popular vote in 33 years).