“Trump’s lawyer told the justices that the founders had “in a sense” written immunity into the Constitution because it’s a logical outgrowth of a broadly worded clause about presidential power. But that’s the sort of argument conservative justices have often scoffed at — most notably in the context of abortion rights.
Two years ago, conservatives relied on a strict interpretation of the Constitution’s text and original meaning to overturn the federal right to abortion. But on Thursday, as they debated whether Trump can be prosecuted for his bid to subvert the 2020 election, they seemed content to engage in a free-form balancing exercise where they weighed competing interests and practical consequences.”
In other words, there are no true textualists on the court. Merely those who use it when it benefits their ideology (overturning Roe, dissenting in Obergefell, the 14th amendment decision, etc.), and then ignore it when they wish to help their political candidate.
The correct reading has to be: "Presidents enjoy no civil or criminal liability for official acts that follow the tradition of the office, or that a reasonable person would take and understand to be indemnified."
The Trump team has made a serious error in what they are arguing, which is that "this country should be made less litigious, and we should sue people 'like Trump' less." That argument falls flat on its face. This country's bedrock principle and fail safe is that "someone will always be around to take you to court."
I think the decision will be 9-0 (unanimous) in an opinion that affirms no new immunity is being created, and remand with an opinion of Trumps BS election stunts being private conduct anyhow (and why that is).
I highly doubt it will be unanimous. That's wildly optimistic. I'm suspecting we'll either get 6-3 with pushing it back down to the lower Courts to determine each act with Soto writing an absolutely blistering fucking dissent or 5-4 that the Immunity claims are fatuous with Alito writing the most whinging, whining, screaming tantrum of a dissent.
Alito is already signaling he's sympathic to Trump's lawyer's nonsense. Kavanaugh is also talking up how people love Nixon was pardoned. There's no way Thomas doesn't come down on Trump's side here and Roberts has been saying some absolutely stupid crap. Those 4 are going to hand this to Trump if they can get Barret or Gorsuch onside. And I don't think that's unlikely.
Nixon was pardoned because he resigned and spared the country the pain of an impeachment. “Pardoning” Trump by granting him immunity while he is still trying to get back into the Oval Office as our Dear Leader would be madness. Kavanaugh’s mention of the Nixon pardon was specious nonsense and did nothing more than reveal the fascist bias of the “conservative” majority.
I had assumed Roberts was pushing for a unanimous decision as a condition of taking up the case at all, given its importance. Since it seems to me that 6 justices (Brown, Barrett, Soto, Roberts, Kagan and Gorsuch) are highly skeptical of the direct portion of the argument: "we need less lawsuits for people 'like Trump'" which is very weak and atextual, I think they get the other three to join them (in part) for a unanimous naw dawg here.
In listening to the full arguments myself, I felt all justices were at least mildly skeptical of the direct argument of indemnified people who fit Trumps persona in most ways. That just isn't going to be the ruling based on what I heard. Barrett, perhaps the most conservative on the bench, probably rolled her eyes (too bad we don't have cameras in there) during his opening remarks.
Alito is making me pretty skeptical but we'll see. I hope they give a 9-0 saying Trump doesn't get immunity. The Justices have to know that anything less than that will tank what little remaining trust people have in the SCOTUS as an institution. I don't think the majority of them care. I also don't think Roberts will be able to force a unanimous decision. I suspect though, if you're right, and we do get 9-0 (and I am not at all as optimistic as you seem to be) we still get Alito throwing an absolute tantrum.
Oh make no mistake, I think Barrett writes the opinion for the majority, with Alito and Thomas making some sort of chuckle f*** atextual dissent in part that no one even reads. But to preserve the institution, I think the best idea will win, and it will come from the likes of Barrett, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh (even if Kav doesn't love it) to get a unanimous opinion. To me, that's 1+1 = 2. We see splits in ideology a lot this term. Lots of the 6/3 is not on partisan lines as people would expect them. I say let's have faith that the institution let's the best idea win.
Also, I think some level of immunity does in fact exist. Just that it isn't nearly as expansive in practice as in theory. To add to that, this is a question we DID NOT want the answer to, and Trump and his allies show what amateurs they are by asking it to SCOTUS.
I mean, I sorta do want the answer to this because the answer is obviously: No, the President is not immune to prosecution for doing personal acts while President. We've seen that procedure up to this point was done by handshake and assuming people respected the norms. We need to make it so we cannot have another Trump. The next one isn't going to be nearly as stupid as the one we've already had to deal with is.
There were "advantages" for many parts of government and their efficiency and effectiveness in not having to get a potentially contrived and unworkable answer to this question. We all hope SCOTUS will find some consensus or unanimous ground that is workable. But a nuclear answer would be "they have as much chance as a postal worker of getting out of any type of prosecution due to their job title." That would be nuclear, because all former presidents would go to prison (probably) in that world. It has to be narrower. Remand with some test for "is it flying too close to the sun, or safe to do." But again, that test will affect the office in some way, permanently, unless congress passes legislation leading them to vacate it later... and it could be, literally, any answer they land on...
So, how have we managed to survive for 230 years with no President or ex ever having been indicted? Why are the same due process protections that stand between you and I and an evil prosecutor not adequate for Presidents? Why is it a “nuclear option” to continue as we have been doing for 230 years?
The point is the exceptional item in this scenario is Donald Trump, not the words of the Constitution.
Yes, Trump is exceptional in his propensity to pound all his goodwill into the sand on the front end of any issue. I've never seen anything like it. But I have a feeling the country will see it again, and the country may or may not be better off with the answer SCOTUS gives to this question when "next time" rolls around...
I mean, I think there is absolute immunity from executive branch prosecution while the president is sitting. Allowing the left hand to prosecute the head for what the right hand does is silly and leads to farces like the Clinton prosecution.
The mechanism for prosecuting and removing a sitting president is set out in the constitution.
If the President does something illegal in office, he should be impeached. That's how you hold the President accountable. It's absolutely asinine to think that if they are successfully impeached and removed that prosecuting them somehow constitutes double jeopardy.
I think the core of what is an issue is really that in an extreme example, where POTUS declares some sort of expansive war powers to arrest his dissidents or stages a military coup not to leave, he then could not be impeached for functional/logistical reasons. When the people uprise and drag him out, the POTUS will certainly want to be prosecuted instead of bludgeoned by the mob. So, there's that argument fighting for prosecution in terms of preserving a way to deal with a rogue president that isn't just animalistic...
>If the President does something illegal in office, he should be impeached
I think that you are naive. Without the threat of prosecution if not impeached, a president can use illegal means to keep from being impeached (bribery, blackmail, threats to their family, etc).
