The liberal justice took aim at various recent rulings, including one that paved the way for rampant partisan gerrymandering of legislative districts.
Liberal Justice Elena Kagan sharply criticized the Supreme Court’s conservative majority Tuesday, saying it undermined democracy in a series of rulings, including several that have prompted a new wave of legislative map-drawing that has increasingly eliminated competitive districts.
Kagan, who has dissented in those cases, also took aim at the majority for striking down campaign finance restrictions and, as she put it, the “evisceration” of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act that was enacted to protect minority voters.
“Part of the reason why the court got it wrong was a kind of lack of the appropriate concern or understanding of the consequences of their decisions,” she said in remarks at Catholic University’s law school in Washington, D.C.
“Conservative judges” and “liberal judges” should not exist. Judges shouldn’t be aligned with any political party, they should be legal professionals.
Separation of Powers is a great ideal but, unfortunately, the US got it positively wrong letting the president appoint judges. A bit too late to change now, though. (Tangentially, the US actually has very good separation between the executive and legislative branches, which nevertheless isn’t useful when they’re both controlled by the same personality cult.)Jesus fucking Christ, does anyone even have object permanence anymore?
Both GW Bush in 2000, and Trump in 2016, lost the popular vote yet won the electoral college. They went on to appoint the conservative majority to the Supreme Court.
Project RedMap happened during the Obama years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP#Criticism
The system has already been subverted with no meaningful attempts at reform.
They’re appointed for life. It’s amazing how long that is.
They’ll be there longer than a lot of us because the decisions they’re forcing through makes us want to kill our selves.
Its nuts that they’re so obviously political.
What is the point of a court with judges that see every issue through the lense of the party that appointed them.
The Supreme Court has almost always been on the wrong side of history (we call that “conservative”).
The blocked reforms from FDR, and were only put in their place when Congress started discussing court reform seriously.
They are 100% undermining democracy. They’re traitors to the country and humanity. I’m sire we’ll do nothing about it though.
“Part of the reason why the court got it wrong was a kind of lack of the appropriate concern or understanding of the consequences of their decisions,” she said in remarks at Catholic University’s law school in Washington, D.C.
They know full well the consequences of their decisions and are glad of it.
They are part the Epstein class.
Some people just can’t accept that human beings can be that evil. So they think they’re misinformed or got tricked into doing the thing. I used to be like that, seeing good in people to a fault. Some people are just evil, cartoonishly evil. Straight up Dr. Evil evil.
Human minds are more or less programmable, so if you are not programming your own mind, someone else is doing the programming, often for their own profitable/evil ends .
they might realize some consequences if republicans lose so much they essentially become a third party.
There’s no viable alternative party to turn the Republican Party into a third party. Widespread electoral reform would need to occur to make that possible, something that must occur at the state level for each and every state.
There’s never going to be three viable parties at once (as you said, not without extensive changes to how voting works, anyway), but that doesn’t mean the same two parties are always the major ones. It would be entirely possible for the Republican Party to implode badly enough that the less-extreme ones all defect and we end up with one neoliberal/conservative party and one progressive/socialist party.
in that situation you would temporarily see a uniparty which we know fights with itself to begin with given its big tent philosophy. It would not take very long for it to split. Im thinking you would likely see something like a progressive democratic party split off and the standard democrats would become the de facto conservative party. Could go the other way though.
Idk, I’m sure the SCOTUS is full of very reasonable and sensible people.
Has anyone just tried talking to them while using facts and logic?
I did… They called me a bunch of slurs after and one of them said, “eat shit, dweeb!” and then the girl one kicked me in my asshole. I don’t know if they actually can be reasoned with?
Yes, we noticed.
I’ll take “Obvious shit” for 1,000 Alex.
The US Supreme Court was never a particularly democratic institution, conservative majority or not.
Sure, but that’s almost a non-sequitur. She wasn’t saying anything about how democratic the institution of the court itself is.
When has the SCOTUS not enjoyed a large conservative majority?
The Warren Court, from 1953-1969. Which is when most of the advances to civil rights that are currently being unmade took place.
The Warren Court, from 1953-1969
United States v. O’Brien made burning draft cards in protest illegal
Terry v. Ohio legalized Stop-and-Frisk Police tactics
Swain v. Alabama cemented the All White Jury for another decade.
Walker v. City of Birmingham made the original MLK protest marches illegal.
And unlike the subsequent Burger Court, which began placing substantial constitutional limits on the death penalty, the Warren Court was generally comfortable with capital punishment.
Much of the modern police state finds it’s roots in the Warren Court.
Then consider that the first major ruling striking down a law for discriminating against women did not arrive until 1971, after Earl Warren had retired. This was after over sixty years of Sufferegate agitation.
Warren fully neglected LGBTQ rights, despite a number of early cases. Warren even interpreted federal immigration statutes to uphold the exclusion and deportation of individuals based on homosexuality, treating it under provisions barring “psychopaths” or persons with constitutional psychopathic inferiority.
Civil Rights advancements were largely limited to a pool of politically engaged upwardly mobile straight black men. Rights for women and other minority groups (particularly migrants) floundered.
It should further be noted that Warren was a century behind the times, relative to the legislative and even the executive branch. They were still the last branch of government to get behind civil rights, and often in the most minimal fashion.
They could only be called progressive relative to their Hughes Era predecessors, which operated in open defiance of the FDR lead government. By 1941, FDR had thinned the herd of opposition judges enough to consistently uphold his legislative agenda. Stone, Vinson, Warren, and Burger would lead a relatively liberal court for the next 40 years. But it still trailed the national executive and legislatures, which in turn trailed the progressive state governments, which trailed the activist movements nationwide.
The courts are consistently the last to do anything resembling progressive reforms. They are far more often a bullwark against process.
The only cases I can think of where the courts were more progressive than the legislature are Roe, Obergefell, and Bostock, but the latter two were after the deadlocking of congress
They all trailed a bunch of state level reforms and outright popular activism.
And they were minimalist in their reforms, not expansive and definitive. Which has cleared the way for their undermining and rollback through counter-revolutionary action.
Roe was swiss cheese when it was written, hiding under the fig leaf of Privacy established two courts prior. Obergefell was barely more than a restatement of the the Equal Protection Clause and 14th Amendment. Bostock was a reiteration of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
None of this was radical or even novel. It was the Courts squeezing out edge cases on a bunch of reactionary state legislatures that refused to accept settled law.
Like, Oberfell in particular came over a decade after the Iowa courts trailblazed right to gay marriage. And that was, in turn, decades after civil courts were issuing licenses in defiance of social norms. And that was an eternity after gay cohabitation and “adult adoption” to stimulate legal marriage. They were way behind the curve.
There has to be a stronger word than “accuses” somewhere in the dictionary.
She said the loud part out loud?
The more that do this, the more they will all do this. Encourage this by calling your reps.
Wait, encourage this? Aha! J’accuse! Found the wolf!
And in other obvious news: folks found in kitchen.
