OK! It's About Time. The Court Thread!

[ashie62]

RBG will gut it out, rest assured

[batmagadanleadoff]

If anybody here has the time and interest to read a tour de force District Court opinion shredding the qualified immunity doctrine, follow the link below. It's a 72 page decision, but each page has about a quarter of the amount of text of a conventional book, so think something like 18 pages.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... endon.html

[nymr83]

If anybody here has the time and interest to read a tour de force District Court opinion shredding the qualified immunity doctrine, follow the link below. It's a 72 page decision, but each page has about a quarter of the amount of text of a conventional book, so think something like 18 pages.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... endon.html

I commend this judge for spending 71.9 pages ripping law he doesnt like and 0.1 pages doing his job and applying it anyway.

[Lefty Specialist]

If anybody here has the time and interest to read a tour de force District Court opinion shredding the qualified immunity doctrine, follow the link below. It's a 72 page decision, but each page has about a quarter of the amount of text of a conventional book, so think something like 18 pages.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... endon.html

I commend this judge for spending 71.9 pages ripping law he doesnt like and 0.1 pages doing his job and applying it anyway.

Yeah, that's the problem. The ripping didn't really amount to anything in the end. I guess it made him feel good to get it off his chest, though.

[nymr83]

he did his job and sent the clearest possible signal he could asking a higher court to do what he feels they should.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The Jamison decision is getting national attention.

Judge’s blistering opinion says courts have placed police beyond accountability
A federal judge in Mississippi said a White police officer’s stop of a Black driver was a miscarriage of justice, but he still dismissed the man’s civil suit because of a controversial legal doctrine.

Excerpt:

The federal judge made clear in his blistering opinion that he thought Clarence Jamison was doing nothing more than driving a Mercedes as a Black man when he was stopped by a White Mississippi police officer. The officer detained Jamison for nearly two hours, tore his car apart looking for drugs and left him on the side of the road when nothing was found.

U.S. District Court Judge Carlton W. Reeves placed the 2013 case alongside others that have sparked outrage, citing the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police. He lamented that thousands had lost their lives to police use-of-force and countless others had been subject to misconduct by officers.

Even so, Reeves dismissed Jamison’s civil suit arguing that Richland police officer Nick McClendon had violated his rights. In an opinion released Monday, Reeves wrote that the case was a miscarriage of justice, but that his hands were tied by a once-obscure legal doctrine that is coming under increasing fire as the nation reckons with how to hold police responsible for misdeeds: qualified immunity.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-la ... ntability/

[batmagadanleadoff]

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said: "We are on the verge of a crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court. We have to take this challenge head on, and everything is on the table to do that," per Politico. She said she is open to the idea of court packing.

https://www.axios.com/court-packing-whe ... 652f9.html

[batmagadanleadoff]

I'm calculating that it'll be eight years at the earliest, 2028, before Florida's felons could vote in a presidential election. That's if a new measure passes in 2022. Then Republican obstruction will keep the new measure in limbo for at least two years as its tied up in new litigation. That'll take it past the 2024 election.

Unless a Dem admin gets to replace Clarence Thomas or the Dems pack the courts.

Florida libs who voted for Jill Stein in 2016 should get strangled.

Or if the Dems sweep into power this election, those Florida felons could vote in 2024 if the new administration passes federal legislation allowing all felons nationally, who completed their sentences for non-violent crimes, to vote without the imposition of financial costs as a prerequisite to voting. The GOP would go nuts, and shout out about socialist libs letting criminals go wild but the truth is that non-violent felons are allowed to vote in just about every state. This proposed law would really be micro-targeting Florida. The GOP would still fight that proposed law to the death -- claiming that the law infringes on states' rights to administer elections. Of course, they'll fight. They'll fight because they don't give a half an inch, but also because the issue is a GOP existential question: the GOP likely can't win a presidential election without Florida.*


*Yet Trump would've won the 2016 election even without Florida. His electoral votes were perfectly placed and his electoral college win was like pulling inside straights in consecutive hands.

[Lefty Specialist]

People don't care until it affects them. Republicans figured this out 40 years ago and have been remaking the judiciary ever since. It's only now that regular people are waking up and going 'whoa'.

Biden's being non-committal about court reform, which is as it should be. He's smart enough to know that any answer he gives will piss of somebody. So hold onto the ambiguity as long as you can, Joe. Then expand the federal courts and the Supreme Court once you're safely ensconced. And do it early because there's always an election coming up. Shock and awe on January 21st. Start vetting candidates now, and if Republicans complain you're rushing things, tell them to pound sand. Nicely, of course.

Four extras and a replacement for Breyer, who has to retire ASAP. He's 84, and as RBG proved, you can't live forever.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I'm much more confident now than a few months ago that the Dems will pack the court. It's because of the Dems totally unified public position in "mumsing the word" on the issue. Personally, I don't see what choice the Dems have after the outrageous power grab to fill RBG's seat but to pack the court. If the Dems don't respond to the latest Comey Barrett abuse, they might as well just go home and forfeit the government to the GOP.