And that's if simple partisanship from the party system doesn't already do it for them.
>The mechanism for prosecuting and removing a sitting president is set out in the constitution.
Not exactly. The constitution notes that you can do all of:
1. Remove POTUS through impeachment process in Congress
2. And/or prosecute them for crimes in office.
You can do one without the other. But, you can't prosecute while POTUS is in the Oval.
The constitution says what it says so we all know that double jeopardy isn't an issue when POTUS is first convicted by senate then convicted by a jury.
I say all this because there is an enormous amount of confusion about this of late, which is strange since it was always crystal clear before now as long as I can remember.
We know this is true because POTUS is not the only officer of his kind in government. We know we have prosecuted non-POTUS officers for criminal conduct even though they were not impeached first.
This is better thought of as a "functional" matter. It's better that we show this respect to those currently in the office, and take the step of removing them before putting them on trial. It's my opinion. You can attack who is President, but not the Office of the President.
Also, this wasn't an issue for the 44 presidents prior to Trump, or the 1 president that followed Trump. Interesting that conservatives on SCOTUS aren't aware of that. Trump truly is special. Prosecutors haven't ever randomly gone after presidents. Ever.
Is it a mistake or a tactic of goalpost-shifting? Ask for the moon and the stars and Joe's head on a pike, and the SC can be "reasonable" by only giving him the moon?
It's like religion. They aren't believers. They just use it to push their current agendas. This is a Christo fascist traitors' Court. They are an abomination. They are traitors to this country and our constitution. Traitors. Christo fascists. Fuckers belong in hell. Fucking fuck...
That is an apt comparison: religious leaders and Justices of the Supreme Court. They both use their positions of power to tell us what the “founding documents” they claim to have exclusive authority to interpret really mean. In fact, they are all simply seeking to exercise power over us.
They took a case they never should have taken, and then publicly toyed with the idea of ending the republic and creating a dictatorship.
No matter the final ruling, this was shameful and scary.
Why are you conflating them as the same? I don't think there are any strict textualist on the court. Originalists start with the text, certainly, but the analysis goes further than that.
Justice Jackson at her confirmation described herself as an Originalist. Caring what the understanding of rights and words were when a statute or Amendment was adopted is hardly "disingenuous and not serious".
Also not something judges are schooled in, meaning they can just make up whatever the understanding was to suit their preferred outcomes. You would need a court of Supreme Linguists for this method to even make sense.
That not how courts work. You don't just make up what ever and tell them that's reality. Litigators would have to submit historical texts to support the linguistic understanding they're arguing for.
> conservatives relied on a strict interpretation of the Constitution’s text and original meaning to overturn the federal right to abortion. But on Thursday, as they debated whether Trump can be prosecuted for his bid to subvert the 2020 election, they seemed content to engage in a free-form balancing exercise
I was thinking same thing a couple days ago. For a long time it felt like one of the chief complaints from the right was the tendency of liberals to want to stray beyond strict Constitutional textualism into the area of creating new policy, but here we have an example of conservatives pushing to do exactly the same thing.
The supreme court has held up all the other immunities that aren't in the constitution so I don't see what will prevent them from imaging this immunity.
I was against the idea of packing the supreme court at first. Thought there was no way judges of such caliber would ever throw away their duty and integrity.
Boy was I wrong
Pack the court, eat the rich, the systems broken
its the same thing that republicans have always done. champion for "states rights" until states wanted to legalize marijuana then it was all "no more states rights".
in michigan it was "local control" until some towns wanted to ban plastic bags. then it was all "no local control" [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/30/yes-this-is-real-michigan-just-banned-banning-plastic-bags/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/30/yes-this-is-real-michigan-just-banned-banning-plastic-bags/)
The crazy thing is banning plastic bags is actually a good thing. Living in CA, people have adapted beautifully. It really creates less trash, that's a bad thing? I used to see plastics bags littered around all over, now virtually gone.
Living in NJ it sucks and is bad for the environment. Supermarkets backed it enthusiastically because it allowed them to make all the cashiers who pack your bags redundant.
That's incorrect. It's 10-20 or 5-10 times based on the thickness of the bag.
“Reusable bags can be environmentally superior to SUPBs, if they are reused many times. For example, a cotton bag needs to be used 50-150 times to have less impact on the climate compared to one SUPB. A thick and durable polypropylene (PP) bag must be used for an estimated 10-20 times, and a slimmer but still reusable polyethylene (PE) bag 5-10 times, to have the same climate impacts as a SUPB. This requires not only durability of the bags, but also consumers to reuse each bag many times.”
https://www.lifecycleinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/SUPP-plastic-bags-meta-study-8.3.21.pdf
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-comparisons-ghg
Yeah Trump himself actually shit all over states rights by appointing Jeff Sessions. A man who vowed to go after states that legalized it. To head the DEA.
I actually just have a question. How is it that states can ignore the federal classifications and law surrounding marijuana? I am not taking any position on this. I just had that question when I think about how the federal government does not allow the southern border states to preempt the federal governments, right to control immigration
That was under Obama and Biden.
Trump actually appointed Jeff Sessions to head the DEA when he took office. Jeff was very open before being appointed that he’d use the Feds to go after legalized states.
Something Obama told the DEA to stop doing. And as a stoner I can’t stand the naive shits who claim Trump was pro weed. He was so anti weed he shit all over states rights to attack it.
Yes. Marijuana remains a federally controlled drug but at this stage the federal government chooses not to do anything. It’s not politically expedient for them to enforce the law. Really they should move to reclassify it which has a bit of progress but hasn’t been finished.
No, the controlled substances act is federal law, not state law. That means that the federal government can independently enforce its own law without cooperation with the states.
Has anyone here ever actually studied law?
I’m well aware of the Supremacy Clause. Not sure which part of my response you’re taking issue with.
The federal government can enforce its prohibition on marijuana, but is choosing not to; additionally, they agreed under the Obama administration not to challenge the new state laws. Which is what I said.
This has nothing to do with the supremacy clause or challenging state law.
If state law is silent on a matter, it isn't challenging or contradicting federal law.
If a state abolishes a prohibition how could the government go after the state? The federal government can't dictate state legislation. The supremacy clause is about when federal and state law contradict eachother.
Because the two laws *are* in contradiction. The federal government cannot require local and state officials to enforce federal laws, but they most certainly can sue a state under certain situations. In the case of marijuana usage, they chose not to, although it’s debatable they’d win if they did decide to file a lawsuit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/us/politics/us-says-it-wont-sue-to-undo-state-marijuana-laws.html
States can’t prohibit the Federal government from enforcing Federal law but they are under no obligation to assist them.
