4 ms·

We have millions of people talking about this case today. I find it absurd to argue that it isn't interesting enough to be worth the time.

granzymes 3y ago
The Supreme Court does not decide cases: it decides questions. Whether or not the case is interesting, the legal questions the parties asked the Court to resolve were evidently not worth its time.
happytoexplain 3y ago
What does "interesting" have to do with it? Millions of people talk about all sorts of stupid shit that happens in current pop culture (including me!). I am very interested in the outcome of this case. I also absolutely do not care for the idea of the Supreme Court wasting one hour on it.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> absurd to argue that it isn't interesting enough to be worth the time This is why “snubs” is misleading. This case has been extensively argued. SCOTUS is saying no novel legal questions are apparent to it; the appeals court is affirmed.
mrandish 3y ago
The POV you express is quite common but it's mistaken in that it assumes the role of the courts is to "fix" things, when it is not. Their role is to apply the law as written consistently. While the word "fairly" is often used in place of "consistently", that can lead to confusion because some people mistake the word "fairness" in this context as meaning "morally fair" judicial outcomes. While "moral fairness" does sometimes happen as a result of applying the law consistently, it's not the primary goal or purpose of courts. When things in society are happening that are unfair or otherwise wrong, blaming the courts is like blaming the CPU instead of the programmer. In the US, the "programmer" is congress (the legislative branch). They write the code. The courts in this analogy are the CPU. Their job is to run the code as written correctly and consistently. If the outcomes aren't satisfactory, it's either a bug, missing feature or unhandled exception in the code. The Supreme Court's primary job is to fix system bugs at the micro-code and kernel levels, stuff like scope violations, etc, when the system runs correct code improperly. It's very rare for the issue behind "bad or unexpected outcomes" to be due to the micro-code or kernel but it can happen. Those rare times are when you call the Supremes. When the Supremes pass on accepting a case without comment, it's like rejecting a bug report, often due to it being a bug in the application-level code. In those cases passing is like responding "Not our Bug." Other times they are basically saying the issue is due to a program using system-level APIs in undefined ways. From their perspective, the system responding to ill-defined or undefined instructions with unexpected or inconsistent results is actually correct, so they respond with "Won't Fix (GiGO)". No one wants the CPU making up how to correctly respond to undefined instructions on its own. This is why the phrase "Courts don't make they law, they apply the law" is such a mantra. In this case, congress hasn't yet written any code designed to directly address this use case. If we want to "fix" things we need to get the feature approved and on the legislative backlog to be addressed in a future sprint.
- riwsky 3y ago
  This idealism ignores decades of the Supreme Court acting as a shadow legislature on topics as broad as environmental protections and sexual freedom. Roe v Wade, and decades later Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization, are not matters of microcode.
  - simiones 3y ago
    That's only because Congress refuses to legislate. Congress could pass a law that says women have the right to an abortion up to X weeks with Y exceptions (or don't or whatever Congress determines is the will of the people), and Roe v Wade or Dobbs would become irrelevant. Even if the SC somehow found that would be unconstitutional, Congress even has the power to enact an amendment to the Constitution.
    - riwsky 3y ago
      Sure, but that doesn’t fix the problem with mrandish’s argument. People assume the Court’s role is to fix things because from like 1950–2016, it fixed things: the Court’s political outlook was much closer to the average American’s than Congress’ was, and its macro-decisions served to nudge the law towards popular opinion.
      - mrandish 3y ago
        I was trying to communicate how the legal system was generally intended to function. You are quite correct that historically it has not always lived up these aspirations. The tendency in certain eras for SCOTUS to creatively go beyond its charter and "color outside the lines" is part of the reason there's confusion about how the court was intended to function. Although, the popular media also bears a good share of the blame for constantly assessing court actions on moral outcomes instead of judicial process. I also acknowledge the exact boundary of the court's proper scope has always been a philosophical gray area over which reasonable people can disagree. However, I think most judicial observers today would agree that some courts in prior eras definitely exceeded those proper bounds, even if they don't agree among themselves on exactly how much and when. While there are still those who believe the excessive judicial activism of the past was proper, I think today that viewpoint is a small minority. I suspect that's because even those who agree directionally with certain historical precedents established through such activism understand that the judicial creativity that's wonderful when the court leans your way becomes terrible when the winds inevitably blow the other way. Hence my analogy about CPUs and how few people think it's a good design approach to "fix" poorly written code or even programs doing things we no longer agree with at the CPU level. The most predictable, reliable and sustainable long-term design approach is for CPUs to consistently run the code as written and for misbehaving code to be fixed at the program level. I think this remains the most proper design intention despite some CPUs of the past being purposefully "creative" to achieve what some may believe were more desirable outcomes than just sticking to the code as written.

