4 ms·

SCOTUS doesn't "attack" anything. They issue a ruling based on law. It's funny that any time there's a judicial ruling we like, it's fair and impartial, and any

by pc86 2y ago

SCOTUS doesn't "attack" anything. They issue a ruling based on law. It's funny that any time there's a judicial ruling we like, it's fair and impartial, and any time there's a judicial ruling we don't like, it's judicial activism. The other reply already makes it pretty clear why this Arizona's law violated 1A. If you want to make a legal argument that donating money to a political campaign isn't political speech, go for it. But right now it's considered protected political speech so this ruling makes perfect sense. "Court reform" is a funny way of phrasing "ignoring the Constitution." This isn't even a partisan issue. Harris has been on the ballot 4 months and her campaign has raised approximately 3x the amount of money Trump's has. Moneyed interests are absolutely on the side of Harris this time around.

jgalt212 2y ago
Truth. The courts have become more / too important as Congress has become more ineffectual.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  Congress wouldn't matter as much if the feds hadn't spend 200yr usurping so much power from the states.
  - dingnuts 2y ago
    well the states really kind of blew it when they chose slavery as the hill to literally die on, didn't they? it's not like this is all on Congress..
    - gottorf 2y ago
      That states' rights were used to fight for the right to maintain slavery does not mean that the concept of states' rights is wrong. It is slavery that is wrong.
      - rat87 2y ago
        It was also used as an argument to fight for Jim Crow laws. So called "States rights" have a very ugly history in America
        potato3732842 2y ago
        And on the flip side states rights is what let half the country not have slavery from the get go, certain states grant women suffrage, basically every singular "good thing" you could come up with started in one state. My state had great public healthcare before the federal mandate. The current state of weed legalization, and research into medical psychedelic use would probably be a ton better off without the feds sticking their dick places it doesn't belong, to name but one example.
      - krapp 2y ago
        I'm inherently mistrustful of arguments for "state's rights" that don't explicitly state what rights are being advocated for, that the existence of a Federal government is standing in the way of. It's usually something gross and regressive, like wanting to mandate Christian doctrine as law, or to reintroduce racial segregation or to send all the gays to conversion therapy. Otherwise it would be something normal they could just, you know, pass a law about. Because states do have rights, they just don't have absolute sovereignty.
        gottorf 2y ago
        > Because states do have rights, they just don't have absolute sovereignty. This would be more meaningful if the federal government wasn't involved in everyone's lives to the degree that most people's idea of state sovereignty ends at issuing driver's licenses and license plates. In general, a call for "states' rights" is a call for the federal government to act in line with the supreme law of the land that is the Constitution and restore the concept of "laboratories of democracy" that states ought to be. Instead, what we have is a federal government that supposedly has the legal authority to regulate activity that crossed no state boundaries and harmed no one[0]. > wanting to mandate Christian doctrine as law, or to reintroduce racial segregation or to send all the gays to conversion therapy I'm not aware of any recent efforts at the state level, at least more seriously than someone trying to make the papers in a primary election, to achieve such goals. Do you have any examples? [0]: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/317us111 https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/317us111
    - potato3732842 2y ago
      I was thinking more recent stuff, like fed income tax and then "giving" that money back with strings resulting in the current "we'll fund your state level EPA and DOT agencies but only if they goose step in line with us" status quo. Said status quo means that every stupid nitpick of federal law winds up getting fought tooth and nail over.
    - adamc 2y ago
      It wasn't even slavery that caused the war, but secession. (I am not arguing that slavery didn't cause secession -- it did -- but that wasn't what created support in the north for fighting a war over it.)
gottorf 2y ago
> It's funny that any time there's a judicial ruling we like, it's fair and impartial, and any time there's a judicial ruling we don't like, it's judicial activism. It is funny, but at the same time I absolutely believe that in many cases it's possible to distinguish between judgments of the activist kind and those that aren't. Critics of SCOTUS should keep in mind that they agree unanimously more often than one might think. In fact, it's the modal outcome over all terms, with roughly third of all cases decided unanimously. IIRC 7-2 or more one-sided rulings (meaning more concurrence between all justices) occur roughly four-fifths of the time.
zaptheimpaler 2y ago
The Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade 2 years ago and the Chevron doctrine recently. Do you think these judgements were both supported by the constitution when they were made and also not supported by the same constitution when overturned? Which one was the "ruling based on law"? If there was a straight deterministic line from the laws to the rulings the court make, we would need far less courts or lawyers or highly trained judges. The fact is there are a million laws and precedents with 100 applying to any given situation in slightly different ways with many interpretations. Laws are written vaguely to keep them somewhat future-proof and leave room for interpretation/evolution. The courts do have a lot of power here.
- ETH_start 2y ago
  Later rulings supersede previous ones because later rulings review their precedents and will correct mistakes that they identify in their precedents, so if a later ruling found those earlier rulings incorrect in their application of the law, we assume there was in fact a misjudgment in those older rulings. The justices provided legal reasoning in overturning Roe vs Wade and the Chevron doctrine, and unless you find some glaring mistake in that reasoning, the default assumption should be that the rulings to overturn these doctrines were legally sound.
  - consteval 2y ago
    This completely ignores the political motivations for rulings. In my opinion, a person who does not at least try to address the obvious partisanism of our current court is not worth listening to. Please keep in mind some justices have gone as far as recommending revisiting rulings on same-sex marriage and interracial marriage. We cannot continue to play stupid.
    - ETH_start 2y ago
      There is no obvious political motivation. You're simply assuming that a ruling that is favored by the political camp you identify with could only be overruled due to political motivations, which is not sound reasoning, and only reveals your own political motivations.
adamc 2y ago
That is such a distorted fantasy I don't really know what to say.