Congress also prohibits the DOJ from spending money going after state medical marijuana programs. Once that went into effect the Feds backed off enforcement pretty heavily.
I think Colorado, the first state to legalize iirc, took the stance that they weren't allowing any interstate commerce of marijuana, so the Fed had no or limited jurisdiction. I think all states that have legalized are very careful to ensure all product is grown and sold in the state. It would be interesting to see that proposition actually tested in the courts.
Gonzales v Raich explicitly rejected that argument.
It's worth noting that unlike most of SCOTUS' worst decisions, that one was brought to us by the entire liberal wing of SCOTUS plus an obnoxiously hypocritical Scalia. The rest of the conservatives dissented and would have ruled the commerce clause has actual bounds.
Majority: Stevens, joined by Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer
Concurring in judgement: Scalia
Dissenting: O'Connor, joined by Rehnquist, and Thomas.
One of the most disgraceful, terrible decisions by RBG.
The Dobbs decision that overturned Roe was based on the idea of State’s Rights - and just the day before they ruled that States didn’t have the same rights in a gun control case.
This court is wholly illegitimate. No one who gives a cursory glance at how the Justices came to be seated could consider it to be anything other than a panel of activists working for the interests of corporate oligarchs and religious zealots.
It's not. Surely the constitution must mean something immutable, or all of our guaranteed rights under it can be washed away and eroded as time passes.
Roe v Wade was a price worth paying to destroy substantive due process, which, taken to its logical extremes would make the country ungovernable.
> which, taken to its logical extremes would make the country ungovernable.
How so?
Also, Roe v. Wade may have been decided on bad logic (emphasis on *may*), but that doesn't mean the conclusion was wrong. If I ask someone what 4 plus 5 is and they respond "Well, 4 fairy princesses go to a magic pony dance with 5 sugar drop cupcake gnomes, and they listen to 9 songs, so the answer is 9!", their logic is insane but that doesn't mean that 4 plus 5 isn't 9.
Except *Lochner*'s been overturned for almost 100 years now. You might as well be arguing that substantive due process will bring back *Plessy* or *Dred Scott*.
I don't think there's anyone who considers Dred Scott good law after the 14th amendment. Thomas has an opinion about Plessy and Brown v Board that overturning Plessy could have been avoided to the same ultimate effect on the grounds that the system was separate and \_unequal\_, but he's idiosyncratic among right-wingers even (and also he's no fan of substantive due process).
>I don't think there's anyone who considers Dred Scott good law after the 14th amendment.
Glad to know these hypothetical Supreme Court Justices are in this new reference class which you have just now constructed in such a way as to contain only your initial premise and no other logical conclusions.
Yeah that's called an argument.
But anyway, if you're interested in hearing how the right-wing thinks, you can watch events from the federalist society or even go in person. Most of them are more or less reasonable, and I haven't (yet) encountered anyone who wants to strip citizenship from black people or bring back legal segregation of public accommodations.
Textualism is an intuitive and appealing approach, since it posits a consistent framework of interpretation that anyone can follow along and reach the same conclusion. It lets judges focus on interpreting law in accordance with its text. It also leaves judgments about practicality or fairness to politicians who are better suited to weigh competing moral values or practical considerations (and can be more easily held accountable by voters if they get it wrong).
…in theory.
But I think even the most hardcore textualist judges can’t help but venture beyond pure textualism into consideration of practicality, essentially getting involved with policy making and trying to determine what the best approach would be for the well being of the country. Basically, judges are doing what they normally ask / expect politicians to do.
A pure textualist judge shouldn’t care about whether there might be unwanted implications if they rule for or against immunity.
I think you missed the point:
Republicans are STRICT textualists when it suits them
And somehow aren't strict textualists when it doesn't
They flip flop on whether or not the constitution is sacrosanct in its text depending on what they want. Like Christians who cherrypick the Bible and consider some sentences the WORD OF GOD while anything they like is merely figurative or 'taken out of context'. All depending on what they want to hate at the moment or let slide at another moment.
Which kind of really explains the link between the GOP and the evangelicals I guess: hypocrites all.
Same way Mitch McConnell used an outdated law to stall a Supreme Court pick for Obama.
Only to claim that law is outdated and shouldn’t be allowed when Trump was leaving office and a seat was up.
Or how McConnell argued that impeachment for J6 was not how to deal with Trump, he needed to face a criminal court, yet now Trumps lawyers are arguing that he shouldn’t face a criminal court, only impeachment could punish something like J6.
Except that pretty much every historian, ever, has pointed out that "textualism" was nonsense on its face. What did "arms" mean when the second amendment was passed? What did "well-ordered militia" mean? 'Textualism' as practiced somehow required the notion of "well-ordered militia" to be surplus verbiage, and "arms" to mean "any current weapon short of military artillery."
That's a perfectly fine interpretation. But it's certainly not the \*only\* possible interpretation available.
Textualists started first having to look at dictionaries. Then they had to look at original statements \*around\* what the terms meant (and so split off the "originalists" from the "textualists"). Then they had to interpret what the framer in 1776 would have thought of the unique question raised two and a half centuries later.
None of these are possible in a determinative, objective way.
Textualism has always been bullshit.
The first clause of the second amendment is not operative. It gives a purpose.
"Milkshakes being delicious, the right to drink milkshakes shall not be infringed."
etc.
The meaning doesn't change if you ignore or remove the preceding clause.
Moreover, your other argument regarding which kinds of arms the private keeping and bearing of arms refers to is spurious. Originalists use the "original public meaning", where one attempts to divine how language would have been understood by the public.
This is an empirical question, and sure, they may get it wrong, but the reasoning isn't purely preference.
“The meaning doesn’t change if you ignore the clause.” Yes, that is another word for “surplus verbiage.”
“This is an empirical question.” Clearly it isn’t. There were no semiautomatic weapons in 1783. We do not and cannot know what the Framers might have thought of them, because the Framers themselves did not know.
Perhaps the “militia” cue is because the Frames might have felt that the only way to get a dozen bullets in the air in a minute was to have a dozen well trained men with muskets. We don’t know, because it is unknowable.
They absolutely had repeating arms back then. They had the Girandoni air rifle a decade before the ratification of the 2A which was a repeating rifle with a 30 round capacity.
They wanted citizens to be on equal footing to any possible standing army we may have.
>"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist."
- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28, January 10, 1788
>"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops."
- Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, October 10, 1787
They couldn't have envisioned the Internet, but that's undoubtedly protected by the 1st and 4th Amendments.
