Supreme Court defies critics with wave of unanimous decisions

Interesting read, hopefully calming some of the hysteria.

The justices are people first and foremost....they have biases and beliefs

But hopefully most can put aside their biases and rule based solely on LAW as they sit on the SCOTUS bench

THis is one area where i would love to see less politics, and more plain language law

Partisanship has no place on SCOTUS

I still find it troubling that so (too?) many cases (on appeal) never get accepted by the SCOTUS - allowing lower court‘s rulings to stand no matter how ridiculous (or unconstitutional).

It seems clear that the cases were chosen for their lack of acrimony. This could be because of the new administration, the new Justice, luck, theme, or a combination of all the above. Do not ignore the thematic portion since religious rights pervade much of the docket.

It's not 'hysteria'. It's a correct understanding that massive amounts have been spent by billionaires to destroy the constitution by appointing an army of radical ideologues to the courts to re-write it, using the tools of money, The Federalist Society to create the army, and the wholly owned Republican Party to pack the courts.

ttwtt78640 said:

I still find it troubling that so (too?) many cases (on appeal) never get accepted by the SCOTUS - allowing lower court‘s rulings to stand no matter how ridiculous (or unconstitutional).

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SCOTUS can't hear every case, but interesting that those who were in glee about finally getting a more conservative bench now are upset they aren't ruling in conservative's favors.
I am NOT one of those (being Canadian) that jumped all over the "pack the court" bandwagon, but still it tickles me pink that now a conservative bench is proving NOT CONSERVATIVE ENOUGH for the same people who were in glee about a conservative bench.

gdgyva said:

The justices are people first and foremost....they have biases and beliefs

But hopefully most can put aside their biases and rule based solely on LAW as they sit on the SCOTUS bench

THis is one area where i would love to see less politics, and more plain language law

Partisanship has no place on SCOTUS

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It's always amusing to watch people with no legal training or experience opine about whether or not a decision follows the "LAW", especially when they put the word in caps.

How could you possibly know whether they have ruled "based solely on LAW"? How could you tell if a part of a decision was "politics"? What is "plain language law"? The bits of a decision you think you understand, meanwhile the other stuff is what, tricksy lawyer law?



Christ... you people judge decisions solely on the basis of whether you like the result or not. If on the right, this "judger" screams "activist judges!" if they don't like the result and "solely followed the LAW" if they do like it. If on the right, you get the opposite. It's just a right wing conspiracy to damage liberals if they don't like the result, and it's the judges "doing the right thing" if they like that result.

And you all say it with such conviction, like you actually do believe you have the tools required to identify the One True Meaning and thus *just know* whether the judges have followed the allcaps LAW and when it must be "politics".

Ridiculous. Parties appoint judges based on their existing track record, and not being attorneys you will only be able to understand so much of the decision by reading it. You also will have no idea how that decision applied or changed existing law without reading all the relevant cases and areas of caselaw it draws on. I've never seen anyone attempt that on DP.



Just throwaway one-liners, based solely on whether the speaker likes the result.

If you take a look at the "surprises" coming from the court, they're almost always from a set of so-called conservative judges who do not vote in a politically conservative way. For example, Barrett, we were told, was going to "kill Obamacare." What you almost never see is the court's liberal judges surprising us. We almost always know how they're going to vote when we know the Democrat's position on the given issue.

There's a very simple reason for this. The conservatives on the court are far more likely to put politics aside and base their decision on the law than our the court's liberals. As I've said before, there are three types of judges:

1. Liberal activists.
2. Conservative activists.
3. Constructionists.

Only the third is politically neutral, and we've not had a Democratically appointed justice who hasn't been a liberal activist in generations.

Lovebug said:

Interesting read, hopefully calming some of the hysteria.

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It's early yet.

NatMorton said:

If you take a look at the "surprises" coming from the court, they're almost always from a set of so-called conservative judges who do not vote in a politically conservative way. For example, Barrett, we were told, was going to "kill Obamacare." What you almost never see is the court's liberal judges surprising us. We
almost always know how they're going to vote when we know the Democrat's position on the given issue.

There's a very simple reason for this. The conservatives on the court are far more likely to put politics aside and base their decision on the law than our the court's liberals.

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Conservative judges are inconsistent far more often than liberal judges... and therefore its conservative judges who follow the law more often? I'm not sure that follows Assuming the law itself was consistent, your claim/observation would seem more compatible with a scenario in which 'liberal' judges usually follow the (mostly 'liberal') law, and conservative judges occasionally do.

Mithrae said:

Conservative judges are inconsistent far more often than liberal judges... and therefore its conservative judges who follow the law more often? I'm not sure that follows Assuming the law itself was consistent, your claim/observation would seem more compatible with a scenario in which 'liberal' judges usually follow the (mostly 'liberal') law, and conservative judges occasionally do.

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Inconsistent from a political perspective, yes. Anyone sticking to purely legal interpretation is bound to upset both sides over time. That liberal judges rarely, if ever, upset the Democratic faithful is a strong indication those judges are rendering opinions based on politics and not the law.

MamboDervish said:

It's early yet.

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It is indeed.