Is the Constitution strong enough to survive the current Supreme Court?

[HikerGuy83]

in the post you quoted

you and a handful of other people who are also incorrect, doesn't change constitutional law.

I don't see the constitution or SCOTUS referenced at all in the post.

Whether or not we are correct isn't the point. My claim was that he wasn't alone. Please focus on that. I could just as easily say you are alone, but I have no data to back it up.

 

[rahl]

I don't see the constitution or SCOTUS referenced at all in the post.

then check your eyes. Neither SS or medicare are unconstitutional.

Whether or not we are correct isn't the point. My claim was that he wasn't alone. Please focus on that. I could just as easily say you are alone, but I have no data to back it up.

again, you and a handful of other constitutional illiterates are statistically zero. More people believe in bigfoot.

 

[Lloyd Christmas]

And yet, that's exactly what this court is doing. You're not paying attention, or too bound up with ideological purity to care. The Supreme Court Is Putting Democracy at Risk (NYT, Opinion, Subscription). "In two disturbing rulings closing out the Supreme Court’s term, the court’s six-justice conservative majority, over the loud protests of its three-liberal minority, has shown itself hostile to American democracy." That's not hyperbole.

In numerous recent decisions, most specifically Shelby County, and yesterday's Brnovich, they gutted the voting rights act. Neither of those decisions are dictated by, or frankly consistent with, the Constitution, and represent unprecedented judicial activism, comparable to the infamous Dred Scott decision. Again, not hyperbole. They are creating judicial law out of whole cloth.

........................................................

Just to pinpoint how sad right wingers posts are. Here is stating a position, and backing it up with facts and an argument. Below is what you get from the right. And people say "both sides". ONe side has actual facts, the other side just bullshit projections. If they had any shame they would be embarrassed

Oh, yes, the Constitution is strong enough to "survive" this Supreme Court.

But, sadly, it will NOT survive the next Supreme Court that is packed with Obama and Clinton supporters.

Moreso than it would be with more Democrat appointees, who actually don't see it as their job to maintain and support the Constitution. Leftist judges think it's their job to change with the times, which is specifically not their job.

Take a refresher course in American government, pay attention especially to Separation of Powers and get back to us when you can discuss the constitution rationally.

Perhaps you should provide "background" to give some backbone to your bullshit accusation.
And how are textualists "actively hostile" to the Constitution which they regard as sacrosanct, as opposed to the usual lefties who impose their woke agendas on our founding document?

 

[HikerGuy83]

then check your eyes. Neither SS or medicare are unconstitutional.

again, you and a handful of other constitutional illiterates are statistically zero. More people believe in bigfoot.

Just taking you at your word.

You certainly didn't accomplish what you said you did.

As to the second point, you are entitled to your POV. You have no data to back it up (because if you did, you would present it).

 

[HikerGuy83]

Just to pinpoint how sad right wingers posts are. Here is stating a position, and backing it up with facts and an argument. Below is what you get from the right. And people say "both sides". ONe side has actual facts, the other side just bullshit projections. If they had any shame they would be embarrassed

I would agree that the responses do not address the claims.

While not excusing that, I will say that:

1. The claims are very broad and really are undefined.
2. The "facts" are nothing but presented decisions with no explanation as to how they support the claims.

I applaud your desire to see improved debate.

I don't agree that this is a good example of clear crisp argument.

 

[rahl]

Just taking you at your word.

it isn't my word. it's the supreme courts.

You certainly didn't accomplish what you said you did.

of course I did

As to the second point, you are entitled to your POV.

I haven't provided a point of view, unless you consider constitutional law a point of view? which would be strange.

You have no data to back it up (because if you did, you would present it).

presented it already. US constitution and the US supreme court.

 

[HikerGuy83]

it isn't my word. it's the supreme courts.

of course I did

I haven't provided a point of view, unless you consider constitutional law a point of view? which would be strange.

presented it already. US constitution and the US supreme court.

