Poll: Supreme Court Assassination

[Bill Murphy]

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What kind of madman would push the button? If you are opposed to a judge, impeach them.

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or pack the court like FDR tried to do. Remember--there is nothing in the constitution stating a number for Supreme Court justices. It didn't work, but the justices got the message.

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I see someone still reads the NYT. What about the "precedent" of having nine Justices? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

And trying to add more Justices in a blatant attempt to swing the Court would backfire drastically with the public. I think there's just been a lot of childlike (and childish) incredulity & disbelief on the part of Democrats that, yes, Sandy's really gone; Kennedy really is pretty conservative overall; elections really do have consequences; Republicans eventually will figure out how to nominate the kinds of Justices they want if you give them enough chances; etc.

Anyone who's shocked, SHOCKED at this last Court Term is either naive or just willfully ignorant.

[Exsubmariner]

Sorry, but is that because Thomas is black? Sounds incredibly racist to me.

[Bill Murphy]

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I don't know why Scalia gets so many votes. Of all the justices who are allegedly originialists, he's the only one who can make a case that he's not simply a conservative judicial activist. Example.

Thomas would be a much better choice.

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Thomas is much more intellectually consistent than Scalia. See Gonzales v. Raich in which Scalia concurred in favor of federal regulation of purely local marijuana cultivation.

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Exactly. Thomas & Scalia often reach the same conclusions about cases, but their methods of getting there can be very different. I love Scalia most of the time. He's hilarious & certainly one the most influential Justices ever, at least among the public & broader legal community if not actual results. And most of his opinions are readable by a layman. Try wading thru a Souter or Breyer opinion sometime.

But while Scalia's not a neo-con like Roberts & Alito, he's hardly a small-government conservative, or a 'strict constructionist' unconcerned with the results of his decisions.

The idea that Thomas follows Scalia around like a lost puppy is ludicrous. They didn't know each other before Thomas was confirmed, and they are not particularly close on a personal level. Scalia's best friend is Ginsburg, and she was also very close to Bork when they were all on the DC Circuit back in the early '80s.

If anything, recent books indicate Thomas has influenced Scalia much more than the other way around, and thus indirectly influenced Kennedy & O'Connor in the other direction. There were however several 5-4 cases this term where Thomas, Scalia, Stevens & Ginsburg were together in dissent.

Stevens is the most liberal Justice, the one most often alone in dissent & he writes the wordiest opinions (tho they're usually well-written). This is all per a recent Harper's or Atlantic article. But he's 550 years old & Ginsburg weighs about 64lbs.

I'd make Kennedy UN Sec-Gen, where he could expound on all the Great Issues of Our Time to his heart's content, while soaking up the praise & attention from the sundry worldwide media & academics, and replace him with the notorious Janice Rogers Brown.

But all the recent teeth-gnashing, hand-wringing & talk of assasinations, impeachment & court-packing is pretty silly. The last fifty years were a historical aberration in the Court's history, due mainly to mind-boggling incompetence on the part of Republican POTUSs in picking Justices, dating back to Ike & Earl Warren.

They're called elections. Consider winning one every now & then.

[Bill Murphy]

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I don't understand how any ACist or libertarian can press the button here against anyone. Doesn't your entire philosophy prohibit using aggression to violate a person's fundamental rights in order to achieve a teleological end? How can you justify pushing the button without accepting some form of utilitarianism?

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Of course you don't understand. You don't try to.

I'll give you an answer- they have aggressed against people.

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Isn't forcing people to send their children on hour+ trips each way to school every morning "aggressive"? And it's certainly not ACist or libertarian, whatever it is. Paleo-liberal, most likely.

[AlexM]

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Scalia.

Thomas wouldnt know what to do, so its almost a 2-for-1.

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Uhm... Thomas votes against Scalia, as well as against conservatives, quite often. Not only that, but even when he does vote the same way, he often does so for vastly different reasons. The fact that you're accusing the Justice who most often completely disagrees with all the other Justices of not thinking for himself is absolutely ridiculous. If you vote, I hope for the sake of this country you do a better job of informing yourself of the people you're voting for than this.

[AlexM]

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Only 15 out of 36 respondents thus far typically vote Democratic or Republican, so we have an unusual group on this forum.

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No, about half of people voting is pretty typical.

[AlexM]

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I don't know why Scalia gets so many votes. Of all the justices who are allegedly originialists, he's the only one who can make a case that he's not simply a conservative judicial activist. Example.

Thomas would be a much better choice.

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You list one case where Scalia chose the Constitution over conservatism (one which I guarantee 100% Thomas would have agreed with if he were on the bench at the time). Here is a much better example where Scalia went with conservatism and Thomas was the only Justice (instead of 1 of 5) that backed the Constitution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich

(It's also interesting to notice that the only 3 justices who supported medicinal marijuana were all conservatives)

Everything I have seen on Thomas's rulings shows him to be a pretty strong, if not perfect, originalist. The only one on the bench. Admittedly, originalism is probably more dangerous to liberals than the conservative judicial activism practiced by those such as Scalia, so liberals probably do have more to be afraid of from Thomas, but let's call it for what it is rather than completely reversing their stances.

[AlexM]

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I don't know why Scalia gets so many votes. Of all the justices who are allegedly originialists, he's the only one who can make a case that he's not simply a conservative judicial activist. Example.

Thomas would be a much better choice.

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I'm more baffled by all the Ginsberg hate.

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Find the last time she took the right side that wasn't a 9-0 decision.

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I didn't realize your typical Supreme Court case was so cut and dry.

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They generally are. Constitution vs Judicial Activism. The activists generally win.

[Dan.]

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They generally are. Constitution vs Judicial Activism. The activists generally win.

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I understand you're being deliberately obtuse because that's what's fun to do around here, but no judge sets out to be an "activist." They're all following the Constitution. It's a matter of what the Constitution means, and each judge has his or her own belief about the language therein.

Language is a very sticky thing. Play around with translating from one language to another, and you'll quickly realize how difficult it is to pin-down an English idea in French, for example. The same is true with the English used in the 18th century compared to today. So the issue doesn't lie with injecting belief into the Constitution verses simply reading the words, but rather with recognizing that the same words read by two different people can have vastly differing meanings. And so we as a country defer to the SCOTUS to attempt to identify what this document known as the Constitution means.

[AlexM]

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They generally are. Constitution vs Judicial Activism. The activists generally win.

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I understand you're being deliberately obtuse because that's what's fun to do around here

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Always fun to open a post with a ridiculous insult, eh? Well, I understand that you're really stupid too, so I guess we're even.

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no judge sets out to be an "activist." They're all following the Constitution. It's a matter of what the Constitution means, and each judge has his or her own belief about the language therein.

Language is a very sticky thing. Play around with translating from one language to another, and you'll quickly realize how difficult it is to pin-down an English idea in French, for example. The same is true with the English used in the 18th century compared to today. So the issue doesn't lie with injecting belief into the Constitution verses simply reading the words, but rather with recognizing that the same words read by two different people can have vastly differing meanings. And so we as a country defer to the SCOTUS to attempt to identify what this document known as the Constitution means.

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I disagree completely. I strongly believe that 8 of the current justices actively try to distort the Constitution to support their own agenda. I disagree with Thomas on things, but I don't think he's trying to do this.