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For those claiming the Supreme Court is a political institution, I'd like to note that this was indeed a 5-4 decision. But one with Justices in the majority wh

For those claiming the Supreme Court is a political institution, I'd like to note that this was indeed a 5-4 decision. But one with Justices in the majority who were appointed by Biden, Trump, Bush 43, and Bush 41, and in the minority who were appointed by Bush 43, Obama, and Trump. It was Jackson, Gorsuch, Barrett, Alito, and Thomas in the majority and Sotomayor, Kagan, Roberts, and Kavanaugh in the minority.

bdzr 2y ago
Most decisions are mixed or more one sided than following the standard "political lines", but those cases never get spoken about.
LordKeren 2y ago
Hmmm, I’m not sure pointing to singular rulings like this really demonstrates that the Supreme Court isn’t getting increasingly political.
- mardifoufs 2y ago
  Increasingly political compared to when? And I don't think it's a singular judgement. If anything, the "ideological split" types of decisions are rarer, so it's more accurate to say that a few decisions on hot political topics doesn't mean that the SCOTUS is increasingly political.
rob74 2y ago
I guess this is not a topic that is politically divisive, so the judges were free to vote as they saw fit. Which doesn't say anything about how they will vote on other topics, like abortion, environmental protection etc.
- rayiner 2y ago
  The justices don't vote on "abortion, environmental protection, etc." They vote on the legal vehicles that have been used to address those things. And views on those legal vehicles map onto judicial philosophies that have nothing to do with the substantive issues. To use an analogy: there's people who think operating systems should be microkernels, and people who think they should be monolithic kernels. Windows NT was created to be a microkernel. But around NT 4.0 they shoved the GUI into the kernel space. If you're on the "Supreme Court of Windows NT," how do you view that? One camp might say, "NT is supposed to be a microkernel, get that GUI out of there." Another might say, "yeah but here in the real world, customers demand a fast GUI so it's fine to cut corners." Constitutional law is basically that, except we're talking about cutting corners with the highest law in the land.
  - relaxing 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - hollerith 2y ago
      He's a lawyer with a lot of professional experience. Are you a lawyer?
      - relaxing 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - rayiner 2y ago
      I'm trying to convey how legal conservatives think, as someone who is one. I am, on many policy issues, quite liberal. I think rich people should pay more taxes, people should drive EVs, etc. But ultimately I care more about the rules--especially the rules about who makes decisions and where power is allocated--than I do about what people or outcomes. I'd rather see 3C of global warming than administrative agencies operating contrary to the tripartite system of government the Founders designed. I care more about the Constitutional rules for allocating power to states than I do about what citizens of those states might do with that power. Etc. Issues like abortion and environmental laws just happen to map onto particular legal issues as an accident of history. If state-by-state legislation leads to widely legalized abortion, for example, I don't think most legal conservatives would support a Roe-like judicial decision ginning up a "right to fetal life" (which actually exists in Germany). If Congress passed environmental laws itself, instead of outsourcing it to an executive agency, I don't think most legal conservatives would be looking for ways to second-guess Congress's judgment. You actually see this in Europe. The legal system in European countries tends to be pretty boring, because they have more social cohesion and can legislate things according to the rules, rather than hacking up the system. The equivalent of Roe, for example, doesn't exist in continental Europe. In an irony, Emmanuel Macron criticized Dobbs when it came down. But France never had anything like Roe. And after Dobbs, France passed a constitutional amendment addressing abortion, which is exactly how legal conservatives would say you should handle the issue!
rurp 2y ago
A single vote means little and being partisan doesn't mean 0% voting with the other side. By this logic Congress is not a partisan institution given that people from both sides frequently vote together, but anyone who remotely follows national politics knows that it's a deeply partisan time.
jcranmer 2y ago
