This is evidence that elections have consequences. To those who voted for DJT because they just couldn't bring themselves to vote for Clinton, the current state of SCOTUS is on YOU. Trump should have NEVER been POTUS. He is an ego-maniacal lowlife, and always has been.
This is purely a Token Ruling, aimed at keeping the myth of "Legitimacy" circulating across the media. It's a distraction, while they continue to impose the vision of their corporate and ideological masters upon America. They took one step to the side, like sacrificing a pawn, while preparing to take great leaps in their far right direction, to continue to reshape America.
Anticipate voting rights to be further diminished this term or at least in time of the 2024 election.
And expect a lot of other things hated by the right to come under review.
Meanwhile, I don't anticipate Alabama will remove partisan calculations in district maps before 2024.
This court is Packed with 6 corrupt, partisan hack extremists.
They are "The Supreme Courtesans", serving to please their ideological masters.
They are Roberts' 3rd Umpire, who when asked "How they calls 'em?",
says, "They ain't nothing until I calls them. And then, that's what they are!"
Textualism, originalism, strict constructionism, precedents, are all just another ruse.
We've seen Fox News talking points infect the questioning and opinions of their rulings, which should make it obvious we are in deep trouble. Scotus has a hidden agenda, which is slowly revealed as they cherry pick cases to leverage massive change upon the country. They have "bigger fish" they want to fry than allowing blatant racist gerrymandering in the south to stand.
Term Limits and Court Expansion can't come fast enough. When it does, begin the Biennial Term-Limiting of 2 Scotus justices to lower courts ASAP. The longest serving are the first to go: Thomas and Roberts.
If a Liberal majority is ever on the court, I hope they have a mission to review and vacate any or all egregious decisions of this deeply corrupted and illegitimate Scotus, going as far back as needed, and at least to the appointment of Corrupt Thomas. This means at least Citizens United and related corporate personhood and the earlier money = speech rulings, then Dobbs, Heller, Breun, Shelby & voting rights rulings, and ...!
Until the corruption inflicted upon the nation since at least the Thomas years is reversed, Scotus is still "The Fraud Squad". The rulings of this corrupt court must not stand.
The ruling is not a distraction, its an important ruling in several ways and perhaps puts a certain floor underneath the court's attacks on section 2 of the voting rights act.
Most of the rest here is on point in that there is a radical rewriting of important rules of democracy and equality taking place, and it will likely continue to take place as this particular aspect of the voting rights act may not be as important to roberts or others as is (eg) the opportunity to really the kill any remaining forms of affirmative action in educational admissions. Then there's the independent state legislature case which could present other problems for democracy.
The democracy outlasted the four horsemen’s attempt to undermine a duly elected leader and the laws passed by Congress, perhaps we will prevail against the 6 right wing zealots occupying the Court seats today!
Roberts had no choice in the Alabama redistributing case! Uphold the unconstitutional gerrymandering which disenfranchised Black voters, or salvage what’s left of his legacy by supporting the Voter Rights act! Roberts’ blinked and democracy lives another day!
Tune in at 3pm for jack smith. The tv media is blown away today, having finally no place else to go but towards facts, having talked about nonsense for months and completely disregarding everything that smith's grand juries have been doing. Legal commenters that actually understand what's going on were all over the Florida grand jury last week.
There's lots to learn but let's all understand how much tv (msnbc included) actually puts out trump narratives and viewpoints rather than anything important. Just today they reported one"changes to his legal team" which are so frequent (ha, ha) when, instead, it's critical to explain to people that his stupid attorneys were involved in the commission of a crime - that they now have to withdraw from representation because they were involved in creating this obstruction of justice and misrepresenting that a diligent search had been conducted, to the court, which is a significant crime.
Can you imagine how disgusted the forward-thinking founding fathers would be if they saw backward Americans insisting on originalism? They knew things would change, and they gave us the gift of Article V. In fact, it's pretty interesting that they thought one third of the nation should NOT be able to stop a change by a two thirds majority.
“The Only Constant in Life Is Change.”- Heraclitus.
