Supreme Court of the United States

[Crap Throwing Clavin]

2 hours ago, IDBillzFan said:

Man, you gotta give Biden credit. When he picks a lost cause, he really holds it tightly.

 

"We aren't wasting any time."

 

You mean like all the time you wasted pushing something that entire world knew SCOTUS was going to knock down? Of is this going to be an all new waste of time?

 

 

 

Is anyone else struck by the irony of a guy who was going to, via the 14th Amendment, take executive action to guarantee the country's ability to pay its debts still wants to guarantee Americans "right" to not pay their debts via executive action?

[Ann]

Ummm
 

 

[B-Man]

 

 

Justices Thomas And Jackson Help Us Understand Judicial Activism

by Ted Noel

 

The ink is barely dry on the Supreme Court’s decisions on religious freedom and affirmative action.

 

That hasn’t hampered instapundits from offering their own decisions. “An extremist minority” has “displayed a willful ignorance of our reality.”

 

I haven’t found polemics denouncing “activist courts,” but that’s probably because I can’t stomach searching for such unhinged screeds. But is every decision of the Court from activists? Are they legislating from the bench, to recall another favorite line from the party of the recently gored ox?

 

Of course, it’s a bit rich to call the Supremes “extremists,” when even Justice Jackson joined a unanimous Court in upholding the free practice of religion.

 

This brings us back to what an “activist” court looks like. I must first admit that, as a conservative, I thought that decisions to avoid decisions in favor of the freedom to practice religion (Masterpiece Cake Shop) smelled funny. The pendulum swung when the Dobbs decision gored the Left’s ox.

 

But were either of those cases actually legislating from the bench, to use the worn-out pejorative? As I’ve become an active consumer of SCOTUS legalese, I believe that there is a useful distinction between someone who legislates from the bench and one who does not. The opinions of Justices Thomas and Jackson provide us with the decoder ring.

 

{snip}

 

Justice Thomas’ concurrence in Students for Fair Admissions is a classic study in legal analysis. He walks step by step through the colorblind nature of the Constitution. He notes that the Fourteenth Amendment “ensures racial equality with no textual reference to race whatsoever.” (Emphasis in the original.) He walks through the broad and long-standing legal identity between citizenship and equality. The arguments both for and against various wordings are fully exposed. Then he dissects the “antisubordination” view “that the Amendment forbids only laws that hurt, but not help, blacks.” This is radically opposite to the colorblind origins and intentions of the Reconstruction Amendments. This view is a policy preference but cannot be supported as law.

 

By way of contrast, Justice Jackson’s dissent focuses on “the historical subjugation of black Americans, invoking statistical racial gaps to argue in favor of defining and categorizing individuals by their race.” Somehow, we are trapped in a fundamentally racist society. She effectively denies Justice Roberts’ comment in 2006 that “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Her solution appears to be “to unquestioningly accede to the view of elite experts and reallocate society’s riches by racial means as necessary to ‘level the playing field,’ all as judged by racial metrics.”

 

In her dissent, Justice Jackson demonstrates most vividly the contrast between legal analysis and activist rhetoric. Jackson’s dissent is based not on law but on policy. And this runs right into the Scylla and Charybdis of the Constitution. On one side, the highest law in the land, the Constitution, stands directly athwart her aspirations. On the other, the Constitution forbids the Courts to enter the realm of policy. That remains exclusively the purview of Congress.

 

For the moment, Donald Trump shines brightly over America. He has given us a Supreme Court that actually settles cases in law.

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/07/do_the_current_conservative_decisions_show_an_activist_supreme_court.html

[Hedge]

I believe someone had embedded the original tweet from this account upthread. Interesting update.

 

Thread:

 

 

[Crap Throwing Clavin]

30 minutes ago, Hedge said:

I believe someone had embedded the original tweet from this account upthread. Interesting update.

 

Thread:

 

 

 

Bummer.  I was really hoping Democrats were that stupid.

[IDBillzFan]

25 minutes ago, Crap Throwing Clavin said:

 

Bummer.  I was really hoping Democrats were that stupid.

 

Give them time.

[Crap Throwing Clavin]

14 minutes ago, IDBillzFan said:

 

Give them time.

 

Yeah...but I was particularly hoping she was that stupid.

 

Cute and dumb is just my type.

[Cinga]

12 minutes ago, Crap Throwing Clavin said:

 

Yeah...but I was particularly hoping she was that stupid.

 

Cute and dumb is just my type.

 

Does your wife know that?

[Crap Throwing Clavin]

18 minutes ago, Cinga said:

 

Does your wife know that?

