7 ms·

Reading the opinions, it is a breath of fresh air to see one of the branches of government relying upon fact and logical argument when discussing the issues. Th

by ISL 7y ago

Reading the opinions, it is a breath of fresh air to see one of the branches of government relying upon fact and logical argument when discussing the issues. This is how America is supposed to work.

thanksforfish 7y ago
The partisan politics you see on TV is thankfully just the tip of the iceberg.
- softwaredoug 7y ago
  I'm not sure I agree. I think mundane issues become partisan whenever they become political, but many mundane issues are still just dealt with by whatever bureaucrat or official is just doing their job applying the law. In my experience with the US Federal Gov't (through my wife and family) applying the boring law is the norm, and what's not normal is when political actors inject themselves or create a narrative about an issue to suit their purpose. US Federal Employees are deeply apolitical as a workplace culture. We see a lot of the latter, but there's only so much bandwidth for it. Most work is boring and getting done in a professional manner
- FearNotDaniel 7y ago
  I suspect that idiom means just the opposite of what you think it means. By "thankfully" I infer that you are relieved that the vast majority of political activity, "below the surface" of what is seen on TV, is nowhere near as reprehensible. Whereas "tip of the iceberg" is generally used to imply that the visible problem is merely a fractional indication of the much greater and uglier problem that lies beneath, being of the same matter and type of that which has already been seen.
  - thanksforfish 7y ago
    Ah correct, I did misuse it. Thank you.
matheusmoreira 7y ago
You mean this is not the norm? The cases I've read seemed quite reasonable. They happened in the 90s and early 2000s though.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  There are definitely more than a few partisan court cases, but most of them are very very logical. Even when it's a partisan, ideological split.
  - LiquidSky 7y ago
    Ha. The trick is that what's "logical" and what's "partisan" depend entirely on who is speaking, like how cries of "judicial activism" only ever arise when it's a ruling against a conservative position. If it's a ruling FOR the conservative position, it's obviously logical and sound, and possibly correcting previous evil irrational liberal decisions.
    - huffmsa 7y ago
      No, I rarely read an opinion from the high court that I can't at least understand the logic and reasoning behind, regardless of if I agree with the conclusion
    - tyre 7y ago
      This is an easy take if you don't follow the court. The cases that tend to get a lot of press tend to be ones with clear ideological lines. But not every case is divided 5–4 along the line of which party nominated the justice. There are a lot of ideological currents that don't fit cleanly into political parties
    - CWuestefeld 7y ago
      cries of "judicial activism" only ever arise when it's a ruling against a conservative position I saw a counterexample just this morning. An editorial was arguing that the Court's "interference" in the Michigan election threatens democracy, and the only solution is to pack the court.
bsder 7y ago
> Reading the opinions, it is a breath of fresh air to see one of the branches of government relying upon fact and logical argument when discussing the issues. Your optimism is refreshing, but this is not how law works. Judges and lawyers start from a conclusion, and then find case law to back up their conclusion. Now, to be fair, most judges and lawyers who are competent tend not to go far off the established precedents. This is especially true at lower levels where higher judges are going to review your case--nobody wants to be the judge who gets overturned all the time. Judges are not engineers. The law regards "truth" as subject to negotiation without objective boundaries. An engineer regards "truth" as "the thing that kicks your ass when you contradict it".
rayiner 7y ago
The judicial branch is supposed to rely on facts and logical arguments. That is not how “America” writ large, however, is “supposed to work.” If that’s what the framers anticipated, they would have have had the other two branches likewise run by unelected subject matter experts with life tenure. But they didn’t. The fact is that the world is too complicated to figure out via facts and logical analysis, and that’s why ultimate control of policy rests with elected politicians. We’re seeing this play out at a grand scale right now. In the US, classes are cancelled for the rest of the year. Meanwhile, German students went back to school a week ago. And in Sweden, lower schools were never even shut down in the first place. Logical analysis doesn’t tell you what are the appropriate trade offs between keeping the economy running and keeping people safe. What the purposes of the welfare state should be isn’t a fact waiting to be discovered through empirical methods. These are all political judgments. Even where facts and logical analysis could play a role, it often doesn’t, because experts don’t agree on often very simple facts, or the experts’ answers are too complicated to be actionable.
- rumanator 7y ago