Thank you for responses.

 

[Glitch]

I am a conservative.

And I can't argue against your claim.

I also can't support it either.

It would be good to have a pro-active article(s) on why the Az case isn't what the OP claims.

This in reasoned terms.

The Supreme Court ruling validated AZ's election law, and reversed a lower court's decision claiming these AZ provisions were "racially discriminatory."

One was a provision that restricted early ballot collection by third parties, a.k.a. "ballot harvesting," and another that discards ballots cast in-person at the wrong precinct. Since neither of these provisions involved race, it cannot be construed as "racially discriminatory." Both dealt specifically with the integrity of AZ's elections, which is something Democrats cannot tolerate.

Everyone who is not intent on committing election fraud supports the Supreme Court decision. What is especially telling are those who do not agree with the decision.

Supreme Court Got It Right in Arizona Voting Law Decision

In rejecting challenges to two Arizona laws on voting procedures, the U.S. Supreme Court produced a clear opinion faithful to the statutory text of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, says Pacific Legal Foundation staff attorney Chris Kieser, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of petitioners in the...

news.bloomberglaw.com

Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Election Rules

The court, in a 6-3 vote, overturned an appeals-court decision that the Arizona regulations discriminated against minority voters, giving states more room to tighten voting laws.

www.wsj.com

SCOTUS Deals Blow to Dems, Upholds Arizona Election Integrity Laws

The US Supreme Court upheld Arizona's two controversial voting rules in a 6-3 decision on Thursday, dealing a major blow to Democrats.

www.westernjournal.com

Supreme Court Rules for Election Integrity, Arizona Attorney General Says

A Supreme Court decision upholding two election laws is a win for the “integrity of elections,” Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich says.

www.dailysignal.com

 

[mrjurrs]

Of course it does... you're saying the government can do pretty much anything they want under general welfare, whereas I and our Founding Fathers say they can't.

General welfare has nothing to do with it, the Necessary and Proper Clause does. The founders wrote the Necessary and Proper Clause into the Constitution. So you're on your own.

 

[Fishking]

Just to pinpoint how sad right wingers posts are. Here is stating a position, and backing it up with facts and an argument. Below is what you get from the right. And people say "both sides". ONe side has actual facts, the other side just bullshit projections. If they had any shame they would be embarrassed

I'm sorry, did you just post a NYT opinion piece of hyperbolic whining as some kind of real thing?

 

[prometeus]

That process didn't just show up.

Unfortunately, that game started a long time ago.

It has only gotten worse.

So that to you is a good excuse to continue?

And some groups count on the activism of the court to get a "minority" agenda into the general governmental process.

Which minority?

 

[prometeus]

But, the constitution could not anticipate the world as it is today vs. what it was back in 1788.

Your point then?

 

[HikerGuy83]

The Supreme Court ruling validated AZ's election law, and reversed a lower court's decision claiming these AZ provisions were "racially discriminatory."

One was a provision that restricted early ballot collection by third parties, a.k.a. "ballot harvesting," and another that discards ballots cast in-person at the wrong precinct. Since neither of these provisions involved race, it cannot be construed as "racially discriminatory." Both dealt specifically with the integrity of AZ's elections, which is something Democrats cannot tolerate.

Everyone who is not intent on committing election fraud supports the Supreme Court decision. What is especially telling are those who do not agree with the decision.

Supreme Court Got It Right in Arizona Voting Law Decision

In rejecting challenges to two Arizona laws on voting procedures, the U.S. Supreme Court produced a clear opinion faithful to the statutory text of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, says Pacific Legal Foundation staff attorney Chris Kieser, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of petitioners in the...

news.bloomberglaw.com

Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Election Rules

The court, in a 6-3 vote, overturned an appeals-court decision that the Arizona regulations discriminated against minority voters, giving states more room to tighten voting laws.

www.wsj.com

SCOTUS Deals Blow to Dems, Upholds Arizona Election Integrity Laws

The US Supreme Court upheld Arizona's two controversial voting rules in a 6-3 decision on Thursday, dealing a major blow to Democrats.

www.westernjournal.com

Supreme Court Rules for Election Integrity, Arizona Attorney General Says

A Supreme Court decision upholding two election laws is a win for the “integrity of elections,” Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich says.

www.dailysignal.com

Very much appreciate the information.