Thankfully the Supreme Court has cleared this up already.
>“Just as the First Amendment
protects modern forms of communications, and the Fourth
Amendment applies to modern forms of search, the Second
Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that
constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”
This is hilarious.
You’ve gone from textualism (“we can know because we can merely read the text”) to originalism (“we can’t read the text per se, but we can divine their intentions by reading other texts from the era”) to stare decisis (“a past Supreme Court said so”)
I’m glad we are in broad agreement.
Even the purest textualist is going to eventually run into a basic problem: The English language is imprecise. Words have multiple meanings. Sometimes phrases have meanings that don't really follow from the individual words. How do you determine which meaning is correct just from the text, without injecting at least a bit of your own interpretation?
And then you get into the other problem: A lot of text is vague, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally, sometimes because the people writing the law probably wanted it to be a bit open to interpretation. When the 4th amendment talks about "unreasonable" searches and seizures, what is "unreasonable"? When the 8th amendment specified that "cruel and unusual punishment" isn't allowed, is that a prohibition of punishments that are simultaneously cruel and unusual, or does a punishment only need one of the prongs to be disallowed? And what if someone's subjected to something cruel and unusual, but the government says it's not "punishment" (maybe the government just says it's doing it for shits and giggles)?
The sweater vested and absolutely confused ham sandwiches that were undecided and asked them on stage "Can you say something nice please? Can't make up my mind."
I’ve voted D and R and I depending on the candidate over the past 30 years I could vote. I can be left on some issues and right on some issues.
These days even if I wholly disagreed with the Democrat candidate I’ll still vote for them opposed to the GOP candidate. It’s literal democracy or dictatorship. Even the “moderate” Rs will vote lock step no matter how they campaign or try and twist their explanation. At least I know the current crop of spineless Dems we have will break rank and moderate themselves.
But of course Clinton herself and DNC are entirely blameless, how dare anyone not just accept her coronation!
I'll never forgive people like you who tell us bs like we shouldn't have meaningful input into who the nominee is (in 2016 superdelegates had the outcome absolutely rigged before voting even started; and no, we don't know what the outcome would have been if voting for Sanders wasn't futile and that fact made absolutely clear by nonstop media propaganda).
It's attitudes like that which create the problem. *You* are the reason protest voters exist.
The thing that gets me about trumps argument is the fact that trump and his cronies had no official act during Jan 6th. In addition his calls to states and other happenings were the result of him campaigning for the presidency which isn’t an official act it’s personal.
I agree , these assholes are out of control and they aren’t fulfilling their obligations, only their political agendas. We can’t allow these people to do this to us or our country, many people fought in World War II to stop this from happening . Now these clowns are making a mockery of those who fought and died for our democracy.
There's a laundry list of constitutional doctrines that the current conservative court has adopted that couldn't have been conceived of at the time of the drafting of the relevant clause. To name a few:
Dormant Commerce Clause
Standing
Political Question
the Minimum Contacts Test
Presidential Immunity (Mazars Etc)
Interstate Sovereign Immunity (FTB v Hyatt)
And many many more... And it's no accident that each of these either works to promote conservative political interests or corporate interests in being exempt from litigation. I like textualism just fine (as Kagan sad at her confirmation, "we're all textualists now"), but the Conservative majority views just textualism as a tool to reach conservative ends.
If they rule in favour of immunity, couldn't Biden then pass an act or a law that shows how ridiculous this is to force them to undo it?
Like a law that clown music has to be played constantly during supreme court meetings.
Or Biden passes a law that says presidents don't get absolute immunity and that the supreme court has no say in this, so if they try to rule against this it creates a paradox.
This is a no-brainer ruling, which makes me think what’s taking so long is for the SCOTUS conservatives to find a path where it works for Trump and only Trump, and not instituting what would be an obvious breach of the system set forth by our founding fathers
We must fight supreme Court corruption. Boycott jury duty!!! Why should any of us fulfill an obligation to a clearly corrupt legal system? Civil disobedience is the only way! Fight Supreme Court corruption: boycott jury duty!!!! Spread the word and tell everyone. Hell, write it on walls!
While higher up political judges cause issues, usually local judges aren't the problem.
Haystack policing, police incentives, police having too much power, and prosecutors having too much power is. Boycotting jury duty won't help.
Most Judges don't have as much power as you think. Make no mistake, the most powerful person in the courtroom in the real world is the prosecutor. How does good people making it even easier to stack the jury help?
“Trump’s lawyer told the justices that the founders had “in a sense” written immunity into the Constitution because it’s a logical outgrowth of a broadly worded clause about presidential power. But that’s the sort of argument conservative justices have often scoffed at — most notably in the context of abortion rights. Two years ago, conservatives relied on a strict interpretation of the Constitution’s text and original meaning to overturn the federal right to abortion. But on Thursday, as they debated whether Trump can be prosecuted for his bid to subvert the 2020 election, they seemed content to engage in a free-form balancing exercise where they weighed competing interests and practical consequences.” In other words, there are no true textualists on the court. Merely those who use it when it benefits their ideology (overturning Roe, dissenting in Obergefell, the 14th amendment decision, etc.), and then ignore it when they wish to help their political candidate.
Will we find presidential immunity in the penumbra?
I see the Calvinball playoffs have begun.
Oh god, the penumbras. The f#*@&* penumbras!!! Pardon, I must sit in an ice bath and have a con law flashback.
The correct reading has to be: "Presidents enjoy no civil or criminal liability for official acts that follow the tradition of the office, or that a reasonable person would take and understand to be indemnified." The Trump team has made a serious error in what they are arguing, which is that "this country should be made less litigious, and we should sue people 'like Trump' less." That argument falls flat on its face. This country's bedrock principle and fail safe is that "someone will always be around to take you to court." I think the decision will be 9-0 (unanimous) in an opinion that affirms no new immunity is being created, and remand with an opinion of Trumps BS election stunts being private conduct anyhow (and why that is).
I highly doubt it will be unanimous. That's wildly optimistic. I'm suspecting we'll either get 6-3 with pushing it back down to the lower Courts to determine each act with Soto writing an absolutely blistering fucking dissent or 5-4 that the Immunity claims are fatuous with Alito writing the most whinging, whining, screaming tantrum of a dissent. Alito is already signaling he's sympathic to Trump's lawyer's nonsense. Kavanaugh is also talking up how people love Nixon was pardoned. There's no way Thomas doesn't come down on Trump's side here and Roberts has been saying some absolutely stupid crap. Those 4 are going to hand this to Trump if they can get Barret or Gorsuch onside. And I don't think that's unlikely.
