Discussion for article #227123
I read the NYT story on this with pure horror. No wonder the court is so off base at times.
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Surely these mistakes are not limited to Kennedy, Roberts, Breyer, and Alito.
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[quote] The problem is that the data are not always accurate. [/quote] We’re talking about Fox News here, right?
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There was a day, not too long ago the SCOTUS was so respected the idea of it being sloppy or making mistakes would have horrified people, and made it seem like the world was coming to an end. The Roberts Court sadly seems to have lowered the bar to the point where sloppiness has become the norm
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It could be sloppiness, but I suspect that in many cases the justices had an outcome that they were seeking and the amicus briefs in question were just handy padding to add the veneer of legitimacy to their decision. Given their, um, dubious reasoning in high profile cases that I’m aware of, I’d suspect the latter.
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The justices’ law clerks are responsible for the fact-checking research that go into their briefs.
- Are they receiving overt or tacit cues from the justices they serve that such scrupulosity doesn’t matter?
- Have they been that ill-trained during law school?
- Are they including such iffy supporting data to bolster a pre-determined opinion at their justices’ expressed or implied direction?
- Are certain law clerks going rogue to nudge their justice’s opinion in a direction that the clerks desire?
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A good example of an unverified claim.
You could back up this assertion by finding factual mistakes used in opinions written by the other five justices, should you wish.
Or you could rely on your source, “Surely”. He’s getting a lot of work these days.
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Amazing. Uncle Thomas wrote none of these. Empty robes in a chair.
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I don’t buy it. In the end, the justice is responsible for whatever their clerks offer up. The facts buck stops with them.
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When you have justices on the SCOTUS quoting or paraphrasing high school graduates Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck in their cross examination you know the Supreme Court has become a Supreme Joke. It all started with Gore vs. Bush and the precedent setting decision that the Supreme Joke said should not be a precedent but only apply in that one particular case.
A sad joke is what this court has become…
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Don’t worry, the bad facts aren’t resulting in bad rulings. Rather, it is the desired outcome that drives the selection of facts.
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Precisely.
So the article mentions 7 instances, but the discussion thread is about 8?
Who has one they can add so we can make TPM look good?
This was one of the most frightening articles I’ve read in quite a while.
“…Some of the factual assertions in recent amicus briefs would not pass muster in a high school research paper. But that has not stopped the Supreme Court from relying on them…”
How corrupted is the Court?
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It’s worth noting that all but one of the instances cited relate to the justices appointed by Republicans. Incidentally, with respect to Caperton v. Massey, the dissents by the four corrupt justices on the Supreme Court, which I consider to be a predecessor to Citizens United, held that it is OK for a company appealing a $50 million judgement to give a $3 million bribe to the chief justice of the state supreme court hearing the appeal as long as it is laundered properly.
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It’s true that the justices are ultimately responsible for their law clerks’ work; but it’s also true the justices don’t do the nitty-gritty of fact-checking, and wouldn’t know some sources were questionable until after the fact.
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Believe me, the Supremes have cited sketchy facts much more than 7 times. Think of Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson, just for starters.
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As a scientist when I wrote a journal article I always had to cite earlier work. Most of my articles had 35-50 citations with source work backing my assertions.Had I done what the SCOTUS gets away with my career would never have happened.
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But he did write the majority opinion here, which Kagan delights in eviscerating.