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No one stopped you or anyone else from investigating liberal justices for ethics violations, nor is anyone currently stopping you.

• elmerfud 3y ago
  I think you're missing my point I don't see a reason to investigate the justices. Because these gifts have been known about for a long time but there is never any evidence that they influence. Justices rule extremely consistent over the course of their career. Especially in the decade leading up to their service on the supreme Court. The entire point of ethics rules is because things can influence outcome. Those rules get made because there is evidence that at least for some people things influenced outcomes. You have a grand total of nine people at any given time that are in the same court for a long long time. In my entire life I have never seen any evidence that for supreme Court justices things influenced their ruling. The history of the justices predicts their current rulings and does it amazingly well. That is the counter evidence to say that these gifts are a problem to them. If they're not having an influence on their ruling they're not a problem. It may be something that we don't like because we might feel personally that it would influence us. But I find it hysterical that the people making the claims are the most influenced by gifts to change their votes.
  • colonelanguz 3y ago
    > these gifts have been known about for a long time No they haven't. That's why it's breaking news when they get discovered. > In my entire life I have never seen any evidence that for supreme Court justices things influenced their ruling. How would you possibly know what this looks like when, as you concede, there never have been meaningful investigations into the justices? > The history of the justices predicts their current rulings and does it amazingly well. No better than the history of their acceptance of lavish gifts from ideologically motivated rich people.
    • elmerfud 3y ago
      Maybe this is breaking news to you that supreme Court justices receive gifts but a quick Google search will reveal news articles going back 10 plus years that talk about this. This is well known that supreme Court justices have received gifts many of them extremely lavish by normal person standards. There is constantly investigations into the justices. Literally every opinion that they publish is scrutinized. If a traditionally liberal Justice all of a sudden ruled in an extremely conservative manner that would like people's hair on fire. So the investigations are constant and the fact that the justices rule extremely consistently is strong evidence that whatever gifts they're given do not influence them to rule opposite of their constitutional understanding. What you do see in other areas such as Congress is that money buys votes. That is a well demonstrated fact. It is so common and so well demonstrated people ignore it at this point. You cannot find any evidence that the supreme Court justices are ruling inconsistent with their past stated constitutional understandings and inconsistent with their past rulings. That's why in all of these hit pieces there is never anything brought up about corruption and buying of justices. If there was even a shred of evidence that Clarence Thomas vote on the supreme Court could be bought it would be front and center on every page. Instead we get nonsense hit pieces of one of the most corrupt political bodies Congress pointing fingers at one of the most consistent government bodies. Because you can disagree with how the justices rule on issues but the supreme Court justices are exceedingly consistent in how they rule. That is direct evidence that either votes have been bought for many decades and prior to when they were nominated to the supreme Court or that these gifts don't influence. I don't think there's a tin foil hat big enough to think that people are able to predict potential supreme Court justices decades before they even made a name for themselves and started buying them off on mass hoping they'll make the supreme Court.
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      • notacoward 3y ago
        > You cannot find any evidence that the supreme Court justices are ruling inconsistent with their past stated constitutional understandings and inconsistent with their past rulings. Yes, we can, and so could you if you were actually curious about the matter. You're actually demonstrating the exact same kind of "motivated reasoning" that afflicts the court. Kavanaugh and Alito have both changed their position on stare decisis, going from "settled law" to "egregiously wrong" when it suited them in Dobbs. Kavanaugh changed his attitude on the rights of religious minorities. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/03/patrick-henry-murphy-brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court-domineque-ray.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/03/patrick-henry-mu... Alito flip-flopped on textualism when it came to the EPA. https://newrepublic.com/article/173028/samuel-alito-kavanaugh-textualism-fight https://newrepublic.com/article/173028/samuel-alito-kavanaug... Gorsuch abandoned originalism when it came to the rights of LGBTQ+ folks. https://www.city-journal.org/article/will-the-real-justice-gorsuch-please-stand-up https://www.city-journal.org/article/will-the-real-justice-g... There are many many more examples, for anyone not inclined to cherry-pick and turn a blind eye. Stop demanding ever more proof from other people, just because you haven't even bothered to study the reality yourself. Prove your own points or stop making these sweeping claims that are, frankly, tantamount to lies. BTW, before you add strawman to the list of your crimes against curious discussion, nobody is saying that justices can't change their minds. They can and should, as circumstances or understanding change. Even long-standing precedents have been set aside this way, and correctly so. However, the recent changes in attitude seem suspiciously sudden and arbitrary, and go to the heart of each justice's claimed judicial philosophy (often the one that got them through confirmation). As Kagan said in her dissent on Dobbs, nothing has changed about the case or issue itself; all that has changed is the composition of the court, and that's a poor basis for such a momentous decision. Again, we can't read minds. Maybe there have been several once-in-a-lifetime changes of heart all at once. OTOH, even if we consider such an incredibly unlikely coincidence, the court's recent decisions are far more consistent with a particular partisan agenda than with any recognizable judicial philosophy - even a flawed one. That's what sets them apart from any other court at least during my lifetime.
  • jjulius 3y ago
    >In my entire life I have never seen any evidence that for Supreme Court justices things influenced their rulings. I'm not here to agree or disagree with your overall point, but I find it really hard to see how you can confidently state this when, in the very beginning of your first comment, you agree that this scrutiny has only "come now". How can you be so sure that it hasn't happened when you haven't really looked at it?
  • garciasn 3y ago
    I am an independent. My biggest problem with the Clarence Thomas news isn’t that he (or any other justice) is being swayed with gifts. It’s that Thomas has publicly stated he leads a simple life where he doesn’t do any of the things he’s done. He’s lying. If he’s lying about this little thing, he’s lying about everything. This means he cannot be trusted with a lifetime appointment to the highest court.
• daft_pink 3y ago
  I think we're really just complaining about the tribalism. It's like our country is full of very left and very right people, and they are just keeping score and fighting for whichever side they think will benefit their tribe. They aren't happy about the conservative majority, so they just write hit piece after hit piece so their tribe can win. The news has become toxic.
  • padjo 3y ago
    What America calls left the rest of the world calls centre
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