  > Meanwhile, German students went back to school a week ago. And in Sweden, lower schools were never even shut down in the first place. Logical analysis Where do you fit Italy, Spain, or even Portugal in your logica analysis? Because arguably the US is being hit harder than any of those countries and yet they are respecting their quarantine with notable results. Meanwhile, neither Germany nor Sweden has suffered as much as neither Spain or Italy.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    The US has not been harder but than Italy or Spain, or even Sweden. Sweden has had 2,300 COVID-19 deaths for 10 million people. The USA has 25 times as many deaths, but 32 times the population. Indeed, American cities with similar population and density to Stockholm have far fewer deaths. Washington DC is a little smaller and has similar density, but has had 165 deaths, versus over 1,100 in Stockholm. (Deaths are doubling in both countries every two weeks, so they seem to be at similar points in their overall trajectories.) Similarly, the death rate in the US outside of NYC is comparable to that of Germany. (NYC has no counterpart in Germany; it’s almost three times as dense as Berlin, and more than twice as tense as Munich.) But that’s a political decision the Swedes have made, and maybe it will prove to be the right one. It could be that, in the fall, the virus resurges in places where people have been sheltering and have not developed anti-bodies, while Swedes manage to avoid that resurgence because they never shut down. No expert can tell you which way it will be. They can tell you a discrete fact (sheltering in place will save more lives than otherwise), but are in no position to plug that fact into a value framework and reach a decision. But politicians must make a decision one way or the other.
tsomctl 7y ago
What's your opinion of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, in regards to them using facts and logical arguments?
btown 7y ago
Reading and listening to https://www.oyez.org/ https://www.oyez.org/ - a fantastic resource for Supreme Court transcripts - it's clear that regardless of their backgrounds and circumstances of their appointment, each justice is incredibly intelligent and engaged. The problem is that when it comes to the really sticky, complex issues that affect huge swaths of human rights, it's very possible for justices, in your words, to "rely upon fact and logical argument," but base their end goal/optimization function on either "what did the founders of the country factually and logically intend" or "what do the norms and ideals of modern society suggest would be factually and logically sustainable" without regard to the opposite viewpoint. A real balance between these viewpoints keeps the pendulum from swinging out of control; it serves as a low-pass filter on the often-wild steering of policy, or the whims of a short-term-focused electorate. But it's equally important that the ultimate power reside long-term with the people. And one very possible outcome is that our justices succumb simultaneously to a pandemic, during an administration that, to be as charitable as possible, does not seem particularly concerned with nuance, system stability, or universal enfranchisement. And it's a lot to ask of a justice to hold both the meta-meta-viewpoint and legal precision in mind, especially as it seems likely that constitutional questions will be in play as November approaches. All we can do is hope they will rise to the occasion.
- baybal2 7y ago
  FYI: a lot of US supreme court opinions are not even written by justices, but by their law clerks and assistants. Similarly, judges deputise their legal research to them at rate that would be rather unsettling for most of us outside of US. Anything like that would not be something expected from country's best laywers. A judge given a quarter million USD salary must be the best of the best in performance, and not to deputise his most important duties. > it's clear that regardless of their backgrounds and circumstances of their appointment, each justice is incredibly intelligent and engaged. I heard of much less charitable descriptions of the process, with the most frequent being about the well known mental decline of some judges. > The problem is that when it comes to the really sticky, complex issues that affect huge swaths of human rights, it's very possible for justices, in your words, to "rely upon fact and logical argument," but base their end goal/optimization function on either "what did the founders of the country factually and logically intend" or "what do the norms and ideals of modern society suggest would be factually and logically sustainable" without regard to the opposite viewpoint. This is one of very many problems. US court system has become too much more than just a legal institute it should be. The point my law instructor told me was that a judge just a lawyer on the government payroll, and half of them should be sent back to the law school so bad their skill level was. Then, if you can not trust half of them with most basic judicial duties, why should you entrust them with the fate of society, moral guidance, and big matter topics? Basically, the elites in the West tend to think too many things about lawyers, when they shouldn't. He was a lawyer by trade, and he was not happy with society putting lawyers in charge of running itself at all.

