Knick v. Township of Scott seems like a big case, too - allowing takings suits to bypass state processes. Another chink in the armor of stare decisis meaning something.
When Trump makes his next appointment to the Supreme Court and chooses Ted Cruz to the position, the Court will be adorned by a Justice whose father has been accused by the President of participating in the Kennedy assassination, a claim he has never retracted and presumably still believes is true.
Deal with that if you can.
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When Trump makes his next selection to the Supreme Court and chooses Ted Cruz for the position, the Court will be adorned by a Justice whose father participated in the Kennedy assassination.
Deal with that if you can.
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Make that:
When Trump makes his next appointment to the Supreme Court and chooses Ted Cruz for the position, the Court will be adorned by a Justice whose father has been accused by the President of participating in the Kennedy assassination, a claim he has never retracted and presumably still believes is true.
Deal with that if you can.
The Supreme Court can only work well when qualified people who are not politically motivated are appointed to serve on it.
This will never happen as long as Individual-1 is appointing them.
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PLEASE stop calling these folks conservatives! The term you are looking for is radicals.
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How interesting on the double jeopardy ruling, with RBG and Gorsuch being the only dissenters. So, does this mean that RBG does not think Trump should be tried by the State of New York if he was ever federally prosecuted and found not guilty? And it looks like all that fear of Kavanaugh changing the dynamics of SCOTUS turned out not to be - he voted with the majority on all cases decided so far in the article.
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Neil Gorsuch sits on a seat stolen from President Barack Obama.
Never forget.
Never forgive.
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How about we get rid of the labels and just call them "Supreme Court Justices." I know they each lean certain ways, but the office is non-partisan and/or non-ideological. The more we focus on their job, maybe just maybe they, the justices, will actually decide on whats best for our nation; i.e. constitutional, and not focus on ideology as a determinant. I know naivety on my part, but hopeful nonetheless.
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I think NYT does a disservice to the country by posting pictures of the members of the Court in two separate "blocks". This adds weight to the notion that the Supreme Court is merely a political tool, a notion America neither needs nor wants.
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And the graphic layout ignores the facts. In recent years this paper has claimed to be the reporter of facts but it seems they are more beholden to the narrative here than to how these justices actually vote.
The conservatives on this court are determined to maintain the ultimate precedence ---ie the "original" interpretation of the Constitution--regardless of the fact that we do not live in 1700's any more.
Yet they are more than will to torch precedence that protects the rights of current American humans.
The hypocrisy is stunning---the legitimacy of this court is teetering in the edge.
Thus far these are all creme puff decisions where little political harm is done either way. They can be independent because these are fairly straight forward cases. Wait until the case is of interest to the oligarchs. Also anything to do with abortion. At least we know where Kavanaugh stands on beer. I hate to side with him, but I have a similar like for beer. I hope I am not turning into a conservative.
It is not very comforting to see a liberal conservative split. I want unbiased justice, not ideology. Any judge who professes to be one or the other is not fit to be a judge. This is why the credibility of the court is starting to look as good as Congress' and that does not bode well for our system of government.
The tough cases are yet to come. Get back with me when they roll in and we'll see if the Robert's court is going to go down as one of our most nefarious Supreme Courts ever. Citizens United alone pretty much puts them there..
I am grateful that the majority of these decisions do not fall on a liberal/conservative divide. It gives me a measure of hope for our Supreme Court.
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I thought you warned us that we were going to have a bunch of 5-4 decisions with the conservatives voting mindlessly as a hard-right wing bloc and the liberals voting as a compassionate, thoughtful well reasoned and thinking bloc?
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Only when it comes to voting on corporate power and money buying elections.
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Amend the law and have 5 democrats and 5 republican as supreme court judge. Life time job is not appropriate these time of age. Let them serve one 6 years terms and select new judges.
Upcoming 5-4 decisions:
- Money is only for rich people
- God created the American People to be exploited by Corporations
- Corporations aren’t people after all, they are gods
- Trump is our new dictator for life
- If the President does it, it is not illegal
- Evangelicals can write all the laws and make other people follow them
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Interesting that after all the brouhaha over Kavanaugh, he is turning out to be relatively balanced and moderate. Gorsuch, on the other hand, sailed through smoothly thanks to his folksy aw-shucks persona but has turned out to be exceedingly partisan.
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Considering that there are no 5-4 decisions along the ideological "blocs" that you define, should the reductionist labels even exist?
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When you label justices as belonging to either liberal or conservative blocs, you give legitimacy to their adoption of these respective ideologies. American constitution expects the judges to be free of bias, political ideology and identification with the two blocs. Instead of calling them as such, NYT should run an article reminding the judges that their only job is to interpret the constitution and make sure laws enacted by legislature align with it without any bias. We need to state this clearly more than ever in these hyper partisan times.
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More striking here is that these "bloc" labels are not at all supported by the facts in the article. The NY Times is letting it's desire to promote the narrative of a divided America trump it's duty to report fact, which in this case demonstrate something different (and more encouraging).
Sadly, I never thought i would say this. Under Roberts, i have lost complete faith that SCOTUS is not just another part of the Republican Party of today. We have no branch of government anymore that the average citizen can trust to be fair and non-political.
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can we please stop w the term "conservative" with these people -- it's been good branding all these years but they are anything but...as they steadily dismantle our democracy...
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I think today's 5-4 decision in Knick v. Township of Scott, Pennsylvania overturning a century of precedent will prove to be among the term's most consequential. Knick holds that a state or local government violates the takings clause of the constitution whenever it imposes a land use regulation that effects a taking of property without first paying compensation to the landowner. The consequence, well explained in Justice Kagan's powerful dissent, will be to flood the federal courts with challenges to local land use regulations by property owners claiming that a land use regulation "took" their property without just compensation. For most local governments, the cost of the litigation, complete with fee awards for landowners who prevail, will make land use regulation prohibitively expensive.
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