Four decisions were released today. We had a decision on the SEC vacating some of its enforcement powers, 6-3 with only the 3 liberal justices dissenting. We had this decision, which was 5-4, although it wasn't a clear ideological split. We had a 5-4 decision vacating an EPA regulation, with the 3 liberal justices and one of the more moderate conservative justices dissenting. We had a 6-3 decision on the EMTALA-abortion decision, with the 3 most conservative justices dissenting. (Technically it's per curiam, and the "majority" opinion is unsigned. But every justice signed onto a concurrence or a dissent, so we know exactly how every justice voted in this case). Yesterday, we had a decision on social media which was 6-3, with the 3 most conservative justices dissenting. Yesterday, we also had a decision on bribery which was 6-3, with the 3 liberal justices dissenting. Out of the most recent 6 decisions, we have 4 decisions that clearly evidence a 3-3-3 ideological split between 3 liberal justices, 3 more moderate conservative justices, and 3 very conservative justices that would be able to pretty fully predict how they would vote on the cases, and there's another case that it's partially predictive on (a 5-4 that peels off either Roberts, Kavanaugh, or Barrett doesn't contradict this lineup). Furthermore, the one case that the ideological breakdown doesn't work on is the case that is the least politically charged (it's literally resolving a circuit split, as opposed to please-intervene-in-this-politically-charged-case). So yeah, this doesn't disprove the thesis that SCOTUS has become increasingly politicized over the past few years.
- jandrese 2y ago
  Is there any corruption law that this court won't overturn? They seem extremely "pro" on quid pro quo.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    They didn't "overturn" this "corruption law." This was a prosecution under 18 USC 666, which is titled "theft or bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds." In this case, the question was framed to the Supreme Court whether 18 USC 666 applies to so-called "gratuity" payments. That framing was because the prosecution in the case below could not prove that the defendant had anticipated a payment in the future when he undertook the official act. (The defendant himself maintained that the payment was for subsequent consulting.) Federal law makes a distinction between those two things. You can still bring an 18 USC 666 case for bribery, you just need to prove that the payment had some ability to influence the official act.
thetinymite 2y ago
I won't argue against the Supreme Court being a political institution. However, I do think the court is more nuanced than popular opinion realizes. The article below shows a nice graphic of how often justices rule together on non-unanimous decisions. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/02/supreme-court-justice-math-00152188 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/02/supreme-co...
- ben7799 2y ago
  That's really interesting, because it shows even the most liberal and most conservative justices still are in agreement the majority of the time. Just reading news articles I would never have thought Sotomayor and Alito ruled the same 63% of the time.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    I weirdly track SCOTUS opinions. Most of them are incredibly technical.
12_throw_away 2y ago
> For those claiming the Supreme Court is a political institution, I'd like to note that this was indeed a 5-4 decision. Is there a name for this type of fallacy, in which a single data point is used to argue that a global trend does not exist? (Another prominent example is "it snowed somewhere, therefore climate change is not real.")
- denton-scratch 2y ago
  > Is there a name for this type of fallacy It's a type of non-sequitur, i.e. a formal fallacy. General conclusions can't be drawn from a single datapoint.
pessimizer 2y ago
Being a judge in the US is a political job. There's not even a universal requirement that one has to be a lawyer. However, "political" how liberals are using it currently is a euphemism for "current disputes between the Democrat and Republican party management." If you don't accept that framing, or assume that these people are wind-up toys set into motion by the Presidents that appointed them, things can be very political without this split that the punditocracy project onto the court. Whether bankruptcy courts can dictate a settlement for something this wide-reaching, and simply indemnify someone against future lawsuits is a very political question. What if the courts had settled with the Sacklers for $10, and indemnified them against future suits? Why are the bankruptcy courts allowed to improvise restrictions against what other courts and other victims are allowed to do? It's redolent of one of the most disturbing elements of Epstein's first conviction, during which they immunized unidentified, unindicted co-conspirators. In order to avail yourself of this immunity, you had to be guilty of child trafficking with Epstein. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been a co-conspirator. Can a court name a sacrifice to suffer for others? I'm not concerned in this case that some of the victims' lawyers were clamoring for it. Those lawyers could very well be paid for by people with another agenda. Why should the Sacklers be left with anything? The main guilty parties in their family are dead - now we're arguing with the people who are inheriting the proceeds of the crime. Why argue? Just seize it all; the damage far outstrips their worth, and their worth isn't even from their own labor, it's inherited. Meanwhile, the descendants of slaves are mocked over 400 years of stolen wealth. And we can't even take the proceeds of the most horrific crimes from people who don't even work for a living, and will likely be left wealthy if every dime of that inheritance is taken away.

bdzr 2y ago

Most decisions are mixed or more one sided than following the standard "political lines", but those cases never get spoken about.