We do not live in the world of the original American Revolution. The dinosaurs that wish we were back at the beginning of this nation do not belong on the Supreme Court. They do not belong in our government. We are in the midst of our own revolution.
Voting rights in 2023 is a no-brain-er! Maybe Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh just didn't want to look STUPID. Apparently Thomas, Barrett, Alito, and Gorsuch have no problem with that or with ruling for racism IN THE 21st CENTURY!
This is from Wikipedia, and it just happens to be correct:
"Federalist No. 78 discusses the power of judicial review. It argues that the federal courts have the job of determining whether acts of Congress are constitutional and what must be done if the government is faced with the things that are done on the contrary of the Constitution."
Thomas Jefferson was simply wrong about this, which anybody can tell from reading federalist 78, which was linked in yesterdays article here.
If you've bought into the notion that judicial review is unwarranted and was created under Marbury v Madison, you will be quite surprised if you actually read federalist 78!
Since Federalist 78 was written by Alexander Hamilton, who was not exactly Thomas Jefferson's BFF, I'm not finding your argument especially persuasive.
The Federalist Papers, though very influential, represent informed opinion, not settled law. (Last I looked, anyway . . .)
As emphasized by my comments, it's really important to read the source materials.
Another surprising thing one finds when they read the Federalist papers - those guys argued strongly against having a bill of rights. They didn't want a bill of rights, and they argue that one would be counterproductive.
Those familiar with the history, understand that Madison was led to change his mind on that by the politics in Virginia, where he served in the house during the first session of Congress.
My professor made jokes about all these things he would always ask people why there was no Bill of Rights in with the original constitution and he would say maybe because it was hot in Philadelphia in the summertime.
But this little known point is relevant when it comes to understanding the federalists' view on the role of the courts, because you're looking at a constitution that was drafted by people that didn't think there would be a Bill of Rights, let alone a 13th, 14th or 15th amendment.
They originally couldn't have been thinking that the court would need to rule on various limits on power ..... many things that would later become so important for it to address. Before ratification there would be no contemplated First Amendment role for courts because there would be no first amendment! I think the adoption of the bill of rights and other limitation on the powers of the government, by necessity created an increased role and power for the judiciary in our system, which even before day 1 had included the concept of judicial review.
Btw I'm not making any political points, and I'm not arguing for what is right or best, just illuminating some things that are such a clear part of the history but aren't well known.
The federalist papers were written by the dudes who actually sat at the convention and wrote the us constitution. (An undertaking conducted in private where the press and others were excluded.)
That's why they are the most important materials that exist on the meaning of the original text. Its authors "sold" the constitution to the people in ny and other states charged with the responsibility of voting on ratifying.
Thomas Jefferson was not at the constitutional convention and wrote none of the constitution, although Madison corresponded with him about a lot of it. When Jefferson became president, there was a huge controversy about his election, and the commissions involved in Marbury versus Madison, and by then he had created a new political party, which was opposed to the federalists - and John Marshall was indeed a federalist.
So by then, Jefferson was opposed to the political organization that created the constitution- which was all federalist, originally led by George Washington. While Madison later became fully aligned with Jefferson in the 1800s, at the time of the federalist papers Madison was a federalist, just like Hamilton, and all of the writers of the federalist papers subscribed to all of its content. Madison is called the "father of the constitution" for a reason. Madison did not disagree with anything Hamilton wrote and in fact advocated for it.
Hopefully this adds a little more gloss that is helpful but the main point is that judicial review was put in front of the American people before the constitution was ratified and was something characterized as essential to the constitutional system. This was put before the American people by the actual authors before the constitution was ratified - it was not created by Marbury versus Madison. That's my point.
Like any significant principle of law or history this doesn't come from a source like me, it's not made up and can be researched easily. It comes from fundamental sources, like the textbooks written by Lawrence Tribe and others that are used in constitutional law classes, or Archibald Cox's extensive treatment of the topic of judicial review in his great book on the courts and the constitution.
There are law review articles on the pervasive citations to federalist 78 in court opinions, and how it discussed and advocated for judicial review before the constitution was ratified.
There's only one problem with that idea (which we all should fully support). It's called "democrats" or its sometimes called "moderates".
