They are really stupid.
Still 5-3 even with her recused. And if by some twist of fate Roberts agrees and it’s 4-4, the lower court decision (likely by some Trump judges, given the circuits the challenge would be brought in) will stand.
Nah, the goal of a class like Con Law is to teach you how 200+ years of case law built on a relatively short governing document ended up with the robust constitutional law we have today. Like “how did we get from ‘Congress has the power to regulate commerce among the several states’ to ‘congress can make it illegal to grow marijuana for your personal use’?”. They will have a chain of cases going from Wicker v Filburn up to the Raich v Gonzales case and the conclusion you’re supposed to draw is that all of these cases were logical conclusions of the prior cases. In a lot of instances, that is laughably wrong or, at minimum, there was enough prior conflicting case law that the court could have convincingly defended any number of decisions.
The logic in the marijuana case was “yes, growing your own pot at home to smoke doesn’t involve interstate commerce, but you MIGHT sell it to someone in the state next door, which would implicate interstate commerce. Really, there’s no way of knowing what you plan to do with that pot. In fact, if you’re NOT selling it to your buddy in the next state over, you’re actually reducing the overall supply in the market which might increase the price of marijuana across the board. So, we’re going to allow the DEA to arrest home growers with no proof the marijuana will ever leave the growers property.” Like… the argument is valid, I guess, but you can make an equally convincing argument of “the burden is on the feds to prove this product moves across state lines”. **
My con law professor certainly didn’t spend any time discussing political motivations behind decisions or the arbitrary nature of a lot of case law.
**This opinion was signed by the liberal lion of the court RBG along with a handful of other liberal justices. So. Cool.
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The Rabbis call this kind of thing “building fences”. It’s how “no work on the Sabbath” gets to where you can’t turn on a light switch.
Right. Where they lose all credibility is when you flip to the next page and the outcome of the following case is that a federal law banning guns in school zones is struck down as exceeding Commerce Clause authority. Of course guns are interstate commerce, they’re manufactured, shipped and sold all over the country, guns are obviously far more related to interstate commerce than a marijuana plant in some guy’s backyard, especially when that guy has a state-issued permit to grow it for his own personal use.
They would do a lot better to just admit that the court is obviously subject to political views, than to pretend there is any kind of intellectual consistency.
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Maybe this isn’t a new or a hot take, but thinking about it this morning, Dems shouldn’t use the nomination process to try and fight the nominee. They shouldn’t even ask her legitimate “questions” about Roe, Obamacare arguments in the courts, etc. We know she’s a ghoul and will make ghoulish decisions. And we know she’s being confirmed.
D question time should be used to promote and frame the issues that poll highest: Obamacare, women’s health, LGBTQ rights, just doing it in “question” form (and frankly, the only reason for framing it as questions is because I don’t think speeches that ignore the nominee will get media coverage):
- “Are you aware that Obamacare was the first time in our nation’s history that people with pre-existing conditions were protected from being thrown off their insurance?”
- “Are you aware that if Obamacare is struck down, 11 million Americans will lose health insurance, many being vulnerable to die without the medications they desperately need?”
- “Are you aware that there are religious zealots who think our LGBTQ deserve to die, or are going to hell?”
- "Do you know the story of [insert person], who after 20+ year of living a life, married to his partner, that was deemed illegal under state law, finally was able to live an open, equal life, out of the shadows, after the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell?
Hell, have 1 or 2 of the committee members do 5-10 minutes on Coronavirus. “Do you believe it’s a hoax?” “The United States has the most COVID deaths and cases, and our medical experts say that wearing masks is one of the easiest and most effective things we can do to control the spread of the virus. Yet across this nation we have people suing in court for the right to not wear a mask and to be able to infect their neighbors and communities. That’s fucked up, right?”
The above examples may be terrible, and there are probably better “questions” - get that House impeachment lawyer on the job - but I feel this is the way to go. Anything else will be framed as combative whining by the media. Every soundbite of a D in committee should be about an issue, however tangentially related to the nominee, not process.
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And right on cue we get the “I’m a liberal but I went to school with Amy or clerked with Amy and she’s really nice so you guys should stop being mean” garbage.
Democrats should spend exactly zero time talking about this individual nominee.
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Does she drive kids to basketball games? These are the facts we need.
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Focus the whole thing on the ACA, Roe and LGBTQ rights. Just politely ask her questions she won’t answer and then frame it as a GOP attack on those things spearheaded by Trump and McConnell.
Bad justices don’t kill people, Trump and McConnell do.
I personally really want to know if she likes beer. Or if she ever liked beer. DOES SHE STILL LIKE BEER, DAMNIT?!
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Voting rights, too.
Have one Senator start their questioning with “Judge Ghoul, do you believe voting is a right? Do you believe everyone should have fair and equal access to the ballot box? Do you believe we should make it easier, or harder, for people to vote?”
Then spend the next 5 minutes or however long you get with “Are you aware?” questions of all the things R’s do to make it harder to vote. Ask her if she knows what’s in HR1. If yes, repeat it. If no, list out everything D’s will do for voting rights.
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These are all great ideas.
Which means the Democrats wont do any of them.
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I’m more interested in if she kept her grade school calendars.
Honestly I get way more upset watching democrat hearings than listening to a trump press conference.
Yeah trumps insane, says dumb shit, and almost everything he says is a lie. I’m used to that shit now.
Dems just being completely weak, pathetic morons is way more tilting.
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Law school sounds even worse than I imagined. In science, people try to backfit pretzel-twisted logic to (fake) results all the time because formally challenging an established paper is tough. There are entire bodies of literature based on completely fabricated bullshit (see: priming in psychology). At least it’s possible though because there are ways to test if some muppet is faking or subtly manipulating data. In other words, there’s testable empirical measureme that has basis in objective reality.
Obviously law is not science and there are few parallels there, but what’s their philosophical explanation for why law is a thing worthy of academic rigor at all? If you’re forced to accept the conclusion that self-contradicting smoothbrains like Scalia are always correct, doesn’t it just reduce to appeal to authority?
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I think they need to ask her how she feels about being in office “for life”. Does she have a retirement plan? Does she intend to retire at 65? 70? Never? Does she think all workers are entitled to keep their jobs for life? Would she step aside if a President asked her to, so that he could name a younger replacement of the same “judicial” philosophy? Does Alzheimer’s run in her family?
WaPo gonna WaPo
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Reading her history it’s seems like she might end up being the most conservative justice. Am I Over reading?
No, she is a complete psycho. It is shocking to me they picked Gorsuch over her last time.
Nothing to fear, it’s not like she’s going to round us up and kill us. That’s what striking down the ACA is for!
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Her religion doesn’t matter to me. She’s an originalist and fuck originalism. I’m a postmodern Living Constitution guy.
She questions the legitimacy of the Fourteenth Amendment. That should scare everyone.
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