On a side but related note, I was dissapointed a bit in Bill Maher last night. Turns out he's just learning that packing the court merely involves passing legislation and not the more buredensome procedure of amending the Constitution. He sounded a little shaky, too, knowldege-wise on the topic.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Ronald Reagan's former Solicitor General, Charles Fried, publishes an opinion in the NYT, where he suggests that Biden and the Dems might have no other alternative but to pack the courts if they sweep into power. Fried's definitiely onto the GOP, as the Roberts court destroys precedents and attaches the imprimatur of Constitutional rights to its anti-majority decisions, so that those decisions can't be legislated away.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/opin ... court.html

Fried opines that packing the court is not the best idea, but that the alternatives are even worse.

Excerpt:

Such a move would make blazingly clear what some of us hope is not quite true: that the court is a partisan political institution, a conception that would invite further rounds of enlargement in a different political moment.

But to paraphrase Churchill, such a maneuver is a bad idea, except for all the alternatives. Here the alternatives boil down to just one: a predictable, reactionary majority on the Supreme Court for perhaps as long as another generation.

I write reactionary, not conservative, because true conservative judges like John Marshall Harlan II are incrementalists, not averse to change, respectful of precedent and unlikely to come into the grips of radical fantasies like eliminating or remaking the modern regulatory-administrative state.

[Fman99]

If the Republicans didn't want the Dems to pack the courts they should have probably given Merrick Garland the hearing he deserved four years ago. Sad that their blatant, abhorrent 2020 hypocrisy over Barrett has gone largely unchecked due to the stupidness of the current White House occupancy.

[batmagadanleadoff]

If the Republicans didn't want the Dems to pack the courts they should have probably given Merrick Garland the hearing he deserved four years ago. Sad that their blatant, abhorrent 2020 hypocrisy over Barrett has gone largely unchecked due to the stupidness of the current White House occupancy.

I think about this all the time. Really. I still do. Things would be different if the GOP gave Garland his interviews, held public hearings and then voted him down, which was their right. I still wonder why the GOP didn't do that instead of inventing this rule that a SCOTUS opening can't be filled in a Presidential election year.

Was that a political calculation? The GOP would've had to go on the record, and make public statements during the process explaining why they denied Garland his SCOTUS confirmation. Were they worried that the public wouldn't buy that stance given that Garland was confirmed to the DC court with strong bipartisan support from a GOP controlled Senate by a vote of 76-23? Or was their blockade motivated mainly by a mean-spirited desire to give Obama another "fuck you"? I still wonder.

[nymr83]

I don't remember the exact math at the time, but my guess is they wouldn't have been able to hold on to Collins, Murkowski, McCain and maybe others if they'd had an up/down vote. McConnell gambled - and he was right in 2016 - that the court wasn't really in the public mind and there was no political sense in having televised hearings to put it there, instead a bunch of articles would be written that only people who are 'tuned in' to politics and already had their minds made up would read.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I don't remember the exact math at the time, but my guess is they wouldn't have been able to hold on to Collins, Murkowski, McCain and maybe others if they'd had an up/down vote.

Why would their Senate seats be in jeopardy for voting down a Democratic President's nominee? And Collins's next election was four years away. And then, why was the GOP comfortable with Collins voting for Kavanaugh, which, predictably, caused greater political problems for Collins, given her stances on abortion rights?

Here's an idea: maybe the GOP was concerned that if they voted down Garland, Obama would nominate another judge, this one even more centrist than Garland, and then the GOP would have to vote down yet another nominee.

And of course, it had little to do with 2016 being a Presidential election year and everything to do with controlling the Supreme Court no matter what it would take. At least three GOP Senators, Richard Burr, Ted Cruz and John McCain gave the game away when they said that a GOP controlled Senate would extend its SCOTUS blockade even throughout a Hillary presidency if need be. That the Scalia vacancy occurred during a Presidential election year was just a flimsy GOP pretext for keeping that seat open -- a pretext flimsier now by orders of magnitude given the GOP's current position on replacing RBG.

[nymr83]

Why would their Senate seats be in jeopardy for voting down a Democratic President's nominee?

sorry, you misunderstood me - I meant that McConnell may not have been 100'% sure he could count on them to vote "no" if an actual vote had been allowed.

Here's an idea: maybe the GOP was concerned that if they voted down Garland, Obama would nominate another judge, this one even more centrist than Garland, and then the GOP would have to vote down yet another nominee.

quite the opposite. they were afraid Hillary could appoint a MORE LIBERAL judge if they voted "no" on Garland. by not taking action on his nomination, they could still vote 'yes' on him post-election if Hillary had won, because Obama wouldn't have wthdrawn the nomination. they werent going to SAY that of course.

[Lefty Specialist]

All speculation on my part, but I think if Hillary had won she would probably have re-nominated Garland, knowing that nominating someone even more liberal would have gotten nowhere in McConnell's senate.

