The US Supreme Court

[Tero]

Another court achievement: you can buy congress. Dark money.

[JimC]

"Merka has the best democracy money can buy..."

[L'Emmerdeur]

An article about teaching law in the era of the 'conservative' supermajority on the US Supreme Court. It's from Slate, which is/was despised by Forty Two, so can't be all bad.

'The Supreme Court Is Blowing Up Law School, Too'

At law schools across the country, thousands of professors of constitutional law are currently facing a court that, in their view, has let the mask of neutrality fall off completely. Six conservative justices are steering the court head-on into the most controversial debates of the day and consistently siding with the Republican Party. Increasingly, the conservative majority does not even bother to provide any reasoning for its decisions, exploiting the shadow docket to overhaul the law without a word of explanation. The crisis reached its zenith between September 2021 and June 2022, when the Supreme Court let Texas impose its vigilante abortion ban through the shadow docket, then abolished a 50-year-old right to bodily autonomy by overruling Roe v. Wade. Now law professors are faced with a quandary: How—and why—should you teach law to students while the Supreme Court openly changes the meaning of the Constitution to align with the GOP?

A version of this question has long dogged the profession, which has fought over the distinction between law and politics for about as long as it has existed. For decades, however, the court has handed enough victories to both sides of the political spectrum that it has avoided a full-on academic revolt against its legitimacy. That dynamic changed when Trump appointed Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to replace far less conservative predecessors and created a Republican-appointed supermajority, a coalition further aided by the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to a seat that should have been filled by Barack Obama. The cascade of far-right rulings in 2022 confirmed that the new court is eager to shred long-held precedents it deems too liberal as quickly as possible. The pace and scale of this revolution is requiring law professors to adapt on several levels—intellectually, pedagogically, and emotionally.

[Joe]

An article about teaching law in the era of the 'conservative' supermajority on the US Supreme Court. It's from Slate, which is/was despised by Forty Two, so can't be all bad.

'The Supreme Court Is Blowing Up Law School, Too'

At law schools across the country, thousands of professors of constitutional law are currently facing a court that, in their view, has let the mask of neutrality fall off completely. Six conservative justices are steering the court head-on into the most controversial debates of the day and consistently siding with the Republican Party. Increasingly, the conservative majority does not even bother to provide any reasoning for its decisions, exploiting the shadow docket to overhaul the law without a word of explanation. The crisis reached its zenith between September 2021 and June 2022, when the Supreme Court let Texas impose its vigilante abortion ban through the shadow docket, then abolished a 50-year-old right to bodily autonomy by overruling Roe v. Wade. Now law professors are faced with a quandary: How—and why—should you teach law to students while the Supreme Court openly changes the meaning of the Constitution to align with the GOP?

A version of this question has long dogged the profession, which has fought over the distinction between law and politics for about as long as it has existed. For decades, however, the court has handed enough victories to both sides of the political spectrum that it has avoided a full-on academic revolt against its legitimacy. That dynamic changed when Trump appointed Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to replace far less conservative predecessors and created a Republican-appointed supermajority, a coalition further aided by the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to a seat that should have been filled by Barack Obama. The cascade of far-right rulings in 2022 confirmed that the new court is eager to shred long-held precedents it deems too liberal as quickly as possible. The pace and scale of this revolution is requiring law professors to adapt on several levels—intellectually, pedagogically, and emotionally.

I heard a law professor call this the YOLO court. They're in such a tearing hurry to execute the Federalist Society agenda they've forgotten they can be ignored if they piss off enough people.

[L'Emmerdeur]

I heard a law professor call this the YOLO court. They're in such a tearing hurry to execute the Federalist Society agenda they've forgotten they can be ignored if they piss off enough people.

A Republican administration would be happy to do its best to enforce the diktats of this court, I think. The MAGA project is doing a fair job of instituting a white Christian minority hegemony in the US: Several of the Federalist Society justices on Supreme Court apparently consider themselves to be instruments of their god, put on the bench to ensure his righteousness is manifested in the laws of the country.

[rainbow]

I blame the French

[Svartalf]

Fuck you, we've been fighting that dominionist abomination for two centuries and more.

[Scot Dutchy]

Of all churches in the Netherlands only four out of ten that still exist are used for religious purposes.
Plenty for sale and some are very cold.

[Tero]

The court is not going to be able to "legislate" from the bench for the former president.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/04/politics ... index.html

[Joe]

I heard a law professor call this the YOLO court. They're in such a tearing hurry to execute the Federalist Society agenda they've forgotten they can be ignored if they piss off enough people.

A Republican administration would be happy to do its best to enforce the diktats of this court, I think. The MAGA project is doing a fair job of instituting a white Christian minority hegemony in the US: Several of the Federalist Society justices on Supreme Court apparently consider themselves to be instruments of their god, put on the bench to ensure his righteousness is manifested in the laws of the country.

Sure, but if they can't keep Democrats out of power the backlast will be severe. After all, court packing is constitutional.

[L'Emmerdeur]

I think we can depend on the Democrats to fail to take any meaningful action. They have a record of several decades to uphold: getting rolled by Republicans.

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On the topic of using position on the court to do the work of the Christian god--Alito cited what is essentially 12th century English canon (church) law in his opinion in Dobbs. Well why not? The US is a Christian country, amirite? The good Christian justice slipped it in dishonestly though, citing canon law while claiming it was common law, and editing his quotation to omit the church-imposed penalty of seven years' penance for abortion. In his source, abortion is not criminalised under common law, while Alito first falsely implies and later outright claims that it is.

'Supreme deceit: How Sam Alito snuck medieval state Christianity into the Dobbs opinion'

The Supreme Court's June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned the half-century-old precedent of Roe v. Wade, occasioned worldwide rage, enough that Justice Samuel Alito — author of the majority opinion in Dobbs — mocked the outraged Prince Harry and other luminaries. Jewish advocacy groups, among others, have filed suits argued that laws restricting abortion may violate religious freedom, but ironically enough, the widespread rage may have prevented people from noticing what may be the most outrageous feature of Dobbs.

Alito's opinion sneaks in a 12th-century religious penalty for abortion — not a criminal statute — citing it in a section meant to support the history of criminal punishment, and with its ecclesiastical origins neatly excised. Those who are outraged by this are now free to mock Alito, unless they'd rather have him impeached — along with the whole Dobbs majority, perhaps — for deceiving America and violating the separation of church and state.

...

In short, Alito provides doctored evidence, or none at all, for his conclusory statement that the "earliest days of the common law" criminalized abortion, and creates a kind of fake history — the fiction of an ancient, continuous Anglo-American pedigree of criminalizing abortion — which supposedly supports overturning Roe.

[Tero]

Why not the Magna Carta? It gives power to men. Not women.

[Woodbutcher]

The supreme court in the States is a fucking joke, only there to run the political agenda. They should be independent of political parties, and their work checked every two years. If found wanting, then fired. None of this fucking lifetime appointment shit.

[Svartalf]

Technically, they ARE independent, since once in place, they can do what they please without risk of getting sacked...
also, they are supposedly, the finest legal minds in the country, whom do you propose to set up to decide whether they are wanting or not? and on what criteria?
Also, how do you ensure the evaluating body itself is free from party interference, since if that can't be guaranteed, then justices would have to please whatever party has a hold on those, if they want to keep their seat, and that is NOT favorable to the rendering of proper justice and honest interpretation of the laws.

[Brian Peacock]

Cardinals form a conclave to elect each other. That could work, right?