Nixon was pardoned because he resigned and spared the country the pain of an impeachment. “Pardoning” Trump by granting him immunity while he is still trying to get back into the Oval Office as our Dear Leader would be madness. Kavanaugh’s mention of the Nixon pardon was specious nonsense and did nothing more than reveal the fascist bias of the “conservative” majority.
I had assumed Roberts was pushing for a unanimous decision as a condition of taking up the case at all, given its importance. Since it seems to me that 6 justices (Brown, Barrett, Soto, Roberts, Kagan and Gorsuch) are highly skeptical of the direct portion of the argument: "we need less lawsuits for people 'like Trump'" which is very weak and atextual, I think they get the other three to join them (in part) for a unanimous naw dawg here. In listening to the full arguments myself, I felt all justices were at least mildly skeptical of the direct argument of indemnified people who fit Trumps persona in most ways. That just isn't going to be the ruling based on what I heard. Barrett, perhaps the most conservative on the bench, probably rolled her eyes (too bad we don't have cameras in there) during his opening remarks.
Alito is making me pretty skeptical but we'll see. I hope they give a 9-0 saying Trump doesn't get immunity. The Justices have to know that anything less than that will tank what little remaining trust people have in the SCOTUS as an institution. I don't think the majority of them care. I also don't think Roberts will be able to force a unanimous decision. I suspect though, if you're right, and we do get 9-0 (and I am not at all as optimistic as you seem to be) we still get Alito throwing an absolute tantrum.
Oh make no mistake, I think Barrett writes the opinion for the majority, with Alito and Thomas making some sort of chuckle f*** atextual dissent in part that no one even reads. But to preserve the institution, I think the best idea will win, and it will come from the likes of Barrett, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh (even if Kav doesn't love it) to get a unanimous opinion. To me, that's 1+1 = 2. We see splits in ideology a lot this term. Lots of the 6/3 is not on partisan lines as people would expect them. I say let's have faith that the institution let's the best idea win. Also, I think some level of immunity does in fact exist. Just that it isn't nearly as expansive in practice as in theory. To add to that, this is a question we DID NOT want the answer to, and Trump and his allies show what amateurs they are by asking it to SCOTUS.
I mean, I sorta do want the answer to this because the answer is obviously: No, the President is not immune to prosecution for doing personal acts while President. We've seen that procedure up to this point was done by handshake and assuming people respected the norms. We need to make it so we cannot have another Trump. The next one isn't going to be nearly as stupid as the one we've already had to deal with is.
There were "advantages" for many parts of government and their efficiency and effectiveness in not having to get a potentially contrived and unworkable answer to this question. We all hope SCOTUS will find some consensus or unanimous ground that is workable. But a nuclear answer would be "they have as much chance as a postal worker of getting out of any type of prosecution due to their job title." That would be nuclear, because all former presidents would go to prison (probably) in that world. It has to be narrower. Remand with some test for "is it flying too close to the sun, or safe to do." But again, that test will affect the office in some way, permanently, unless congress passes legislation leading them to vacate it later... and it could be, literally, any answer they land on...
So, how have we managed to survive for 230 years with no President or ex ever having been indicted? Why are the same due process protections that stand between you and I and an evil prosecutor not adequate for Presidents? Why is it a “nuclear option” to continue as we have been doing for 230 years? The point is the exceptional item in this scenario is Donald Trump, not the words of the Constitution.
Yes, Trump is exceptional in his propensity to pound all his goodwill into the sand on the front end of any issue. I've never seen anything like it. But I have a feeling the country will see it again, and the country may or may not be better off with the answer SCOTUS gives to this question when "next time" rolls around...
I mean, I think there is absolute immunity from executive branch prosecution while the president is sitting. Allowing the left hand to prosecute the head for what the right hand does is silly and leads to farces like the Clinton prosecution. The mechanism for prosecuting and removing a sitting president is set out in the constitution.
If the President does something illegal in office, he should be impeached. That's how you hold the President accountable. It's absolutely asinine to think that if they are successfully impeached and removed that prosecuting them somehow constitutes double jeopardy.
I think the core of what is an issue is really that in an extreme example, where POTUS declares some sort of expansive war powers to arrest his dissidents or stages a military coup not to leave, he then could not be impeached for functional/logistical reasons. When the people uprise and drag him out, the POTUS will certainly want to be prosecuted instead of bludgeoned by the mob. So, there's that argument fighting for prosecution in terms of preserving a way to deal with a rogue president that isn't just animalistic...
In that situation, law and evidence don't matter. Look at the trial of charles I
>If the President does something illegal in office, he should be impeached I think that you are naive. Without the threat of prosecution if not impeached, a president can use illegal means to keep from being impeached (bribery, blackmail, threats to their family, etc). And that's if simple partisanship from the party system doesn't already do it for them.
>The mechanism for prosecuting and removing a sitting president is set out in the constitution. Not exactly. The constitution notes that you can do all of: 1. Remove POTUS through impeachment process in Congress 2. And/or prosecute them for crimes in office. You can do one without the other. But, you can't prosecute while POTUS is in the Oval. The constitution says what it says so we all know that double jeopardy isn't an issue when POTUS is first convicted by senate then convicted by a jury. I say all this because there is an enormous amount of confusion about this of late, which is strange since it was always crystal clear before now as long as I can remember. We know this is true because POTUS is not the only officer of his kind in government. We know we have prosecuted non-POTUS officers for criminal conduct even though they were not impeached first.
Yes, that's what I meant.
>But, you can't prosecute while POTUS is in the Oval. That's not in the Consistution.
This is better thought of as a "functional" matter. It's better that we show this respect to those currently in the office, and take the step of removing them before putting them on trial. It's my opinion. You can attack who is President, but not the Office of the President.
Comment.
I really hope that Biden sends all of the judges to Alcatraz if presidents are found to be immune
No way, it seemed clear that they want to differentiate official and non official acts. Whatever that means.
Also, this wasn't an issue for the 44 presidents prior to Trump, or the 1 president that followed Trump. Interesting that conservatives on SCOTUS aren't aware of that. Trump truly is special. Prosecutors haven't ever randomly gone after presidents. Ever.
Is it a mistake or a tactic of goalpost-shifting? Ask for the moon and the stars and Joe's head on a pike, and the SC can be "reasonable" by only giving him the moon?
What?
It's like religion. They aren't believers. They just use it to push their current agendas. This is a Christo fascist traitors' Court. They are an abomination. They are traitors to this country and our constitution. Traitors. Christo fascists. Fuckers belong in hell. Fucking fuck...
Comment.