We can thank Nancy Pelosi for "just saying no" (without any explanation at all) to the Jones - Markey bill, co-authored by my own congressman, which would raised the number of seats by four.
I find the mainstream coverage to be so superficial and innocuous. The Times had a lead page yesterday with a picture of guess who, a lead headline about how many people in the world shrugged off the indictment, and the next story about Trump's viewpoint. What passes for news and journalism at NYT is an utter disgrace.
The other thing that's got me insane is how everything refers to classified documents, and its the classified documents case, etc. You see lots of mainstream and lefty outlets ridiculing Trump's statements about declassifying documents.
Maybe I'm too worked up but this is a very inaccurate way to talk about the indictment. This is not a classified documents case, as the classification status of the documents is irrelevant and is not mentioned in the criminal statutes he violated. It starts with 31 counts that involve "national security information" and criminal acts in relation to it. Once its national security information, its a whole 'nother thing and its just not a classified documents case - its a national security case. Yes, these are classified docs, but the point is the law doesnt care, and nothing about their classification status needs to be proven, or is even relevant, to the crimes charged!
But all forms of media are happy to a carry forward parts of a false trump narrative about classified documents - a topic that's subject to all kinds of inappropriate and confusing commentary, bothsideisms, etc. All media should just stop using the terminology of "classified documents," and instead talk about what is actually involved in the crimes charged. Some outlets are doing a better job than most of the mainstream. The first part of this headline is not technically true (he was not charged with retaining "classified docs", in any greater sense than he was charged with retaining "property" he does not own) but the secondary tagline clarifies things:
Did someone forward Thom's writing to John Roberts? Maybe the messages are filtering through somehow and getting to the least insular of the conservative justices. Reality is there if they will choose to stop ignoring it. Persistence has to pay off sooner or later. One can only hope.
This decision might show that SCOTUS will do the right thing sometimes. Let's hope it's a good sign.
The operative word being "sometimes".
Of course, can't let your expectations get too high...
This is evidence that elections have consequences. To those who voted for DJT because they just couldn't bring themselves to vote for Clinton, the current state of SCOTUS is on YOU. Trump should have NEVER been POTUS. He is an ego-maniacal lowlife, and always has been.
This is purely a Token Ruling, aimed at keeping the myth of "Legitimacy" circulating across the media. It's a distraction, while they continue to impose the vision of their corporate and ideological masters upon America. They took one step to the side, like sacrificing a pawn, while preparing to take great leaps in their far right direction, to continue to reshape America.
Anticipate voting rights to be further diminished this term or at least in time of the 2024 election.
And expect a lot of other things hated by the right to come under review.
Meanwhile, I don't anticipate Alabama will remove partisan calculations in district maps before 2024.
This court is Packed with 6 corrupt, partisan hack extremists.
They are "The Supreme Courtesans", serving to please their ideological masters.
They are Roberts' 3rd Umpire, who when asked "How they calls 'em?",
says, "They ain't nothing until I calls them. And then, that's what they are!"
Textualism, originalism, strict constructionism, precedents, are all just another ruse.
We've seen Fox News talking points infect the questioning and opinions of their rulings, which should make it obvious we are in deep trouble. Scotus has a hidden agenda, which is slowly revealed as they cherry pick cases to leverage massive change upon the country. They have "bigger fish" they want to fry than allowing blatant racist gerrymandering in the south to stand.
Term Limits and Court Expansion can't come fast enough. When it does, begin the Biennial Term-Limiting of 2 Scotus justices to lower courts ASAP. The longest serving are the first to go: Thomas and Roberts.
If a Liberal majority is ever on the court, I hope they have a mission to review and vacate any or all egregious decisions of this deeply corrupted and illegitimate Scotus, going as far back as needed, and at least to the appointment of Corrupt Thomas. This means at least Citizens United and related corporate personhood and the earlier money = speech rulings, then Dobbs, Heller, Breun, Shelby & voting rights rulings, and ...!
Until the corruption inflicted upon the nation since at least the Thomas years is reversed, Scotus is still "The Fraud Squad". The rulings of this corrupt court must not stand.
