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Fallacy
Joined: 29 Jun 2015
Location: ex-ROK
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 Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2016 7:36 pm Post subject: US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is dead |
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| 'Nuff said. |
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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| Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2016 9:19 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/the-republicans-debate-in-greenville/462750/
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Looming over the debate was the death of Justice Antonin Scalia earlier on Saturday—a man who reshaped America’s understanding of its Constitution, and whose passing has now reshaped the political landscape. The debate opened with a moment of silence, and the moderators lost no time in asking the candidates for their views on how his seat on the Supreme Court should be filled.
Not by President Obama, it seems. “I think it’s up to Mitch McConnell and everybody else to stop it,” said Trump. “It’s called delay, delay, delay.” One by one, the others voiced their assent. John Kasich decried partisanship, and then called for a partisan delay. Rubio agreed. “We have 80 years of precedent of not confirming Supreme Court justices in an election year,” thundered Cruz. He was brought up short by the moderator, John Dickerson, who pointed out that Anthony Kennedy was confirmed in 1988—an election year. Cruz pointed out that Kennedy was nominated in 1987, although that was still less then 12 months before the election.
If the candidates agreed that one of them, and not Obama, should have the chance to choose Scalia’s successor, it was a rare moment of accord on the stage. They clashed on other issues, from tax plans to immigration to foreign policy—to Donald Trump’s business record. |
The Senate must give its "Advice and Counsel" to the President's nomination of a Supreme Court justice now apparently means the Senate can stall for time for as long as 11 months.
Happy Valentine's Day! |
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catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2016 9:32 pm Post subject: |
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| They will definitely stall until the election. |
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Fallacy
Joined: 29 Jun 2015
Location: ex-ROK
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| Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 2:02 am Post subject: RE: Scalia is dead |
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http://democrats.senate.gov/2011/05/18/selected-statements-from-republican-senators-on-the-constitutionality-of-filibustering-nominees-and-the-deference-owed-to-the-presidents-nominees/
“The Constitution of the United States is at stake. Article II, Section 2 clearly provides that the President, and the President alone, nominates judges. The Senate is empowered to give advice and consent."
“Because of the unprecedented obstruction of our Democratic colleagues, the Republican conference intends to restore the principle that, regardless of party, any President’s judicial nominees, after full debate, deserve a simple up-or-down vote."
“What Senate Republicans are contemplating doing and what I think they should do is to get us back to the precedents that were established prior to the last Congress, in which judicial appointments were given an up-or-down – that is, a majority – vote.”
“Let’s get back to the way the Senate operated for over 200 years, up or down votes on the president’s nominee, no matter who the president is, no matter who’s in control of the Senate. That’s the way we need to operate.” |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 2:58 am Post subject: Re: RE: Scalia is dead |
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| Fallacy wrote: |
http://democrats.senate.gov/2011/05/18/selected-statements-from-republican-senators-on-the-constitutionality-of-filibustering-nominees-and-the-deference-owed-to-the-presidents-nominees/
“The Constitution of the United States is at stake. Article II, Section 2 clearly provides that the President, and the President alone, nominates judges. The Senate is empowered to give advice and consent."
“Because of the unprecedented obstruction of our Democratic colleagues, the Republican conference intends to restore the principle that, regardless of party, any President’s judicial nominees, after full debate, deserve a simple up-or-down vote."
“What Senate Republicans are contemplating doing and what I think they should do is to get us back to the precedents that were established prior to the last Congress, in which judicial appointments were given an up-or-down – that is, a majority – vote.”
“Let’s get back to the way the Senate operated for over 200 years, up or down votes on the president’s nominee, no matter who the president is, no matter who’s in control of the Senate. That’s the way we need to operate.” |
These quotes are not necessarily relevant to the current situation. The Republican Party holds a majority in the Senate, so it does not need to filibuster or obstruct nominations: it can hold an "up-or-down – that is, a majority – vote" for any candidate the President nominations, and reject it simply through party unity in voting "down." Assuming, that is, that every Republican in the Senate is so indifferent to the country's need for a functional Supreme Court that it's willing to reject every candidate nominated on purely partisan grounds. |
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Fallacy
Joined: 29 Jun 2015
Location: ex-ROK
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| Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 4:54 am Post subject: RE: Scalia is dead |
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| Quote: |
| US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: |
“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.” -- 2016
" . . . regardless of party, any President’s judicial nominees, after full debate, deserve a simple up-or-down vote." -- 2005
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| US Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid: |
“The President can and should send the Senate a nominee right away. The Senate has a responsibility to fill vacancies as soon as possible..” -- 2016
"In the history of the Republic, there have been 168 filibusters of executive and judicial nominations. Half of them have occurred during the Obama Administration – during the last four and a half years. These nominees deserve at least an up-or-down vote." -- 2013
Ordinary citizens have no power over policy decisions, so average voters have a nonexistant influence on public policies. |
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yodanole
Joined: 02 Mar 2003
Location: La Florida
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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| Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 9:03 pm Post subject: |
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Scalia was a reliable partisan but not the most miserable partisan on the bench (that would be Alito). He was a committed proponent of textualism/originalism, but he was not a die-hard nut about it (that would be Thomas). He has a substantial number of wrong-headed opinions, and the third-most wrong-headed would have to be Gonzales v Raich, which was a massive betrayal of conservative "originalist" Commerce Clause jurisprudence in service of a drug war he soon after denounced. Nonetheless, on the less political cases, i.e., the cases nobody on this board cares about (except perhaps me), he was a leading jurist. This is a far better "say something good about the dead" coda than the ignorant blather in liberal publications about Scalia being delightful at dinner parties. When it wasn't political, Scalia was a damned fine jurist, one of the better ones. Unfortunately, the political cases are the most important and he was in the majority on Bush v. Gore.