Good to see the Democrats will boycott the committee vote on Barrett. It won't change anything but it sends a message.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I don't remember the exact math at the time, but my guess is they wouldn't have been able to hold on to Collins, Murkowski, McCain and maybe others if they'd had an up/down vote

I don't believe that this was the reason for the blockade. McCain himself was on record as threatening to extend the blockade through a Hillary Presidency if the GOP were to hold the Senate, which it did. So McCain was clearly a safe "no" vote for the GOP on the Garland confirmation, had that process come to an actual vote.

But more importantly, the GOP held a 54 seat Senate majority. And with the SCOTUS filibuster still in place in 2016, the Democrats would've needed to flip at least 14 Republican Senators to secure Garland's confirmation -- and that just wasn't happening, no matter how Collins or Murkowski might've voted. The GOP's rejection of Garland in an actual confirmation hearing was very safe at hand should it have come to that.

quite the opposite. they were afraid Hillary could appoint a MORE LIBERAL judge if they voted "no" on Garland. by not taking action on his nomination, they could still vote 'yes' on him post-election if Hillary had won, because Obama wouldn't have wthdrawn the nomination. they werent going to SAY that of course.

I disagree, but now we're gonna get into mostly opinions instead of facts. There were cries from the rooftops and the mountaintops for Hillary to nominate someone much more liberal than Garland if she had won the election. That was a huge risk the GOP took if the reason you cite was the justification for the blockade. I think Hillary would've loved to dare the GOP to keep that seat open for another two, maybe four years. Plus, the Supreme Court would been deadlocked in an ideological and political 4-4 split for the most part, with the Dems holding a 5-3 advantage on most gender and abortion issues with Kennedy on the court. That would've been a much better position for Dems and liberals than the way it was with Scalia still on the court. So I strongly doubt that Hillary was averse to replacing Garland as the nominee.

So I still wonder, even right now -- why did the GOP go for that blockade, with its intellectually insulting rationale?

[batmagadanleadoff]

Please, Charlie: Don't give up hope. What other hope is there for the Dems without court-packing? Jeez, those scumbags stole two "flipped" seats. They prevented the Dems from flipping Scalia's seat to a liberal. And now they're flipping RBG's seat to a Federalist Society supreme nutjob.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the idea of expanding the Court is as dead as Kelsey's nuts. I'd love to be wrong about this.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/p ... judiciary/

[Edgy MD]

It may be your policy of choice, but there's plenty of hope without court packing.

[batmagadanleadoff]

It may be your policy of choice, but there's plenty of hope without court packing.

Like what? Neil Gorsuch and Bret Kavanaugh's car falling from a 300 feet cliff during a Dem administration? Get real.

You have 20 years to wait for Texas and Florida and Georgia to become solidly blue demographically? And then another 20 years for these young and crazy nutjob Trump Justices to finally retire? Meanwhile, the Dems can't win the Senate without a miracle wave election and a once in a lifetime worldwide pandemic to torpedo Trump who by now, I'm certain, can shoot a man dead on 5th Avenue with impunity and without justification and get away with it.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Please, Charlie: Don't give up hope. What other hope is there for the Dems without court-packing? Jeez, those scumbags stole two "flipped" seats. They prevented the Dems from flipping Scalia's seat to a liberal. And now they're flipping RBG's seat to a Federalist Society supreme nutjob.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the idea of expanding the Court is as dead as Kelsey's nuts. I'd love to be wrong about this.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/p ... judiciary/

Jeez, youse should read that linked piece. It's starting already. Biden's suggesting a bipartisan committee to reform the courts, should he win. I hope he's just deflecting the constant question he's getting about his position on court-packing. Because if he thinks he's gonna work with Republicans to reform the Courts fairly, after the maneuvering and 25 moves ahead of the Dems chess game the GOP has been playing with the judiciary, he's fucking nuts. And weak.

I can't believe what the Dems worry over after what the GOP does. It reminds me of early WWII, with the Poles and Czechs fighting the modern Nazi blitzkrieging war machine with fucking horses, still stuck in an obsolete WWI mindset. The game has changed and the Dems will, as usual, have their decapitated heads handed to them on a spike by the GOP if their harshest plan is to hope to talk the GOP into bipartisan cooperation. It's a fucking life or death political war out there and right now, the Dems are those late 1930s Poles and Czechs getting absolutely slaughtered by the Nazis.

[Edgy MD]

It may be your policy of choice, but there's plenty of hope without court packing.

Like what? Neil Gorsuch and Bret Kavanaugh's car falling from a 300 feet cliff during a Dem administration? Get real.

Please don't ask questions and then answer them yourself and then tell me to "get real" because you reject the answer that I didn't give.

[batmagadanleadoff]

It may be your policy of choice, but there's plenty of hope without court packing.

Like what? Neil Gorsuch and Bret Kavanaugh's car falling from a 300 feet cliff during a Dem administration? Get real.

Please don't ask questions and then answer them yourself and then tell me to "get real" because you reject the answer that I didn't give.

Oh, a little good-natured snarkiness never hurt anybody. But fair enough. So, like what?

[Edgy MD]

It certainly hurts meaningful, good faith, reasoned exchanges.

As for where hope lies, it depends on where you're trying to get. But there are always a thousand paths if we're willing to walk them.