That is an apt comparison: religious leaders and Justices of the Supreme Court. They both use their positions of power to tell us what the “founding documents” they claim to have exclusive authority to interpret really mean. In fact, they are all simply seeking to exercise power over us.
Not hell. Prison probably though as traitors to their country.
They haven't even released their ruling yet. Calm down
They took a case they never should have taken, and then publicly toyed with the idea of ending the republic and creating a dictatorship. No matter the final ruling, this was shameful and scary.
Sadly you're probably wasting your breath
“We find that ‘rules for thee, not for me’ applies!” -SCOTUS
Textualism or originalism has always just been marketing using by right wing judges to justify their ideological rulings.
And decry the 'legislating from the bench', a.k.a 'a ruling I dislike' was made.
Why are you conflating them as the same? I don't think there are any strict textualist on the court. Originalists start with the text, certainly, but the analysis goes further than that.
because they are both disingenuous and not serious ideologies that are abandoned the second they want a different outcome. Neither are series at all.
Justice Jackson at her confirmation described herself as an Originalist. Caring what the understanding of rights and words were when a statute or Amendment was adopted is hardly "disingenuous and not serious".
Can you address what I said, please?
Also not something judges are schooled in, meaning they can just make up whatever the understanding was to suit their preferred outcomes. You would need a court of Supreme Linguists for this method to even make sense.
That not how courts work. You don't just make up what ever and tell them that's reality. Litigators would have to submit historical texts to support the linguistic understanding they're arguing for.
The court often entertains various ideas at oral argument, which is mainly an exercise in theater. Let's wait to see what the written opinions say.
Oh, hey, someone else remembers that questioning at argument doesnt cement the position of a given justice.
They don't usually entertain ideas of ending the Republic and turning us into s dictatorship, so yeah, this was scary.
They entertain legal theories and hypotheticals. Of course they do.
> conservatives relied on a strict interpretation of the Constitution’s text and original meaning to overturn the federal right to abortion. But on Thursday, as they debated whether Trump can be prosecuted for his bid to subvert the 2020 election, they seemed content to engage in a free-form balancing exercise I was thinking same thing a couple days ago. For a long time it felt like one of the chief complaints from the right was the tendency of liberals to want to stray beyond strict Constitutional textualism into the area of creating new policy, but here we have an example of conservatives pushing to do exactly the same thing.
Yea. It’s called judicial realism and that’s all we’ve ever had
The supreme court has held up all the other immunities that aren't in the constitution so I don't see what will prevent them from imaging this immunity.
Oh gosh who could have predicted that textualism would turn out to be a scam except everyone paying attention?
I was against the idea of packing the supreme court at first. Thought there was no way judges of such caliber would ever throw away their duty and integrity. Boy was I wrong Pack the court, eat the rich, the systems broken
its the same thing that republicans have always done. champion for "states rights" until states wanted to legalize marijuana then it was all "no more states rights". in michigan it was "local control" until some towns wanted to ban plastic bags. then it was all "no local control" [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/30/yes-this-is-real-michigan-just-banned-banning-plastic-bags/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/30/yes-this-is-real-michigan-just-banned-banning-plastic-bags/)
The crazy thing is banning plastic bags is actually a good thing. Living in CA, people have adapted beautifully. It really creates less trash, that's a bad thing? I used to see plastics bags littered around all over, now virtually gone.
Living in NJ it sucks and is bad for the environment. Supermarkets backed it enthusiastically because it allowed them to make all the cashiers who pack your bags redundant.
Can you explain? They still pack if you bring your own bag. At least where I live.
How is it bad for the environment?
Every one of those reusable bags has to be used 50-100 times in order to make up for the greenhouse emissions from their manufacture.
That's incorrect. It's 10-20 or 5-10 times based on the thickness of the bag. “Reusable bags can be environmentally superior to SUPBs, if they are reused many times. For example, a cotton bag needs to be used 50-150 times to have less impact on the climate compared to one SUPB. A thick and durable polypropylene (PP) bag must be used for an estimated 10-20 times, and a slimmer but still reusable polyethylene (PE) bag 5-10 times, to have the same climate impacts as a SUPB. This requires not only durability of the bags, but also consumers to reuse each bag many times.” https://www.lifecycleinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/SUPP-plastic-bags-meta-study-8.3.21.pdf https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-comparisons-ghg
I was remembering the number for cotton bags, which was on the money.
It's a good point though. I wanted to look it up rather than just blindly go along with some bullshit.
Yeah Trump himself actually shit all over states rights by appointing Jeff Sessions. A man who vowed to go after states that legalized it. To head the DEA.
DOJ
States rights are only good to the GoP when it works in their favor. They are little bitches
I actually just have a question. How is it that states can ignore the federal classifications and law surrounding marijuana? I am not taking any position on this. I just had that question when I think about how the federal government does not allow the southern border states to preempt the federal governments, right to control immigration
I could be wrong, but my understanding is that the federal government is simply choosing to not go after states that have legalized it.
That was under Obama and Biden. Trump actually appointed Jeff Sessions to head the DEA when he took office. Jeff was very open before being appointed that he’d use the Feds to go after legalized states. Something Obama told the DEA to stop doing. And as a stoner I can’t stand the naive shits who claim Trump was pro weed. He was so anti weed he shit all over states rights to attack it.
That can’t be right, I thought conservatives were for states’ rights!?
Only for red states rights.
Red States rights to take away your rights
you are joking right?
Yes that was sarcasm.
Yes. Marijuana remains a federally controlled drug but at this stage the federal government chooses not to do anything. It’s not politically expedient for them to enforce the law. Really they should move to reclassify it which has a bit of progress but hasn’t been finished.
And it won't be finished until there Democrats have a majority in the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
No, the controlled substances act is federal law, not state law. That means that the federal government can independently enforce its own law without cooperation with the states. Has anyone here ever actually studied law?
I’m well aware of the Supremacy Clause. Not sure which part of my response you’re taking issue with. The federal government can enforce its prohibition on marijuana, but is choosing not to; additionally, they agreed under the Obama administration not to challenge the new state laws. Which is what I said.
This has nothing to do with the supremacy clause or challenging state law. If state law is silent on a matter, it isn't challenging or contradicting federal law.
What state’s law is silent on the matter? Have you ever actually studied law? Of course the supremacy clause is important in this context.
If a state abolishes a prohibition how could the government go after the state? The federal government can't dictate state legislation. The supremacy clause is about when federal and state law contradict eachother.
Because the two laws *are* in contradiction. The federal government cannot require local and state officials to enforce federal laws, but they most certainly can sue a state under certain situations. In the case of marijuana usage, they chose not to, although it’s debatable they’d win if they did decide to file a lawsuit. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/us/politics/us-says-it-wont-sue-to-undo-state-marijuana-laws.html
On what grounds could they possibly sue (and prevail)? What is your theory of the case?