The ruling is not a distraction, its an important ruling in several ways and perhaps puts a certain floor underneath the court's attacks on section 2 of the voting rights act.
Most of the rest here is on point in that there is a radical rewriting of important rules of democracy and equality taking place, and it will likely continue to take place as this particular aspect of the voting rights act may not be as important to roberts or others as is (eg) the opportunity to really the kill any remaining forms of affirmative action in educational admissions. Then there's the independent state legislature case which could present other problems for democracy.
The democracy outlasted the four horsemen’s attempt to undermine a duly elected leader and the laws passed by Congress, perhaps we will prevail against the 6 right wing zealots occupying the Court seats today!
Roberts had no choice in the Alabama redistributing case! Uphold the unconstitutional gerrymandering which disenfranchised Black voters, or salvage what’s left of his legacy by supporting the Voter Rights act! Roberts’ blinked and democracy lives another day!
Tune in at 3pm for jack smith. The tv media is blown away today, having finally no place else to go but towards facts, having talked about nonsense for months and completely disregarding everything that smith's grand juries have been doing. Legal commenters that actually understand what's going on were all over the Florida grand jury last week.
There's lots to learn but let's all understand how much tv (msnbc included) actually puts out trump narratives and viewpoints rather than anything important. Just today they reported one"changes to his legal team" which are so frequent (ha, ha) when, instead, it's critical to explain to people that his stupid attorneys were involved in the commission of a crime - that they now have to withdraw from representation because they were involved in creating this obstruction of justice and misrepresenting that a diligent search had been conducted, to the court, which is a significant crime.
Can you imagine how disgusted the forward-thinking founding fathers would be if they saw backward Americans insisting on originalism? They knew things would change, and they gave us the gift of Article V. In fact, it's pretty interesting that they thought one third of the nation should NOT be able to stop a change by a two thirds majority.
“The Only Constant in Life Is Change.”- Heraclitus.
We do not live in the world of the original American Revolution. The dinosaurs that wish we were back at the beginning of this nation do not belong on the Supreme Court. They do not belong in our government. We are in the midst of our own revolution.
Voting rights in 2023 is a no-brain-er! Maybe Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh just didn't want to look STUPID. Apparently Thomas, Barrett, Alito, and Gorsuch have no problem with that or with ruling for racism IN THE 21st CENTURY!
Thom, wouldn’t an adverse decision in Moore v Harper render this decision moot as it would assign all electoral issues to the State Legislatures ?
This is from Wikipedia, and it just happens to be correct:
"Federalist No. 78 discusses the power of judicial review. It argues that the federal courts have the job of determining whether acts of Congress are constitutional and what must be done if the government is faced with the things that are done on the contrary of the Constitution."
Thomas Jefferson was simply wrong about this, which anybody can tell from reading federalist 78, which was linked in yesterdays article here.
If you've bought into the notion that judicial review is unwarranted and was created under Marbury v Madison, you will be quite surprised if you actually read federalist 78!
Since Federalist 78 was written by Alexander Hamilton, who was not exactly Thomas Jefferson's BFF, I'm not finding your argument especially persuasive.
The Federalist Papers, though very influential, represent informed opinion, not settled law. (Last I looked, anyway . . .)
As emphasized by my comments, it's really important to read the source materials.
Another surprising thing one finds when they read the Federalist papers - those guys argued strongly against having a bill of rights. They didn't want a bill of rights, and they argue that one would be counterproductive.
Those familiar with the history, understand that Madison was led to change his mind on that by the politics in Virginia, where he served in the house during the first session of Congress.
My professor made jokes about all these things he would always ask people why there was no Bill of Rights in with the original constitution and he would say maybe because it was hot in Philadelphia in the summertime.
But this little known point is relevant when it comes to understanding the federalists' view on the role of the courts, because you're looking at a constitution that was drafted by people that didn't think there would be a Bill of Rights, let alone a 13th, 14th or 15th amendment.
They originally couldn't have been thinking that the court would need to rule on various limits on power ..... many things that would later become so important for it to address. Before ratification there would be no contemplated First Amendment role for courts because there would be no first amendment! I think the adoption of the bill of rights and other limitation on the powers of the government, by necessity created an increased role and power for the judiciary in our system, which even before day 1 had included the concept of judicial review.
