I’m saying there are ways to defend things even if you have, temporarily, a majority of justices who are hostile to them. You can’t just throw yourself on the ground and weep.
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Fuck you.
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LOL I think he/she enjoys the conflict more than the 10 kopeks a post
You may be correct.
I think it can be defended. Anything can be defended. Putting kids in cages can be defended, as can any other atrocity over the past 4 years. It just takes some soulless bastard who thinks it’s right. “Defending” something, in this case, is just empty rhetoric designed to make yourself feel better.
It’s empty rhetoric when we’re talking about, now, a 6-3 conservative bend to a court, a court that is the sole arbiter of what a law says, what it means, and even whether or not lower courts can consider a given argument when a matter regarding that law comes before them.
If they decide Obergefell was incorrectly decided, that’s it. Gay marriage is over in the United States. I don’t think they will issue so sweeping a ruling as to un-marry the currently married, but if Barrett and four others decide it’s over, it is.
So, who cares what you think you can bring to bear to ‘defend’ it when it’s up to those six people to decide whether or not you can bring ANYTHING to bear at all?
Now, if you want to add seats to SCOTUS, you can do that. If you want to make new law that is specifically exempted from judiciary judgement, Congress can even do that.
But, until and unless either of those things happen, there is no “defense” for these issues when taking them up with the people who literally decide what the law is.
Thank you for the offer, but, no, thank you.
So sad that Coronavirus precautions prevent my deploying this information at a cocktail party
Taking action rather than hand wringing. Sounds good to me.
Look, I’m no expert in constitutional law, but several of these precedents mostly say you can’t make a law in your state preventing abortion, gay marriage, voting rights, etc. I’m not sure the Supreme Court can prevent all the states from permitting it, or anything else. First of all, I think expansion is necessary so that moots anything. And I think you’ve got a conflict going on saying sure you can defend things but you can’t ultimately defend them because the SC is omnipotent. I just don’t think that’s true. They killed the National Recovery Act, but Roosevelt’s overall aims were achieved. They’re part of a system meant to function with checks and balances; they don’t sit atop it.
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kudos for recognizing that PR should be asked if they want in. so many just say ‘make PR a state’ which is pretty paternalistic, and does not take into account the will of american citizens. there’s a pretty sizeable independence movement so i suspect there’s a fair amount that needs be be done to get enough of a majority for legitimacy in an inclusion as a state (as much as if welcome them and their additional senators and reps.)
I agree with you, except that you might be underestimating Republican zeal for cutting taxes and deregulating, for which they are perfectly willing to accept a substantial body count — McConnell takes the long view, and takes the bad with the good. You decide which is which, but he is unlikely to be surprised by anything that happens now.
Like everyone, I wonder whether he is dying, which would help to explain his monomania in packing the courts. He has looked as though he has some kind of Parkinsonism syndrome, and is prone to falls with injury. Doesn’t seem likely to stay in office for another six years, even though he is likely to win his Senate race, but his problem is that Kentucky has a young, Democratic governor now. So what might be his swan song?
Do we imagine that McConnell would balk at a lame duck appointment to the Supreme Court? Maybe that’s why Clarence Thomas was at the White House last night, for some quality face time with Trump and Federalist Society mavens. McConnell and Trump have nothing to lose, and the courts from their perspective are their one shining achievement. Clarence Thomas seems like a vengeful guy, too.
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Today’s NYT has a good article on ways to check the court. One by a law student is beautiful in its simplicity and feasibility. Her name; Melody Wang. I learned that the Court could not choose its cases before 1925. Simple enough to repeal the law that allowed this. Eh, voila!
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Haha speak when you’re spoken to, court. Love it.
Harsh. But she was human, and facing one’s mortality seems beyond those in power. Hence our geriatocracy. And remember RBG’s experience of being a meme and icon really took off in her 80s: she was high on it.
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This is mostly true, but, it depends on what they choose to rule, too. I mean, Kavanaugh, when deciding the WI ballot question yesterday, literally signed on to a Rehnquist opinion in Bush v. Gore that says that even STATE courts can’t expand voting rights, that if it isn’t specifically enumerated in state statute it can’t be inferred by those people in a state whose job it is to interpret that law.
Abortion? If five of them agree that life begins at conception, then “born” and conceived are the same thing, and if they’re the same thing ,fetuses, etc. are persons under the 14th Amendment, so abortion is rendered illegal everywhere in the US. Do I think they’ll go that far? Probably not.
But they can if they want.
Facts don’t matter, and words mean what those nine people decide they mean.
I agree. But it remains to be seen if Democrats have the belly for it and I doubt that they do. If they do and it gets done, I’ll be the first to say, “Thank the FSM”, and eat as much crow as you want to feed me. But I don’t think they do.
They kind of do, especially with the current crop of conservative Justices who have greater allegiance to their own beliefs than the word of or intention behind a law.
By ‘defend’ in this case, I mean ‘speak in defense of,’ like, say, before the court. You can talk as good a game as you want about Internet freedom, but do you think you’re gonna sway Thomas, a guy who has already all but said that he wants a case that would allow him to rule on what can/can’t be said on boards like this?
No.
And, yes, as I said, there are actions Congress can take, but the question remains as to whether or not they have the testicular fortitude to do it. So, if Biden wins and his coattails bring the senate with him, we’ll see. I doubt it.
But I’d be happy to be wrong.
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Allow me to confidently wish you much future happiness. 
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This is very interesting. I didn’t know that. I thought them picking cases was part and parcel of their power grab in Jefferson’s time.
Amen, man.
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And sadly not even the pope is on their side. Some Catholics, like Evangelicals, use religion as a fig leaf for their hateful nonsense.
“Our defense of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery and every form of rejection.” - Francis
Emphasis mine
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Me, too, but this young law student told me de trute.
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