However, I was referencing you claim the OP was butt-hurt.

Or that someone was trying to steal the election.

I am from AZ and will be moving back soon.

Election integrity is a key component of the short term in my estimation.

 

[HikerGuy83]

So that to you is a good excuse to continue?

Which minority?

I don't recall saying it was a good excuse to continue.

There are a couple of things I would point out.

1. You don't clean up overnight, a mess you took decades to create. Both sides are guilty (and I am necessarily on board with criticism of the current court).

1. There is way to much happening at the federal level. The stakes have gotten to large and losing isn't an option. Cooperation isn't either. Consequently, this trend is going to be very much a part of our lives for a long time to come.

I honestly don't know that we'll ever get back to something normal.

As to which minority.

Jeff Toobin (the bad zoom etiquette guy) wrote many years ago about the issue of minority factions using the courts to forward agendas. One of his prime examples was the environmental movement. The examples of them twisting laws to save a lizard (that didn't need saving) in order to prevent something they objected to were plenty. Other minority groups have done similar. LGBTQ (letter) (letter) (letter) have used the courts to push agendas also.

 

[HikerGuy83]

I'm not going to provide a lot of background on this one, to keep the discussion as open as possible, but my premise, essentially, is this: the current SC majority is actively hostile to basic tenets of the Constitution, from separation of powers to separation of church and state, including basic civil rights, democratic voting, equality under the law, and so many others. The floor is open.

So back to the assertions of the OP.

The hostility has been claimed, but in reading through I don't see it has been proved.

Looking through the thread, I see opinion pieces and some argument in articles. (some articles can't be accessed).

I am trying to piece together the point/counter-point through the other comments.

I'd like to summarize going forward.

 

[newpublius]

And yet, that's exactly what this court is doing. You're not paying attention, or too bound up with ideological purity to care. The Supreme Court Is Putting Democracy at Risk (NYT, Opinion, Subscription). "In two disturbing rulings closing out the Supreme Court’s term, the court’s six-justice conservative majority, over the loud protests of its three-liberal minority, has shown itself hostile to American democracy." That's not hyperbole.

Of course it is.

I'll just focus on Shelby and Citizens here.

In numerous recent decisions, most specifically Shelby County, and yesterday's Brnovich, they gutted the voting rights act. Neither of those decisions are dictated by, or frankly consistent with, the Constitution, and represent unprecedented judicial activism, comparable to the infamous Dred Scott decision. Again, not hyperbole. They are creating judicial law out of whole cloth.

Shelby deals with a very specific issue, preclearance. All Congress has to do is to pass a law requiring ALL states' laws to be subject to preclearance. This would clearly be constitutional. Even without preclearance, all laws passed by states remain subject to challenge in federal courts should they violate they violate the US Constitution, via XIV or XV Amendment.

Similarly, in Citizens United .......at odds with 250 years of precedent. That is per se judicial activism,

You're making shit up.

Citizens United was decided square on with https://www.oyez.org/cases/1977/76-1172

First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti

Facts of the case
The National Bank of Boston, along with two other national banks and three corporations, wished to spend money to publicize their opposition to a ballot initiative that would permit Massachusetts to implement a graduated income tax. The Attorney General of Massachusetts informed the organizations that he intended to enforce a state statute that prohibited such organizations from making contributions to influence the outcome of a vote that does not materially affect their assets and holdings. The organizations sued and argued that the statute violated their First Amendment rights. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld the constitutionality of the statute.