by ISL 7y ago

Reading the opinions, it is a breath of fresh air to see one of the branches of government relying upon fact and logical argument when discussing the issues. This is how America is supposed to work.

thanksforfish 7y ago

The partisan politics you see on TV is thankfully just the tip of the iceberg.

softwaredoug 7y ago
I'm not sure I agree. I think mundane issues become partisan whenever they become political, but many mundane issues are still just dealt with by whatever bureaucrat or official is just doing their job applying the law. In my experience with the US Federal Gov't (through my wife and family) applying the boring law is the norm, and what's not normal is when political actors inject themselves or create a narrative about an issue to suit their purpose. US Federal Employees are deeply apolitical as a workplace culture. We see a lot of the latter, but there's only so much bandwidth for it. Most work is boring and getting done in a professional manner
FearNotDaniel 7y ago
I suspect that idiom means just the opposite of what you think it means. By "thankfully" I infer that you are relieved that the vast majority of political activity, "below the surface" of what is seen on TV, is nowhere near as reprehensible. Whereas "tip of the iceberg" is generally used to imply that the visible problem is merely a fractional indication of the much greater and uglier problem that lies beneath, being of the same matter and type of that which has already been seen.
- thanksforfish 7y ago
  Ah correct, I did misuse it. Thank you.

matheusmoreira 7y ago

You mean this is not the norm? The cases I've read seemed quite reasonable. They happened in the 90s and early 2000s though.

huffmsa 7y ago
There are definitely more than a few partisan court cases, but most of them are very very logical. Even when it's a partisan, ideological split.
- LiquidSky 7y ago
  Ha. The trick is that what's "logical" and what's "partisan" depend entirely on who is speaking, like how cries of "judicial activism" only ever arise when it's a ruling against a conservative position. If it's a ruling FOR the conservative position, it's obviously logical and sound, and possibly correcting previous evil irrational liberal decisions.
  - huffmsa 7y ago
    No, I rarely read an opinion from the high court that I can't at least understand the logic and reasoning behind, regardless of if I agree with the conclusion
  - tyre 7y ago
    This is an easy take if you don't follow the court. The cases that tend to get a lot of press tend to be ones with clear ideological lines. But not every case is divided 5–4 along the line of which party nominated the justice. There are a lot of ideological currents that don't fit cleanly into political parties
  - CWuestefeld 7y ago
    cries of "judicial activism" only ever arise when it's a ruling against a conservative position I saw a counterexample just this morning. An editorial was arguing that the Court's "interference" in the Michigan election threatens democracy, and the only solution is to pack the court.

bsder 7y ago

> Reading the opinions, it is a breath of fresh air to see one of the branches of government relying upon fact and logical argument when discussing the issues. Your optimism is refreshing, but this is not how law works. Judges and lawyers start from a conclusion, and then find case law to back up their conclusion. Now, to be fair, most judges and lawyers who are competent tend not to go far off the established precedents. This is especially true at lower levels where higher judges are going to review your case--nobody wants to be the judge who gets overturned all the time. Judges are not engineers. The law regards "truth" as subject to negotiation without objective boundaries. An engineer regards "truth" as "the thing that kicks your ass when you contradict it".

rayiner 7y ago

The judicial branch is supposed to rely on facts and logical arguments. That is not how “America” writ large, however, is “supposed to work.” If that’s what the framers anticipated, they would have have had the other two branches likewise run by unelected subject matter experts with life tenure. But they didn’t. The fact is that the world is too complicated to figure out via facts and logical analysis, and that’s why ultimate control of policy rests with elected politicians. We’re seeing this play out at a grand scale right now. In the US, classes are cancelled for the rest of the year. Meanwhile, German students went back to school a week ago. And in Sweden, lower schools were never even shut down in the first place. Logical analysis doesn’t tell you what are the appropriate trade offs between keeping the economy running and keeping people safe. What the purposes of the welfare state should be isn’t a fact waiting to be discovered through empirical methods. These are all political judgments. Even where facts and logical analysis could play a role, it often doesn’t, because experts don’t agree on often very simple facts, or the experts’ answers are too complicated to be actionable.