Btw I'm not making any political points, and I'm not arguing for what is right or best, just illuminating some things that are such a clear part of the history but aren't well known.
The federalist papers were written by the dudes who actually sat at the convention and wrote the us constitution. (An undertaking conducted in private where the press and others were excluded.)
That's why they are the most important materials that exist on the meaning of the original text. Its authors "sold" the constitution to the people in ny and other states charged with the responsibility of voting on ratifying.
Thomas Jefferson was not at the constitutional convention and wrote none of the constitution, although Madison corresponded with him about a lot of it. When Jefferson became president, there was a huge controversy about his election, and the commissions involved in Marbury versus Madison, and by then he had created a new political party, which was opposed to the federalists - and John Marshall was indeed a federalist.
So by then, Jefferson was opposed to the political organization that created the constitution- which was all federalist, originally led by George Washington. While Madison later became fully aligned with Jefferson in the 1800s, at the time of the federalist papers Madison was a federalist, just like Hamilton, and all of the writers of the federalist papers subscribed to all of its content. Madison is called the "father of the constitution" for a reason. Madison did not disagree with anything Hamilton wrote and in fact advocated for it.
Hopefully this adds a little more gloss that is helpful but the main point is that judicial review was put in front of the American people before the constitution was ratified and was something characterized as essential to the constitutional system. This was put before the American people by the actual authors before the constitution was ratified - it was not created by Marbury versus Madison. That's my point.
Like any significant principle of law or history this doesn't come from a source like me, it's not made up and can be researched easily. It comes from fundamental sources, like the textbooks written by Lawrence Tribe and others that are used in constitutional law classes, or Archibald Cox's extensive treatment of the topic of judicial review in his great book on the courts and the constitution.
However, the so called originalists try to ‘divine’ the intent of the Founders! They use their own crystal ball not the US Constitution!
There are law review articles on the pervasive citations to federalist 78 in court opinions, and how it discussed and advocated for judicial review before the constitution was ratified.
https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1428&context=concomm
There's only one problem with that idea (which we all should fully support). It's called "democrats" or its sometimes called "moderates".
We can thank Nancy Pelosi for "just saying no" (without any explanation at all) to the Jones - Markey bill, co-authored by my own congressman, which would raised the number of seats by four.
I find the mainstream coverage to be so superficial and innocuous. The Times had a lead page yesterday with a picture of guess who, a lead headline about how many people in the world shrugged off the indictment, and the next story about Trump's viewpoint. What passes for news and journalism at NYT is an utter disgrace.
The other thing that's got me insane is how everything refers to classified documents, and its the classified documents case, etc. You see lots of mainstream and lefty outlets ridiculing Trump's statements about declassifying documents.
Maybe I'm too worked up but this is a very inaccurate way to talk about the indictment. This is not a classified documents case, as the classification status of the documents is irrelevant and is not mentioned in the criminal statutes he violated. It starts with 31 counts that involve "national security information" and criminal acts in relation to it. Once its national security information, its a whole 'nother thing and its just not a classified documents case - its a national security case. Yes, these are classified docs, but the point is the law doesnt care, and nothing about their classification status needs to be proven, or is even relevant, to the crimes charged!
But all forms of media are happy to a carry forward parts of a false trump narrative about classified documents - a topic that's subject to all kinds of inappropriate and confusing commentary, bothsideisms, etc. All media should just stop using the terminology of "classified documents," and instead talk about what is actually involved in the crimes charged. Some outlets are doing a better job than most of the mainstream. The first part of this headline is not technically true (he was not charged with retaining "classified docs", in any greater sense than he was charged with retaining "property" he does not own) but the secondary tagline clarifies things:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/08/donald-trump-charged-retention-classified-documents
Did someone forward Thom's writing to John Roberts? Maybe the messages are filtering through somehow and getting to the least insular of the conservative justices. Reality is there if they will choose to stop ignoring it. Persistence has to pay off sooner or later. One can only hope.