Question
Does the First Amendment protect the rights of corporations to attempt to influence the outcome of elections in which they have no direct monetary interest?

-------------------------

1977, decided actually by a relatively liberal court.

 

[NWRatCon]

Claiming it isn't hyperbole does not make it so.

Hmmm... what a substantive argument. Is so.

Not saying what it is in terms of hyperbole....without more information.

Understanding requires reading the sources and contemplating the content. The information is provided.

However, we can say (let me know if I am wrong):

You are wrong. See above. Discussion does require actually thinking about the subject, not merely "reacting". Again, "nu-uhn" is not a response.

To demonstrate this, you need to first describe what the voting rights act was intended to address, protect, or create.

What the voting rights act was intended to do was to protect the franchise of disenfranchised voters. It still serves that purpose, and the threat it was intended to protect from still exists (as has been demonstrated in spades by current Republican disenfranchisement efforts). The Supreme Court ignored this and simply pretended that, because it is old, it is no longer applicable. It was, and is, and odd position for the Court to take, given that the precedents of the Court are, in some cases, centuries old and still valid. The same is true of the Voting Rights Act.

Are you serious?

 

[NWRatCon]

Saying Un-uh isn't really a great argument.

And he is NOT alone in his point of view.

Not being alone in error is not an argument, as your mother probably pointed out to you as a child. "If everyone else is jumping off a cliff, does that mean you should too?" Most of your posts so far have consisted of "I disagree" and "I don't understand, I'm not going to do my own thinking." That's not exactly a basis for discussion of any depth.

 

[NWRatCon]

So back to the assertions of the OP.

The hostility has been claimed, but in reading through I don't see it has been proved.

Looking through the thread, I see opinion pieces and some argument in articles. (some articles can't be accessed).

I am trying to piece together the point/counter-point through the other comments.

I'd like to summarize going forward.

In citing to numerous opinion pieces - some of which I have excerpted or summarized because of inaccessibility - numerous examples of the hypothesis have been demonstrated. I recognize that viewpoints can become myopic when based upon ideology, but the substance is, in fact, there.

If you would like to participate in the discussion, frankly, put up. Naysaying does not do this.

My premises were several: The Supreme Court has been hostile to a number of fundamental principles of constitutional law, among them separation of powers, separation of church and state, basic civil rights, democratic voting, equality under the law, and so many others. Feel free to provide counter-examples if you can find them.

 

[NWRatCon]

And some groups count on the activism of the court to get a "minority" agenda into the general governmental process.

There is a fundamental difference, though, in protecting the rights of the minority against the incursion of a majority (something embedded in the structure of the Constitution) and pushing the interests of the minority onto the majority, as this Court is doing. I can see a counter-argument, but it is a weak one. Let's take as a for-instance: same-sex marriage.

The Supreme Court has long held that choices in familial relations/choices (marriage, child-rearing, sex) are fundamental interests requiring the utmost protection. This is supported by a long list of cases: Pierce v. Soc'y of Sisters, 1925 (educating children); Skinner v. Oklahoma,1942 (right to procreate); Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965 (right to contraception); Loving v. Virginia, 1967 (right to marry). Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) is a natural outgrowth of that line of cases.

In contrast, homophobia is a minority view. Should the views of that minority be enforced against views of the majority (and against a social minority)? Should discrimination against that minority be judicially enforced? The current Supreme Court majority, in a number of recent cases, has taken the view that individual (religious) preferences (including of corporations - an artificial legal entity) take precedence over fundamental civil rights. It's not a "balancing act" - it is enforcing the views of the religious minority against the secular majority (another constitutional principle) - in business, social welfare, education, and employment. That's the kind of hostility I am highlighting. (Religious preferences have also resulted in serious undermining of other equality determinations, such as in executions.)

 

[prometeus]

You're making shit up.

Right, because corporations are people too....

 

[NWRatCon]

Of course it is.

No it's not. PTHTHTHPPPT! (Great argument, that.)

