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Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

More evidence that it's always been Calvinball.

If you’re arguing for the attitudinal model or the strategic model that’s one thing, but I don’t believe history supports the idea that Supreme Court justices or Federal bench were always mostly partisan actors or mostly advocates for particular interests, prior to the dominance of the Federalist Society.
I’m not going to argue with you about matters of law, but in terms of history this is a recent phenomenon. That’s why I was ringing the fire alarm about Leegin two decades back when @washparkhorn was still caping for citizens united. If you knew anything about how the commercial economy operated, Leegin was a holy shit moment.

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted
2 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:


Look, institutions come and go but a robust and equitable legal system is the only one we absolutely have to have in a constitutional Republic, and it seems to be failing.

There are four basic historical paths from this point, listed below. Two are violent, two are not, and it’s likely we won’t know which one we are on for 10-15 more years.

1) The Republic Holds: slow but successful return to norms via the institutions and the ballot box.
Precedent- Italy, but they weren’t nearly as far down the path.

2) Chaos: some flavor of civil war (cold or hot) or armed domestic conflict(s) eventually leading to a new order.  Precedent- lots

3) America, Humbled: lose a war with an ascendant power.
Precedent- Germany

4) SPQR: terminal but mostly peaceful decline and eventual collapse.
Precedent - Rome
 

The first path would be the most likely but requires the American elite to awaken from our hubris and recognize where we are.  The second and third path  strip us of it at a devastating human cost. The fourth lets us keep our hubris but we lose the Republic, even if we retain its costume.

 

FIFY

Posted
43 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Wouldn’t a 9-0 decision to seriously limit a popular and powerful POTUS suggest it hasn’t always been this level of Calvinball.

I'd suggest that the entire era was largely characterized by politicization, rather than Humphrey's Executor itself.  Four of the justices politically opposed to FDR, the rest more agnostic, but also acutely aware of the scenario.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_switch_in_time_that_saved_nine

But yeah, FedSoc vetting/training has been extraordinarily good for their purposes and takes things to a level heretofore unseen.  Or like no one has ever seen before.

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Posted

The Court has always been political. It used to be common to nominate politicians and political operatives who had little-to-no judicial experience to the Court. But they operated in different contexts than we have today, contexts in which they understood the necessity of couching what were partially political decisions in something that at least resembled Law. As awful as it was, as wrong as it was, even Dred Scott was based on a thread of an intelligible legal theory. Lochner and the Slaughterhouse cases were based on intelligible legal theories. They were theories I very much disagree with and which I think are contrary to our Constitution, but they were coherent as legal arguments. Similarly, the changes brought about by the Warren Court were based on intelligible legal theories that had been around for a long time. The Warren Court was political, but it wasn't just nakedly siding with its preferred party with no or little reasoning and conflicting justifications from case to case. 

The Court has been awful more often than not during the history of our country. Never before has it made dozens of District court judges look at their decisions and go "what the fuck are we supposed to do with this?"

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Posted
11 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

The Court has been awful more often than not during the history of our country. Never before has it made dozens of District court judges look at their decisions and go "what the fuck are we supposed to do with this?"

QFMFT. It's like they're intentionally trying to make the government more dysfunctional - oh wait ...



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