RIP RBG

[Hot Pepsi]

Same as Ursus. We talk a good game about civil war, but there are lots of crazy Tumpists in what we think of as very Democratic states like Massachusetts and California, let alone in more purple ones. And there are lots of people who you'd hate to see stuck in a New Confederacy who don't deserve it. Particularly the people who were in the Old Confederacy.

The potential positives are that all this judicial activism could drive the electorate to act, particularly when voting for state legislatures if they discover how utterly rotten their own legislature is and how much power the supremes are giving it. And that the federal legislature acts to reduce the power of the Supreme Court. And that it actually implements legislation on climate change and abortion and so on.

But, frankly, I think a lot of that is wishful thinking. It might happen, but it probably won't, and if it does it'll take time.

Well, if we just devolved into something like the EU, people in those states could vote with their feet, possibly.

I think it will just take a while, sadly.*

Climate change and health care are the issues that are most likely to cause change because they affect the most people. Abortion, immigration, even voting rights are not visible to a lot of people, especially white people.

But it's getting harder and harder for people in the south and west to pretend climate change isn't real and the ongoing collapse of the health system, such as it is, is becoming more and more evident to more people.

It's all just overwhelmingly bad and it's put me in one of the darkest places I've ever been.

But then I also realize that it's an enormous and obscene privilege to feel that way. For many (most?) Black people, women, natives, etc, this is the world they've always lived in. They have managed, so I guess I can too.


* Then again, we don't really know because I don't think there's any precedent for our current combination of factors since the industrial revolution. Maybe the closest comparison I can imagine would be the French Revolution in that it had a huge gap in wealth and an idiotic form of government that was also extremely unpopular. But it didn't really have a middle-class or industry so it's not much of a comp.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/monicahesse/status/1542952608020811777?s=21&t=fZWk_-6eD_0Qi1nhOLillQ

[Satchmo Distel]

People with no equity in their housing due to the legacy of redlining can't really move. It's worse than Jim Crow in that respect, which at least had an escape route via the Great Migration (OTOH Chicago was also a racist shithole, as MLK discovered, but at least you could move there and have strength in numbers).

[Satchmo Distel]

I wonder if someone in the GOP will ask their SCOTUS buddies to delay the next set of fascism until after the midterms?

[ursus arctos]

They don't have to,

No decisions of the full Court are scheduled to be announced before mid-November, which is quite typical.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/grantxfox/status/1543204995528626176?t=cIz3n-aY8vD294FSjczouQ&s=19

[john the revelator]

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...m-true-meaning Great piece in Guardian by Robert Reich about patriotism, back to basic principles of what it is to be a patriot

[Satchmo Distel]

But the Puritans defined patriotism as loyalty only to the Kingdom of Christ, which is the genealogy operating with these judges.

[San Bernardhinault]

So, I see that John Roberts has decided to not discover that Samuel Alito leaked the Dobbs draft opinion. I suppose that's all Roberts could do. If it was someone lower down the ladder I'm sure that they would have been thrown under the bus and we'd have been told that the Supremes are strict at dealing with this kind of stuff. But as it was Alito, if he was revealed as the leaker there's really nothing that the court could do to sanction him, nor anyone else, and we'd have a court basically admitting that it is flawed and broken and unable to act properly yet also unable to reform itself because of the lifetime appointments process.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/elienyc/status/1616157152137052193?s=61&t=2UkyCgw419H-mYY2twAE_A

[ursus arctos]

We also aren't sure that it was Alito and not Thomas (via Ginny)

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/jodikantor/status/1617350714908459008?s=61&t=w6QpiUJuYBas1w_mqS2ooQ

[San Bernardhinault]

As I was saying. Roberts had to very, very carefully make sure that he couldn't discover that one of the Supremes was responsible, given what the consequences would be.

[Hot Pepsi]

What consequences? They're immune from consequences.