LordKeren 2y ago

Hmmm, I’m not sure pointing to singular rulings like this really demonstrates that the Supreme Court isn’t getting increasingly political.

mardifoufs 2y ago
Increasingly political compared to when? And I don't think it's a singular judgement. If anything, the "ideological split" types of decisions are rarer, so it's more accurate to say that a few decisions on hot political topics doesn't mean that the SCOTUS is increasingly political.

rob74 2y ago

I guess this is not a topic that is politically divisive, so the judges were free to vote as they saw fit. Which doesn't say anything about how they will vote on other topics, like abortion, environmental protection etc.

rayiner 2y ago
The justices don't vote on "abortion, environmental protection, etc." They vote on the legal vehicles that have been used to address those things. And views on those legal vehicles map onto judicial philosophies that have nothing to do with the substantive issues. To use an analogy: there's people who think operating systems should be microkernels, and people who think they should be monolithic kernels. Windows NT was created to be a microkernel. But around NT 4.0 they shoved the GUI into the kernel space. If you're on the "Supreme Court of Windows NT," how do you view that? One camp might say, "NT is supposed to be a microkernel, get that GUI out of there." Another might say, "yeah but here in the real world, customers demand a fast GUI so it's fine to cut corners." Constitutional law is basically that, except we're talking about cutting corners with the highest law in the land.
- relaxing 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - hollerith 2y ago
    He's a lawyer with a lot of professional experience. Are you a lawyer?
    - relaxing 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - rayiner 2y ago
    I'm trying to convey how legal conservatives think, as someone who is one. I am, on many policy issues, quite liberal. I think rich people should pay more taxes, people should drive EVs, etc. But ultimately I care more about the rules--especially the rules about who makes decisions and where power is allocated--than I do about what people or outcomes. I'd rather see 3C of global warming than administrative agencies operating contrary to the tripartite system of government the Founders designed. I care more about the Constitutional rules for allocating power to states than I do about what citizens of those states might do with that power. Etc. Issues like abortion and environmental laws just happen to map onto particular legal issues as an accident of history. If state-by-state legislation leads to widely legalized abortion, for example, I don't think most legal conservatives would support a Roe-like judicial decision ginning up a "right to fetal life" (which actually exists in Germany). If Congress passed environmental laws itself, instead of outsourcing it to an executive agency, I don't think most legal conservatives would be looking for ways to second-guess Congress's judgment. You actually see this in Europe. The legal system in European countries tends to be pretty boring, because they have more social cohesion and can legislate things according to the rules, rather than hacking up the system. The equivalent of Roe, for example, doesn't exist in continental Europe. In an irony, Emmanuel Macron criticized Dobbs when it came down. But France never had anything like Roe. And after Dobbs, France passed a constitutional amendment addressing abortion, which is exactly how legal conservatives would say you should handle the issue!

rurp 2y ago

A single vote means little and being partisan doesn't mean 0% voting with the other side. By this logic Congress is not a partisan institution given that people from both sides frequently vote together, but anyone who remotely follows national politics knows that it's a deeply partisan time.