Bush v. Gore was an abomination, both in its result and its reasoning. It laid bare the hypocrisy of lifetime appointments who could not vote but for their party, even when it contradicted their earlier jurisprudence. And make no mistake: the legacy and aftermath of Bush v. Gore is the primary reason for the massive confirmation fight.
Perhaps as obviously bad was Clapper v. Amnesty International USA. Amnesty Int'l USA challenged FISA surveillance. In 2013, a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court denied the challenge because "the claims of the challengers that they were likely to be targets of surveillance were based too much on speculation and on a predicted chain of events that might never occur, so they could not satisfy the constitutional requirement for being allowed to sue." In other words, the challengers could not be sure they were being spied upon, because they could not prove it.
The ruling was premised upon an Obama Administration prevarication that criminal defendants would receive notice if they were spied upon under FISA. Since the ruling, Snowden's disclosures have annihilated the standing pretext for the majority's refusal to hold the administration accountable for its FISA surveillance.
In any case, that is Scalia's legacy. Oh, yeah, his opinions were a fun read.  |
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Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
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| Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 10:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Maybe there's a compromise that can be worked out, like an aged "moderate" judge being confirmed, but with the promise that they'd resign following the 2016 Court season. They could even work out a backroom deal where certain potential 5-4 cases would go a certain way. Or perhaps nominate a full liberal, but with the promise that Ginsburg would retire following the election if the Republicans won. It's ugly politics, but it would spare the country a nastier fight. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 11:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Steelrails wrote: |
| Maybe there's a compromise that can be worked out, like an aged "moderate" judge being confirmed, but with the promise that they'd resign following the 2016 Court season. They could even work out a backroom deal where certain potential 5-4 cases would go a certain way. Or perhaps nominate a full liberal, but with the promise that Ginsburg would retire following the election if the Republicans won. It's ugly politics, but it would spare the country a nastier fight. |
None of these "promises" would be enforceable, and politicians don't get to decide how Supreme Court Justices rule. Besides, there's no nasty fight to be averted: either the Republicans will confirm a justice before the election, or they won't. If they don't, the public will know they have demanded the country wait an entire year for a new confirmation for entirely political reasons, and the public will have the chance to vote on their new President and representatives with that in mind. If they choose to reject the Republican party because of such conduct, fine, and if they choose to embrace that conduct and keep Republicans in the majority, or even hand them the Presidency, then that's fine too. There is already a system in place for how to handle this situation; America can survive with a justice missing on the Supreme Court for a while. |
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Coltronator
Joined: 04 Dec 2013
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| Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2016 2:10 am Post subject: |
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| SR, while interesting I am pretty sure the Notorious RBG wouldn't go along with anything like that. |
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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| Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2016 5:08 pm Post subject: |
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I say all or nothing; if a Republican wins the Presidency, the Republicans get their nominee, but if a Democrat wins, pack the court with five, 10, 15 nominees.
The same nine judges voting on all the supreme cases all the time brings personality to the law, not stability or jurism. Take a look at number of judges on the Sixth Circuit, just as an example. There are sixteen judges. They only all sit together on a case rarely, during a per curiam decision. The Supreme Court should have twice or three times as many judges, but at the very least at least as many judges, as any particular Circuit. And judges should rotate, so we can have more cases.
Edit: Jacobin Magazine suggests the very same: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/02/supreme-court-antonin-scalia-death-nomination-bernie-sanders/
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Instead of joining in the farce that is the nominations process, the Left should exploit the current moment. It’s time to revive and defend court curbing. Packing the Court, stripping its jurisdiction, refusing to replace deceased or retiring justices, weakening the Court’s control over its own docket, instating judicial retention elections, empowering Congress to overturn Court decisions that invalidate federal legislation — all of these are possible tools to subordinate the Court to political control.
. . .
The current eight-seat bench will become politically consequential only if the Left can use it to argue for a thorough restructuring of the Court, its powers, and its role in the federal government.
Imagine, for example, that this November sees the election of a Democratic president, one who claims the mantle of America’s fugitive tradition of social-democratic politics. What would he have to gain by playing the conventional judicial nominations game? Or if he did play it, why should he ask for only one more justice?
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Or we could abolish judicial review of the constitutionality of laws by amendment. After all, that was itself a judicial decision.
Last edited by Plain Meaning on Wed Apr 06, 2016 12:51 am; edited 1 time in total |
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yodanole
Joined: 02 Mar 2003
Location: La Florida
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| Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2016 10:25 am Post subject: |
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| If Obama really wanted some entertainment, he could nominate Hillary ... |
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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| Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2016 2:24 am Post subject: |
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Alito demurs, mostly, on successor to Scalia
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Alito did suggest that having only eight justices would not necessarily mean paralysis for the high court.
"It'll be a new experience," the George W. Bush appointee said. "There's nothing in the Constitution that specifies the size of the Supreme Court. There have been times in history where the Supreme Court had an even number of justices." |
It should not matter whether there are an even or odd number of justices, because Congress could conceivably regulate the size of the Supreme Court body, as well as the number of justices to hear a single case (three is a better number for this than nine, but five would work, too).
Indeed, Democrats could begin to introduce bills limiting the number of sitting justices on a case. With a proper rotation, eight justices would not be an issue. Random lottery could decide the constitution of the court for each case.
Or are the Democrats just going to take it from McConnell? |
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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| Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2016 5:24 pm Post subject: |
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Not even one month in the ground, and corporations are settling cases where pending writs are before the Supreme Court.
Dow just settled their In Re Urethenes class action case for about 80% of the $1.035 billion verdict against them. |
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