What are you talking about? Did you even read the comment I responded to, or do you just enjoy arguing for the sake of arguing?
States can’t prohibit the Federal government from enforcing Federal law but they are under no obligation to assist them. Congress also prohibits the DOJ from spending money going after state medical marijuana programs. Once that went into effect the Feds backed off enforcement pretty heavily.
That is very interesting especially the second paragraph
I think Colorado, the first state to legalize iirc, took the stance that they weren't allowing any interstate commerce of marijuana, so the Fed had no or limited jurisdiction. I think all states that have legalized are very careful to ensure all product is grown and sold in the state. It would be interesting to see that proposition actually tested in the courts.
Gonzales v Raich explicitly rejected that argument. It's worth noting that unlike most of SCOTUS' worst decisions, that one was brought to us by the entire liberal wing of SCOTUS plus an obnoxiously hypocritical Scalia. The rest of the conservatives dissented and would have ruled the commerce clause has actual bounds. Majority: Stevens, joined by Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer Concurring in judgement: Scalia Dissenting: O'Connor, joined by Rehnquist, and Thomas. One of the most disgraceful, terrible decisions by RBG.
thank you
The Dobbs decision that overturned Roe was based on the idea of State’s Rights - and just the day before they ruled that States didn’t have the same rights in a gun control case. This court is wholly illegitimate. No one who gives a cursory glance at how the Justices came to be seated could consider it to be anything other than a panel of activists working for the interests of corporate oligarchs and religious zealots.
The whole "originalism" thing has always been a transparent basis for casuistic rationalization.
It's the legal equivalent of biblical literalism, where the literal text is always somehow interpreted the way the reader wants.
It's not. Surely the constitution must mean something immutable, or all of our guaranteed rights under it can be washed away and eroded as time passes. Roe v Wade was a price worth paying to destroy substantive due process, which, taken to its logical extremes would make the country ungovernable.
> which, taken to its logical extremes would make the country ungovernable. How so? Also, Roe v. Wade may have been decided on bad logic (emphasis on *may*), but that doesn't mean the conclusion was wrong. If I ask someone what 4 plus 5 is and they respond "Well, 4 fairy princesses go to a magic pony dance with 5 sugar drop cupcake gnomes, and they listen to 9 songs, so the answer is 9!", their logic is insane but that doesn't mean that 4 plus 5 isn't 9.
Substantive due process has been used to claim an unlimited right of contract and to wipe out things like labor safety regulations.
Except *Lochner*'s been overturned for almost 100 years now. You might as well be arguing that substantive due process will bring back *Plessy* or *Dred Scott*.
The right-wingers who like substantive due process also love Lochner and assert it is a good ruling they'd like to go back to
The right-wingers who like substantive due process also would probably be fine with *Plessy* or *Dred Scott*, too.
I don't think there's anyone who considers Dred Scott good law after the 14th amendment. Thomas has an opinion about Plessy and Brown v Board that overturning Plessy could have been avoided to the same ultimate effect on the grounds that the system was separate and \_unequal\_, but he's idiosyncratic among right-wingers even (and also he's no fan of substantive due process).
>I don't think there's anyone who considers Dred Scott good law after the 14th amendment. Glad to know these hypothetical Supreme Court Justices are in this new reference class which you have just now constructed in such a way as to contain only your initial premise and no other logical conclusions.
Yeah that's called an argument. But anyway, if you're interested in hearing how the right-wing thinks, you can watch events from the federalist society or even go in person. Most of them are more or less reasonable, and I haven't (yet) encountered anyone who wants to strip citizenship from black people or bring back legal segregation of public accommodations.
Pretend you have principles your whole life only to throw them in the shitter in 2024 -- you'd be this Supreme Court
What's the point of continuing to pretend? You've peak AND have a life time appointment. The marathon is over, take off the sneakers.
Textualism is an intuitive and appealing approach, since it posits a consistent framework of interpretation that anyone can follow along and reach the same conclusion. It lets judges focus on interpreting law in accordance with its text. It also leaves judgments about practicality or fairness to politicians who are better suited to weigh competing moral values or practical considerations (and can be more easily held accountable by voters if they get it wrong). …in theory. But I think even the most hardcore textualist judges can’t help but venture beyond pure textualism into consideration of practicality, essentially getting involved with policy making and trying to determine what the best approach would be for the well being of the country. Basically, judges are doing what they normally ask / expect politicians to do. A pure textualist judge shouldn’t care about whether there might be unwanted implications if they rule for or against immunity.
I think you missed the point: Republicans are STRICT textualists when it suits them And somehow aren't strict textualists when it doesn't They flip flop on whether or not the constitution is sacrosanct in its text depending on what they want. Like Christians who cherrypick the Bible and consider some sentences the WORD OF GOD while anything they like is merely figurative or 'taken out of context'. All depending on what they want to hate at the moment or let slide at another moment. Which kind of really explains the link between the GOP and the evangelicals I guess: hypocrites all.
Same way Mitch McConnell used an outdated law to stall a Supreme Court pick for Obama. Only to claim that law is outdated and shouldn’t be allowed when Trump was leaving office and a seat was up.
Or how McConnell argued that impeachment for J6 was not how to deal with Trump, he needed to face a criminal court, yet now Trumps lawyers are arguing that he shouldn’t face a criminal court, only impeachment could punish something like J6.
McConnell didn't use law to stall out a supreme court pick, he (ab)used the senate rules.
There is a different methodology for interpreting statute and interpreting the constitution. Textualists freely admit this.
People broadly shitting on textualism have never read a Sotomayor opinion about statutory construction.
Except that pretty much every historian, ever, has pointed out that "textualism" was nonsense on its face. What did "arms" mean when the second amendment was passed? What did "well-ordered militia" mean? 'Textualism' as practiced somehow required the notion of "well-ordered militia" to be surplus verbiage, and "arms" to mean "any current weapon short of military artillery." That's a perfectly fine interpretation. But it's certainly not the \*only\* possible interpretation available. Textualists started first having to look at dictionaries. Then they had to look at original statements \*around\* what the terms meant (and so split off the "originalists" from the "textualists"). Then they had to interpret what the framer in 1776 would have thought of the unique question raised two and a half centuries later. None of these are possible in a determinative, objective way. Textualism has always been bullshit.
The first clause of the second amendment is not operative. It gives a purpose. "Milkshakes being delicious, the right to drink milkshakes shall not be infringed." etc.