granzymes 3y ago

The Supreme Court does not decide cases: it decides questions. Whether or not the case is interesting, the legal questions the parties asked the Court to resolve were evidently not worth its time.

happytoexplain 3y ago

What does "interesting" have to do with it? Millions of people talk about all sorts of stupid shit that happens in current pop culture (including me!). I am very interested in the outcome of this case. I also absolutely do not care for the idea of the Supreme Court wasting one hour on it.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> absurd to argue that it isn't interesting enough to be worth the time This is why “snubs” is misleading. This case has been extensively argued. SCOTUS is saying no novel legal questions are apparent to it; the appeals court is affirmed.

mrandish 3y ago

The POV you express is quite common but it's mistaken in that it assumes the role of the courts is to "fix" things, when it is not. Their role is to apply the law as written consistently. While the word "fairly" is often used in place of "consistently", that can lead to confusion because some people mistake the word "fairness" in this context as meaning "morally fair" judicial outcomes. While "moral fairness" does sometimes happen as a result of applying the law consistently, it's not the primary goal or purpose of courts. When things in society are happening that are unfair or otherwise wrong, blaming the courts is like blaming the CPU instead of the programmer. In the US, the "programmer" is congress (the legislative branch). They write the code. The courts in this analogy are the CPU. Their job is to run the code as written correctly and consistently. If the outcomes aren't satisfactory, it's either a bug, missing feature or unhandled exception in the code. The Supreme Court's primary job is to fix system bugs at the micro-code and kernel levels, stuff like scope violations, etc, when the system runs correct code improperly. It's very rare for the issue behind "bad or unexpected outcomes" to be due to the micro-code or kernel but it can happen. Those rare times are when you call the Supremes. When the Supremes pass on accepting a case without comment, it's like rejecting a bug report, often due to it being a bug in the application-level code. In those cases passing is like responding "Not our Bug." Other times they are basically saying the issue is due to a program using system-level APIs in undefined ways. From their perspective, the system responding to ill-defined or undefined instructions with unexpected or inconsistent results is actually correct, so they respond with "Won't Fix (GiGO)". No one wants the CPU making up how to correctly respond to undefined instructions on its own. This is why the phrase "Courts don't make they law, they apply the law" is such a mantra. In this case, congress hasn't yet written any code designed to directly address this use case. If we want to "fix" things we need to get the feature approved and on the legislative backlog to be addressed in a future sprint.

riwsky 3y ago
This idealism ignores decades of the Supreme Court acting as a shadow legislature on topics as broad as environmental protections and sexual freedom. Roe v Wade, and decades later Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization, are not matters of microcode.
- simiones 3y ago
  That's only because Congress refuses to legislate. Congress could pass a law that says women have the right to an abortion up to X weeks with Y exceptions (or don't or whatever Congress determines is the will of the people), and Roe v Wade or Dobbs would become irrelevant. Even if the SC somehow found that would be unconstitutional, Congress even has the power to enact an amendment to the Constitution.
  - riwsky 3y ago
    Sure, but that doesn’t fix the problem with mrandish’s argument. People assume the Court’s role is to fix things because from like 1950–2016, it fixed things: the Court’s political outlook was much closer to the average American’s than Congress’ was, and its macro-decisions served to nudge the law towards popular opinion.
    - mrandish 3y ago
      I was trying to communicate how the legal system was generally intended to function. You are quite correct that historically it has not always lived up these aspirations. The tendency in certain eras for SCOTUS to creatively go beyond its charter and "color outside the lines" is part of the reason there's confusion about how the court was intended to function. Although, the popular media also bears a good share of the blame for constantly assessing court actions on moral outcomes instead of judicial process. I also acknowledge the exact boundary of the court's proper scope has always been a philosophical gray area over which reasonable people can disagree. However, I think most judicial observers today would agree that some courts in prior eras definitely exceeded those proper bounds, even if they don't agree among themselves on exactly how much and when. While there are still those who believe the excessive judicial activism of the past was proper, I think today that viewpoint is a small minority. I suspect that's because even those who agree directionally with certain historical precedents established through such activism understand that the judicial creativity that's wonderful when the court leans your way becomes terrible when the winds inevitably blow the other way. Hence my analogy about CPUs and how few people think it's a good design approach to "fix" poorly written code or even programs doing things we no longer agree with at the CPU level. The most predictable, reliable and sustainable long-term design approach is for CPUs to consistently run the code as written and for misbehaving code to be fixed at the program level. I think this remains the most proper design intention despite some CPUs of the past being purposefully "creative" to achieve what some may believe were more desirable outcomes than just sticking to the code as written.