by pc86 2y ago

jgalt212 2y ago

Truth. The courts have become more / too important as Congress has become more ineffectual.

potato3732842 2y ago
Congress wouldn't matter as much if the feds hadn't spend 200yr usurping so much power from the states.
- dingnuts 2y ago
  well the states really kind of blew it when they chose slavery as the hill to literally die on, didn't they? it's not like this is all on Congress..
  - gottorf 2y ago
    That states' rights were used to fight for the right to maintain slavery does not mean that the concept of states' rights is wrong. It is slavery that is wrong.
    - rat87 2y ago
      It was also used as an argument to fight for Jim Crow laws. So called "States rights" have a very ugly history in America
      - potato3732842 2y ago
        And on the flip side states rights is what let half the country not have slavery from the get go, certain states grant women suffrage, basically every singular "good thing" you could come up with started in one state. My state had great public healthcare before the federal mandate. The current state of weed legalization, and research into medical psychedelic use would probably be a ton better off without the feds sticking their dick places it doesn't belong, to name but one example.
    - krapp 2y ago
      I'm inherently mistrustful of arguments for "state's rights" that don't explicitly state what rights are being advocated for, that the existence of a Federal government is standing in the way of. It's usually something gross and regressive, like wanting to mandate Christian doctrine as law, or to reintroduce racial segregation or to send all the gays to conversion therapy. Otherwise it would be something normal they could just, you know, pass a law about. Because states do have rights, they just don't have absolute sovereignty.
      - gottorf 2y ago
        > Because states do have rights, they just don't have absolute sovereignty. This would be more meaningful if the federal government wasn't involved in everyone's lives to the degree that most people's idea of state sovereignty ends at issuing driver's licenses and license plates. In general, a call for "states' rights" is a call for the federal government to act in line with the supreme law of the land that is the Constitution and restore the concept of "laboratories of democracy" that states ought to be. Instead, what we have is a federal government that supposedly has the legal authority to regulate activity that crossed no state boundaries and harmed no one[0]. > wanting to mandate Christian doctrine as law, or to reintroduce racial segregation or to send all the gays to conversion therapy I'm not aware of any recent efforts at the state level, at least more seriously than someone trying to make the papers in a primary election, to achieve such goals. Do you have any examples? [0]: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/317us111 https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/317us111
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    I was thinking more recent stuff, like fed income tax and then "giving" that money back with strings resulting in the current "we'll fund your state level EPA and DOT agencies but only if they goose step in line with us" status quo. Said status quo means that every stupid nitpick of federal law winds up getting fought tooth and nail over.
  - adamc 2y ago
    It wasn't even slavery that caused the war, but secession. (I am not arguing that slavery didn't cause secession -- it did -- but that wasn't what created support in the north for fighting a war over it.)

gottorf 2y ago

> It's funny that any time there's a judicial ruling we like, it's fair and impartial, and any time there's a judicial ruling we don't like, it's judicial activism. It is funny, but at the same time I absolutely believe that in many cases it's possible to distinguish between judgments of the activist kind and those that aren't. Critics of SCOTUS should keep in mind that they agree unanimously more often than one might think. In fact, it's the modal outcome over all terms, with roughly third of all cases decided unanimously. IIRC 7-2 or more one-sided rulings (meaning more concurrence between all justices) occur roughly four-fifths of the time.

zaptheimpaler 2y ago

The Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade 2 years ago and the Chevron doctrine recently. Do you think these judgements were both supported by the constitution when they were made and also not supported by the same constitution when overturned? Which one was the "ruling based on law"? If there was a straight deterministic line from the laws to the rulings the court make, we would need far less courts or lawyers or highly trained judges. The fact is there are a million laws and precedents with 100 applying to any given situation in slightly different ways with many interpretations. Laws are written vaguely to keep them somewhat future-proof and leave room for interpretation/evolution. The courts do have a lot of power here.

ETH_start 2y ago
Later rulings supersede previous ones because later rulings review their precedents and will correct mistakes that they identify in their precedents, so if a later ruling found those earlier rulings incorrect in their application of the law, we assume there was in fact a misjudgment in those older rulings. The justices provided legal reasoning in overturning Roe vs Wade and the Chevron doctrine, and unless you find some glaring mistake in that reasoning, the default assumption should be that the rulings to overturn these doctrines were legally sound.
- consteval 2y ago
  This completely ignores the political motivations for rulings. In my opinion, a person who does not at least try to address the obvious partisanism of our current court is not worth listening to. Please keep in mind some justices have gone as far as recommending revisiting rulings on same-sex marriage and interracial marriage. We cannot continue to play stupid.
  - ETH_start 2y ago
    There is no obvious political motivation. You're simply assuming that a ruling that is favored by the political camp you identify with could only be overruled due to political motivations, which is not sound reasoning, and only reveals your own political motivations.

adamc 2y ago

That is such a distorted fantasy I don't really know what to say.