I'll just focus on Shelby and Citizens here.
...
Shelby deals with a very specific issue, preclearance. All Congress has to do is to pass a law requiring ALL states' laws to be subject to preclearance. This would clearly be constitutional. Even without preclearance, all laws passed by states remain subject to challenge in federal courts should they violate they violate the US Constitution, via XIV or XV Amendment.

I genuinely have a hard time taking this argument seriously. The whole point of the structure of the Voting Rights Act is to prevent disenfranchisement of minorities. I think we can agree on that. Shelby was a precursor to Brnovich. I think we can also agree on that. The premise of both decisions are fundamentally bankrupt: that discrimination no longer exists. That is most obviously not true, and the Court was well aware of this reality when they made the decisions. Your highlighted sentence is obviated by Brnovich, the whole point of which is to pretend that the realities of disenfranchisement don't exist and any excuse to so pretend is acceptable.

Let's be real here. By essentially eliminating Section 2 of the VRA (by reinterpreting the actual language of the statute out of existence), the Court gives the lie to your premise. If the Court creates a rule that obviates the stated intent of Congress, what meaning can future challenges have? In Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980), the Supreme Court equated the then-standard with the 15th Amendment's invidious intent standard, so Congress expressly added language to make it abundantly clear that disparate impact was a basis for proving it. As the Justice Department puts it: Section 2 prohibits both voting practices that result in citizens being denied equal access to the political process on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group, and voting practices adopted or maintained for the purpose of discriminating on those bases. (Emphasis mine). Previously, the Supreme Court had noted that the "essence of a Section 2 claim is that a certain electoral law, practice, or structure interacts with social and historical conditions to cause an inequality in the opportunities enjoyed by black and white voters to elect their preferred representatives." Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 47 (1986) Brnovich read that provision out of the statute, so what's left?

 

[newpublius]

Right, because corporations are people too....

You do realize that this is shorthand for the LEGAL FICTION of SEPARATE PERSONHOOD.

If you don't want to treat corporations, for purposes of Due Process and the I Amendment, as 'persons' -- that's fine, but there ARE consequences and one of them is that Donald Trump could storm into the NY Times Building on 8th Avenue, take it over, shut down the NY Times and declare, "The NY Times is not a person, its a billion dollar corporation and I'm shutting it down because its not entitled to any constitutional protection"

 

[newpublius]

I genuinely have a hard time taking this argument seriously.

If the AZ law had been subject to preclearance and blocked how does the result change? It changes the caption of the case, nothing more.

"If the Court creates a rule that obviates the stated intent of Congress, what meaning can future challenges have?"

"Next, the racial disparity in burdens allegedly caused by the out-of-precinct policy is small in absolute terms. Of the Arizona counties that reported out-of-precinct ballots in the 2016 general election, a little over 1% of Hispanic voters, 1% of African-American voters, and 1% of Native American voters who voted on election day cast an out-of-precinct ballot. For non-minority voters, the rate was around 0.5%. A procedure that appears to work for 98% or more of voters to whom it applies--minority and non-minority alike--is unlikely to render a system unequally open."

And of course what is NOT in the case are the 2020 election results, How many of these 1% of minority voters vs the .5% of majority voters still cast an in-district vote in 2020?

As the header of the case notes: "Arizona law generally makes it very easy to vote. Voters may cast their ballots on election day in person at a traditional precinct or a "voting center" in their county of residence. Ariz. Rev. Stat. §16-411(B)(4). Arizonans also may cast an "early ballot" by mail up to 27 days before an election, §§16-541, 16-542(C), and they also may vote in person at an early voting location in each county, §§16-542(A), (E)" {emphasis supplied}

 

[HikerGuy83]

Hmmm... what a substantive argument. Is so.

Let's see....you are claiming a positive.

I am not.

Taking your argument further, if you say the sun rises in the west...we have to accept that in the absence of anything else.

Sorry.

Doesn't work.