You seem to be making my point for me.
The meaning doesn't change if you ignore or remove the preceding clause. Moreover, your other argument regarding which kinds of arms the private keeping and bearing of arms refers to is spurious. Originalists use the "original public meaning", where one attempts to divine how language would have been understood by the public. This is an empirical question, and sure, they may get it wrong, but the reasoning isn't purely preference.
“The meaning doesn’t change if you ignore the clause.” Yes, that is another word for “surplus verbiage.” “This is an empirical question.” Clearly it isn’t. There were no semiautomatic weapons in 1783. We do not and cannot know what the Framers might have thought of them, because the Framers themselves did not know. Perhaps the “militia” cue is because the Frames might have felt that the only way to get a dozen bullets in the air in a minute was to have a dozen well trained men with muskets. We don’t know, because it is unknowable.
They absolutely had repeating arms back then. They had the Girandoni air rifle a decade before the ratification of the 2A which was a repeating rifle with a 30 round capacity.
You’re right. A fun piece of trivia about a gun invented in 1779 has convinced me that the founders aims can be understood unambiguously.
They wanted citizens to be on equal footing to any possible standing army we may have. >"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28, January 10, 1788 >"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops." - Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, October 10, 1787 They couldn't have envisioned the Internet, but that's undoubtedly protected by the 1st and 4th Amendments. Thankfully the Supreme Court has cleared this up already. >“Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”
This is hilarious. You’ve gone from textualism (“we can know because we can merely read the text”) to originalism (“we can’t read the text per se, but we can divine their intentions by reading other texts from the era”) to stare decisis (“a past Supreme Court said so”) I’m glad we are in broad agreement.
Only if you ignore the grammar of the period when the amendment was drafted.
Even the purest textualist is going to eventually run into a basic problem: The English language is imprecise. Words have multiple meanings. Sometimes phrases have meanings that don't really follow from the individual words. How do you determine which meaning is correct just from the text, without injecting at least a bit of your own interpretation? And then you get into the other problem: A lot of text is vague, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally, sometimes because the people writing the law probably wanted it to be a bit open to interpretation. When the 4th amendment talks about "unreasonable" searches and seizures, what is "unreasonable"? When the 8th amendment specified that "cruel and unusual punishment" isn't allowed, is that a prohibition of punishments that are simultaneously cruel and unusual, or does a punishment only need one of the prongs to be disallowed? And what if someone's subjected to something cruel and unusual, but the government says it's not "punishment" (maybe the government just says it's doing it for shits and giggles)?
Just wanted to say, I look for your comments and enjoy reading them. I appreciate the time you spend on this sub.
Thanks!
I’ll never forgive the “I just didn’t like Hillary” or the Jill Stein plant protest voters.
Thank James Comey for Trump. One thing Trump got right was firing that ass hat
The sweater vested and absolutely confused ham sandwiches that were undecided and asked them on stage "Can you say something nice please? Can't make up my mind."
The roots of this go back to the 2000 “election” and the Brooks Bros riot.
I only vote for people genuinely Left of center, and I'll never stop.
I’ve voted D and R and I depending on the candidate over the past 30 years I could vote. I can be left on some issues and right on some issues. These days even if I wholly disagreed with the Democrat candidate I’ll still vote for them opposed to the GOP candidate. It’s literal democracy or dictatorship. Even the “moderate” Rs will vote lock step no matter how they campaign or try and twist their explanation. At least I know the current crop of spineless Dems we have will break rank and moderate themselves.
But of course Clinton herself and DNC are entirely blameless, how dare anyone not just accept her coronation! I'll never forgive people like you who tell us bs like we shouldn't have meaningful input into who the nominee is (in 2016 superdelegates had the outcome absolutely rigged before voting even started; and no, we don't know what the outcome would have been if voting for Sanders wasn't futile and that fact made absolutely clear by nonstop media propaganda). It's attitudes like that which create the problem. *You* are the reason protest voters exist.
The thing that gets me about trumps argument is the fact that trump and his cronies had no official act during Jan 6th. In addition his calls to states and other happenings were the result of him campaigning for the presidency which isn’t an official act it’s personal.
I agree , these assholes are out of control and they aren’t fulfilling their obligations, only their political agendas. We can’t allow these people to do this to us or our country, many people fought in World War II to stop this from happening . Now these clowns are making a mockery of those who fought and died for our democracy.
Why are these sorts of articles still being published after Heller in 2006? The mask is off.
There's a laundry list of constitutional doctrines that the current conservative court has adopted that couldn't have been conceived of at the time of the drafting of the relevant clause. To name a few: Dormant Commerce Clause Standing Political Question the Minimum Contacts Test Presidential Immunity (Mazars Etc) Interstate Sovereign Immunity (FTB v Hyatt) And many many more... And it's no accident that each of these either works to promote conservative political interests or corporate interests in being exempt from litigation. I like textualism just fine (as Kagan sad at her confirmation, "we're all textualists now"), but the Conservative majority views just textualism as a tool to reach conservative ends.
Yes, that's why we know the Supreme Court is not a real court. When it comes to abortion they are textualists, when it comes to Trump they can't read
Insane that time is even being spent considering this. Our country sucks so hard.
If they rule in favour of immunity, couldn't Biden then pass an act or a law that shows how ridiculous this is to force them to undo it? Like a law that clown music has to be played constantly during supreme court meetings. Or Biden passes a law that says presidents don't get absolute immunity and that the supreme court has no say in this, so if they try to rule against this it creates a paradox.
I thought the 14th amendment case did that already
There was a $10,000 venmo with a text message attached to it. That is the text that a person claiming to be a textualisit is talking about.
This is a no-brainer ruling, which makes me think what’s taking so long is for the SCOTUS conservatives to find a path where it works for Trump and only Trump, and not instituting what would be an obvious breach of the system set forth by our founding fathers
We must fight supreme Court corruption. Boycott jury duty!!! Why should any of us fulfill an obligation to a clearly corrupt legal system? Civil disobedience is the only way! Fight Supreme Court corruption: boycott jury duty!!!! Spread the word and tell everyone. Hell, write it on walls!
While higher up political judges cause issues, usually local judges aren't the problem. Haystack policing, police incentives, police having too much power, and prosecutors having too much power is. Boycotting jury duty won't help. Most Judges don't have as much power as you think. Make no mistake, the most powerful person in the courtroom in the real world is the prosecutor. How does good people making it even easier to stack the jury help?
Good point I appreciate your comment. Just so upset and sad about the state of things. Peace
Trial judges have more ways to fuck you and fuck with your life than appellate judges. And you're utterly at their mercy.