rumanator 7y ago
> Meanwhile, German students went back to school a week ago. And in Sweden, lower schools were never even shut down in the first place. Logical analysis Where do you fit Italy, Spain, or even Portugal in your logica analysis? Because arguably the US is being hit harder than any of those countries and yet they are respecting their quarantine with notable results. Meanwhile, neither Germany nor Sweden has suffered as much as neither Spain or Italy.
- rayiner 7y ago
  The US has not been harder but than Italy or Spain, or even Sweden. Sweden has had 2,300 COVID-19 deaths for 10 million people. The USA has 25 times as many deaths, but 32 times the population. Indeed, American cities with similar population and density to Stockholm have far fewer deaths. Washington DC is a little smaller and has similar density, but has had 165 deaths, versus over 1,100 in Stockholm. (Deaths are doubling in both countries every two weeks, so they seem to be at similar points in their overall trajectories.) Similarly, the death rate in the US outside of NYC is comparable to that of Germany. (NYC has no counterpart in Germany; it’s almost three times as dense as Berlin, and more than twice as tense as Munich.) But that’s a political decision the Swedes have made, and maybe it will prove to be the right one. It could be that, in the fall, the virus resurges in places where people have been sheltering and have not developed anti-bodies, while Swedes manage to avoid that resurgence because they never shut down. No expert can tell you which way it will be. They can tell you a discrete fact (sheltering in place will save more lives than otherwise), but are in no position to plug that fact into a value framework and reach a decision. But politicians must make a decision one way or the other.

tsomctl 7y ago

What's your opinion of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, in regards to them using facts and logical arguments?

btown 7y ago

Reading and listening to https://www.oyez.org/ https://www.oyez.org/ - a fantastic resource for Supreme Court transcripts - it's clear that regardless of their backgrounds and circumstances of their appointment, each justice is incredibly intelligent and engaged. The problem is that when it comes to the really sticky, complex issues that affect huge swaths of human rights, it's very possible for justices, in your words, to "rely upon fact and logical argument," but base their end goal/optimization function on either "what did the founders of the country factually and logically intend" or "what do the norms and ideals of modern society suggest would be factually and logically sustainable" without regard to the opposite viewpoint. A real balance between these viewpoints keeps the pendulum from swinging out of control; it serves as a low-pass filter on the often-wild steering of policy, or the whims of a short-term-focused electorate. But it's equally important that the ultimate power reside long-term with the people. And one very possible outcome is that our justices succumb simultaneously to a pandemic, during an administration that, to be as charitable as possible, does not seem particularly concerned with nuance, system stability, or universal enfranchisement. And it's a lot to ask of a justice to hold both the meta-meta-viewpoint and legal precision in mind, especially as it seems likely that constitutional questions will be in play as November approaches. All we can do is hope they will rise to the occasion.

baybal2 7y ago
FYI: a lot of US supreme court opinions are not even written by justices, but by their law clerks and assistants. Similarly, judges deputise their legal research to them at rate that would be rather unsettling for most of us outside of US. Anything like that would not be something expected from country's best laywers. A judge given a quarter million USD salary must be the best of the best in performance, and not to deputise his most important duties. > it's clear that regardless of their backgrounds and circumstances of their appointment, each justice is incredibly intelligent and engaged. I heard of much less charitable descriptions of the process, with the most frequent being about the well known mental decline of some judges. > The problem is that when it comes to the really sticky, complex issues that affect huge swaths of human rights, it's very possible for justices, in your words, to "rely upon fact and logical argument," but base their end goal/optimization function on either "what did the founders of the country factually and logically intend" or "what do the norms and ideals of modern society suggest would be factually and logically sustainable" without regard to the opposite viewpoint. This is one of very many problems. US court system has become too much more than just a legal institute it should be. The point my law instructor told me was that a judge just a lawyer on the government payroll, and half of them should be sent back to the law school so bad their skill level was. Then, if you can not trust half of them with most basic judicial duties, why should you entrust them with the fate of society, moral guidance, and big matter topics? Basically, the elites in the West tend to think too many things about lawyers, when they shouldn't. He was a lawyer by trade, and he was not happy with society putting lawyers in charge of running itself at all.