Discussion for article #224676
Anytime one acknowledges Earl Warren one must also recognize William Brennan, because it isn’t clear the Warren Court would have been half the transformative court it was without his mastery pulling the strings.
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Maybe less of a fantasy if Democrats step up and bat a few out of the park. Heading for the hills is not an option. The potential is there, but SCOTUS is problematic for them. Standards people, we have no standards anymore. Fear is the trump card and it sucks.
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Definite fantasy. Both parties have been compromised.
Climate Change coming down the pipe fast is going to just make the 1% more desperate and mean.
We tried. But at some point we decided that power and money are more important than the general welfare of the people. And now we are stuck with this broken model.
Stare decis means that even the most liberal court in history will not be able to overturn all of those things. Depending on a sympathetic SCOTUS is not enough. We need at least one Constitutional amendment, and probably two, to clean up the mess the
Roberts Court has created.
Telling a Supreme Court Justice that she should retire for merely political reasons won’t work. Never has, never will, and never should. A Justice will retire when s/he is ready for it (perhaps even by her own political calculations) or forced to retire by health or other reasons. And not bc of some short range political expectations demanded by others, let alone the media.
My own wish list would include revisiting the court’s awful rulings on the subject of arbitration. At the rate we’re going, in a few years, courts will be exclusively for corporations to settle their differences, and all us peasants will have to go to arbitration even over civil rights violations.
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No Conservative will retire. Die on the bench is more like it. It’s not as though Thomas nor Scalia actually work. As long as they can be propped up in a chair. Ginsberg should have retired in O’s first term.
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Nope. Stare Decisis is a basis not a rock solid necessity. Even Roberts in his confirmation hearing stated that it was not a guiding principle for 100% of his decisions. History shows that even Obiter Dicta can figure into a decision as long as you have the votes. Dred Scott and Citizens are the perfect examples.
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So UFG, once again we ask, just as we did this past Tuesday.
never-mind, it’s a waste of time
William O.Douglas was a hero of mine and a force on the Warren court. Although he was also a cantankerous individual his stand on environmental issues has always resonated with me. I was able to canoe the scenic Buffalo River in Arkansas thanks to him. And I’ve taken his books along while backpacking in the William O. Douglas Wilderness of Washington state.
Admittedly it was a bit difficult to get him to retire but his actions can be mostly attribute due to a stroke he suffered in his later years.
Not only is stare decisis not a necessity, Roberts and his fellow travelers have ignored the principle whenever it was convenient. It’s likely that some of the new majority decisions would call the right-wing hacks the sophists they are, but I don’t have a problem with that.
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Recent spate? This has been going on since at least the Rehnquist court and Bush v. Gore. As to a liberal court I’d give some credit to the Minnesota Twins too.
Bingo; sophists they certainly are, most of all Scalia and his new clone Alito. Thomas doesn’t seem to write many majority opinions that aren’t on uncontroversial 9:0 topics.
It’s very possible in the next 10 years Obama + Clinton= 10 years, both Justices are 88. Good bet, My guess is Scalia first. It would be rude to say why.
A pure fantasy. What’s likely to happen? The Senate goes to the Republicans and Obama spends his last two years in office fighting investigations. From a SCOTUS, perspective, it probably would have been nice to have had a couple of the old right-leaning Justices to retire earlier this year. Will be interesting to see who Obama can nominate after the midterms…
The fact remains that the major problem for any President is that the Senate doesn’t care about the qualifications of the nominee, they care about their political positions. In truth there are candidates that have been disqualified based upon their abilities and background, but more often for judicial (political) viewpoints… Some others have been withdrawn, and likely would have failed confirmation anyway.
Robert Bork was voted down 42-58, and his successor, Douglas Ginsberg never got a vote after he admitted to drug use in college.
G Harold Carswell was rejected by the Senate in 1970…his nomination followed the failure of Clement Haynsworth, who was voted down largely for his segregationist rulings and some issues with recusal in cases where he had conflicts of interest.
Harriet Meirs was withdrawn when it quickly became obvious to everyone that she was not remotely qualified.
In short, the Senate does not really care too much about qualifications…and those usually end up being withdrawn before they ever reach a hearing. Sadly, they DO care about politics…in a place that should as apolitical as possible.