jcranmer 2y ago

Four decisions were released today. We had a decision on the SEC vacating some of its enforcement powers, 6-3 with only the 3 liberal justices dissenting. We had this decision, which was 5-4, although it wasn't a clear ideological split. We had a 5-4 decision vacating an EPA regulation, with the 3 liberal justices and one of the more moderate conservative justices dissenting. We had a 6-3 decision on the EMTALA-abortion decision, with the 3 most conservative justices dissenting. (Technically it's per curiam, and the "majority" opinion is unsigned. But every justice signed onto a concurrence or a dissent, so we know exactly how every justice voted in this case). Yesterday, we had a decision on social media which was 6-3, with the 3 most conservative justices dissenting. Yesterday, we also had a decision on bribery which was 6-3, with the 3 liberal justices dissenting. Out of the most recent 6 decisions, we have 4 decisions that clearly evidence a 3-3-3 ideological split between 3 liberal justices, 3 more moderate conservative justices, and 3 very conservative justices that would be able to pretty fully predict how they would vote on the cases, and there's another case that it's partially predictive on (a 5-4 that peels off either Roberts, Kavanaugh, or Barrett doesn't contradict this lineup). Furthermore, the one case that the ideological breakdown doesn't work on is the case that is the least politically charged (it's literally resolving a circuit split, as opposed to please-intervene-in-this-politically-charged-case). So yeah, this doesn't disprove the thesis that SCOTUS has become increasingly politicized over the past few years.

jandrese 2y ago
Is there any corruption law that this court won't overturn? They seem extremely "pro" on quid pro quo.
- rayiner 2y ago
  They didn't "overturn" this "corruption law." This was a prosecution under 18 USC 666, which is titled "theft or bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds." In this case, the question was framed to the Supreme Court whether 18 USC 666 applies to so-called "gratuity" payments. That framing was because the prosecution in the case below could not prove that the defendant had anticipated a payment in the future when he undertook the official act. (The defendant himself maintained that the payment was for subsequent consulting.) Federal law makes a distinction between those two things. You can still bring an 18 USC 666 case for bribery, you just need to prove that the payment had some ability to influence the official act.

thetinymite 2y ago

I won't argue against the Supreme Court being a political institution. However, I do think the court is more nuanced than popular opinion realizes. The article below shows a nice graphic of how often justices rule together on non-unanimous decisions. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/02/supreme-court-justice-math-00152188 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/02/supreme-co...

ben7799 2y ago
That's really interesting, because it shows even the most liberal and most conservative justices still are in agreement the majority of the time. Just reading news articles I would never have thought Sotomayor and Alito ruled the same 63% of the time.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  I weirdly track SCOTUS opinions. Most of them are incredibly technical.

12_throw_away 2y ago

> For those claiming the Supreme Court is a political institution, I'd like to note that this was indeed a 5-4 decision. Is there a name for this type of fallacy, in which a single data point is used to argue that a global trend does not exist? (Another prominent example is "it snowed somewhere, therefore climate change is not real.")

denton-scratch 2y ago
> Is there a name for this type of fallacy It's a type of non-sequitur, i.e. a formal fallacy. General conclusions can't be drawn from a single datapoint.

pessimizer 2y ago

Being a judge in the US is a political job. There's not even a universal requirement that one has to be a lawyer. However, "political" how liberals are using it currently is a euphemism for "current disputes between the Democrat and Republican party management." If you don't accept that framing, or assume that these people are wind-up toys set into motion by the Presidents that appointed them, things can be very political without this split that the punditocracy project onto the court. Whether bankruptcy courts can dictate a settlement for something this wide-reaching, and simply indemnify someone against future lawsuits is a very political question. What if the courts had settled with the Sacklers for $10, and indemnified them against future suits? Why are the bankruptcy courts allowed to improvise restrictions against what other courts and other victims are allowed to do? It's redolent of one of the most disturbing elements of Epstein's first conviction, during which they immunized unidentified, unindicted co-conspirators. In order to avail yourself of this immunity, you had to be guilty of child trafficking with Epstein. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been a co-conspirator. Can a court name a sacrifice to suffer for others? I'm not concerned in this case that some of the victims' lawyers were clamoring for it. Those lawyers could very well be paid for by people with another agenda. Why should the Sacklers be left with anything? The main guilty parties in their family are dead - now we're arguing with the people who are inheriting the proceeds of the crime. Why argue? Just seize it all; the damage far outstrips their worth, and their worth isn't even from their own labor, it's inherited. Meanwhile, the descendants of slaves are mocked over 400 years of stolen wealth. And we can't even take the proceeds of the most horrific crimes from people who don't even work for a living, and will likely be left wealthy if every dime of that inheritance is taken away.