[San Bernardhinault]

That is the point. There are no consequences. If Roberts had told us that one of his justices who was deciding how the country was run was corrupt and broken and flawed, and that nothing could be done, and this justice was going to carry on doing this for the next few decades, then he'd have basically trashed the validity of every decision the court made. Plus a whole bunch of previous decisions, too.

We all know that the Supreme Court is broken, but Roberts can't tell us that.

[Hot Pepsi]

"Validity" according to whom? It's still the law. They're not worried about angry tweets from Harvard Law people.

[San Bernardhinault]

"Validity" according to whom? It's still the law. They're not worried about angry tweets from Harvard Law people.

I think it would be very hard to defend any 5-4 decision where Alito was the deciding vote had Roberts actually told us Alito was the leaker.

[Hot Pepsi]

They don't have to defend it.

[San Bernardhinault]

Hard disagree. If the public don't see your court or rulings as legitimate they become much easier for future courts to overturn and for Congress to legislate out. Also, if you're Roberts and apparently concerned about history and legacy, you're going to end up hung up about the idea of public perception of legitimacy. Also, if the public thinks you're bullshit, that makes the argument for term limits and court packing and the rest much harder to resist.

[Hot Pepsi]

The argument for abolishing the court - let alone term limits and court packing - is already pretty fucking irresistible and yet the senate and president are having no trouble resisting it, not least of all because the illegitimacy of the supreme court is a direct reflection of the illegitimacy of the senate itself, and yet here we are.

In cases where the constitution and/or the law is not serving the welfare of the people, it's up to the people through congress and the constitutional amendment process to change that. But the constitutional amendment process and the way congress, especially the senate, is elected is not democratically legitimate. It never has been (in fact, it used to be a lot worse)


What evidence is there that this supposed "legitimacy" matters to anyone outside of a handful of smart-but-insulated people on twitter and constitutional scholars (large overlap between those two groups). And it's quite clear that their opinion doesn't matter to the court matter any more.

We'd like to think it matters to Roberts, but that hasn't helped so far. Maybe it will eventually. But the rest of them don't give a shit. They know their opinions are unpopular, making US less democratic and making life harder for everyone who isn't white, property-owning, cis, hetero and male. They don't care. I don't know what they care about, but it's not the consent of the governed, that's for sure.

Trust in the supreme court is already the lowest it's been in 50 years but that doesn't bother the court's majority at all.

That ~47% of poll respondeants that thinks the court is doing a good job only thinks that because of prejudice and ideology (or because they aren't paying attention at all), not because they respect the way the majority goes about its business and the quality of it's legal reasoning.

Alito could be convicted of murder and they'd still think he's somehow God's instrument of justice or some shit. He probably thinks that too.


* At least, as far as I can tell. But sometimes I really think that the constitution is hopeless. It was written in a way to make sure slave states would ratify it and the post-Civil War amendments really were not intended to establish equality and fairness so we can't be shocked when they fail to do that. But if we tried to just start over, we'd end up with something worse.

[WOM]

Hard disagree. If the public don't see your court or rulings as legitimate they become much easier for future courts to overturn and for Congress to legislate out.

That's hardly a fear for Thomas, et al, if they know that could happen...you know...50 years from now. People have been disagreeing with Rowe since, what, 1975? Thomas will be a ripe old 125 before that bothers his day.

[Lang Spoon]

Is there an irresistible argument for abolition? Call me a naive fool but a constitutional check by the judiciary on legislation and executive power isn't something to lightly give away. Thats not the same as saying this shitfire of a broken court and constitution is in any way fit for anything but destroying.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/propublica/status/1643929027353124864?s=61&t=xvOireV8JOIS_CpbTtDBow

[ursus arctos]

BTW, I think the Israeli protests provide a striking response to the Spoon's rhetorical question of January

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/mjs_dc/status/1643973021382713344?s=61&t=xvOireV8JOIS_CpbTtDBow