 

She'd probably be the first to agree with me.

[IDBillzFan]

I alluded to this at one point last week, in part suggesting that Roberts has a majority, he no longer feels threatened by the nutbags on the left.

 

No idea if it's actually true, or I just want it to be true.

 

 

[IDBillzFan]

Admittedly, my take on things political are usually just me having to sit at a desk for work all day, but this is something else I brought up recently. Thank Trump all you want, but Trump doesn't get to seat three justices if one of them would have either retired for Obama and not held out for the Hillary presidency.

 

The left can be pissed all they want, but they need to be pissed at RBG.

 

 

 

[Ann]

59 minutes ago, IDBillzFan said:

I alluded to this at one point last week, in part suggesting that Roberts has a majority, he no longer feels threatened by the nutbags on the left.

 

No idea if it's actually true, or I just want it to be true.

 

 

 

Radicalized!? 

Maybe what was being held over Roberts head no longer matters since the decisions would be 5-4 without him? What happens if Clarence Thomas retires? Does Roberts go back to the swing vote?
 

[devnull]

7 hours ago, Hedge said:

I believe someone had embedded the original tweet from this account upthread. Interesting update.

 

Thread:

 

 

 

Real or not, got any more pics?

 

 

 

[B-Man]

 

WILL THE SUPREME COURT DISMANTLE THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE?

As I have written more than once, the government we live under is not the one described in the Constitution. The ubiquitous and powerful arm of our government, found nowhere in the Constitution, is the Fourth Branch, the plethora of federal agencies, the administrative state. The administrative state has assumed much of the power that the Constitution assigns to the legislative and executive branches, a development that has progressed now for more than a century without serious challenge.

 

Do we finally have a Supreme Court willing to take on the unelected Fourth Branch and restore a government that looks more like the one that is outlined in the Constitution?

 

That is a lot to hope for. But next term, the Court has agreed to hear SEC v. Jarkesy, a case that raises one of the fundamental issues spotlighted by Professor Philip Hamburger in his seminal book Is Administrative Law Unlawful?–the combination of investigative and judicial powers in federal agencies. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board previews the case:

Mr. Jarkesy argues that a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act allowing the SEC to adjudicate enforcement actions and seek civil penalties in its in-house courts violates his Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury. Before Dodd-Frank, the SEC had to litigate fraud claims in Article III federal courts where defendants enjoy more procedural rights.

He also says Congress improperly delegated to the SEC unreviewable power to choose whether to bring charges either in its in-house or federal court. The SEC has increasingly chosen the former because it has a home-court advantage. 

{snip}

The Fifth Circuit ruled in Mr. Jarkesy’s favor last May. The case gives the Supreme Court an opportunity to continue the process of whittling the administrative state down to size. And, who knows, perhaps one day restoring the government that the Founders thought they were founding.

[TakeYouToTasker 2.0]

16 hours ago, Crap Throwing Clavin said:

 

Bummer.  I was really hoping Democrats were that stupid.

Oh, don’t worry. It was funded by Democrats.

[B-Man]

 

 

Alito and Thomas: Government resorting “to racial or ethnic classifications to ration medical treatment … would be a very strong case for prompt review by this Court”

Legal Insurrection, by William A. Jacobson

 

Original Article

[snafu]

Since last week, all I've seen have been stories and reports about Harvard's legacy student admissions.  They're catching a lot of heat.  I shed no tears. Wait till this spreads to other schools.  And then it will be "early action" policies.  I absolutely can't wait.  College admission processes are cesspits for everyone.  It isn't limited to minorities.

 

 

[B-Man]

 

 

.

[Robs House]

[Ann]

Supreme Court allows work on contested natural gas pipeline to resume

The court’s decision greenlights approval of a section of the Mountain Valley Pipeline crossing federal land in Virginia.

 

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed work on a natural gas pipeline crossing federal land in Virginia to resume over the objections of environmental groups.

 

The justices granted an emergency request filed by Mountain Valley Pipeline, meaning that final elements of the 303.5 mile pipeline running from the northwestern part of West Virginia to southern Virginia can be finished.

 

In doing so, the court blocked decisions by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Richmond, Virginia, that prevented the project from moving forward. The appeals court intervened despite Congress including language in the recently enacted Fiscal Responsibility Act backed by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., that stripped courts of authority to review approval of the pipeline.

 

Construction of the pipeline is almost finished. The dispute before the Supreme Court was over a 3.5-mile stretch in the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia as well as several stream crossings outside the forest.

 

</snip>