The Supremes

[Biff Tannen 45747]

11 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Ignoring it would trespass on the constitutional separation of powers because the justices would essentially be saying that they have the power to override a congressional command.

Because they would certainly never do this.

[HornOnTheBayou 8948]

 

[HenryJames 66185]

Taking away the rights of every woman in America instead of going to therapy. 

[Biff Tannen 45747]

7 minutes ago, HornOnTheBayou said:

 

It’s like they are having a contest to see who can be the most blatantly hypocritical. 

[jimmyjazz 46205]

The last time my wife raised a flag, I was served more deliciously inexpensive and perhaps horse-laden TexMex.  Mmm, TexMex.

[elfenix 34336]

my wife put up the flag in mid january of 2020 after being called a cunt 4 weeks later on february 15.  i didn't notice it for a couple days, but when i did, i asked her to take it down. she refused.  what was i supposed to do? you heard those people-my wife is a cunt!  no way i was going to take that flag down and unleash the beast!

Edited May 30 by elfenix

[HenryJames 66185]

Has the New York Post run a ‘Flag Hag’ headline yet?

[Smax 3800]

Sounds like Alito needs to get a handle on his trad wife.

[Dnaguy 12094]

37 minutes ago, Smax said:

Sounds like Alito needs to get a handle on his trad wife.

Exactly.

What a weird self own.

Dude goes full Beta cuck to avoid accountability. What red blooded American man gives up flag duty to their wife? 
Memorial Day, Flag Day, July 4th, and Veterans Day are all DNAguy on a ladder putting up and taking down American flag with my ladder. The house is divided so I respect her enough to not throw up a UT flag on games days… plus I’m lazy so I’ll just go with the first excuse.

DNAgal doesn’t know where the ladder is, where I keep the flag, or how to raise an extension ladder.

I bet that pussy doesn’t even own a drill.

[The Original Greaser Bob 2851]

I don't own a drill, but my nickname in college with "The Jackhammer".

[brown water 3778]

19 hours ago, TexEx15 said:

 

 

[Red Five 40897]

".... and then I said, 'But honey, I'm a Supreme Court Justice! We can't be flying openly political flags outside of our house! Either one of them!'. And she said, 'Oh fuck that Sam. Don't be a fucking pussy.'" 

[Fudge Nuggets 19227]

14 hours ago, bolverk said:

The Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland can invoke two powerful textual authorities for this motion

I laughed. Not like that slack ass is going to do anything. 

[jimmyjazz 46205]

17 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

I laughed. Not like that slack ass is going to do anything. 

Just imagine how much less damage he would have done on the Supreme Court.

[Brisketexan 105408]

As an aside on the Alito-wife thing...I am often involved in litigating matters of public interest.  Things that are the subject of some of the petitions that people go knocking on your door to get you to sign.  SO, I don't want to have my signature or my wife's signature on anything that I may have to litigate later.  Even if I agree with the subject of the petition - I studiously avoid anything that would even have a whiff of conflict.  That means that I have also asked my wife not to sign any petitions without talking to me about it first, as it's an ethical issue for me.  She of course understands, and respects that.

There.  It's that simple.  "Hey, my ethics and integrity are at stake and need to be above reproach, so we need to stay out of things that we might otherwise get into if that wasn't the standard."  And two of our fucking SUPREME COURT JUSTICES CAN'T FOLLOW A STANDARD THAT A MIDDLING TEXAS TRIAL LAWYER HAS FIGURED OUT AND FOLLOWS.  Fucking fuckers.

[bolverk 29728]

Not gonna talk about it. Wouldn't be prudent.

For a guy who's supposedly concerned about maintaining his legacy and the legitimacy of the court, he certainly has a funny way of showing it. Or, alternatively and more likely, he just doesn't give a shit about any of that. 

 

Chief Justice Roberts rejects Senate Democrats’ request to discuss Supreme Court ethics

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday declined an invitation to meet with Democratic senators to talk about Supreme Court ethics and the controversy over flags that flew outside homes owned by Justice Samuel Alito.

Roberts’ response came in a letter to the senators a day after Alito separately wrote them and House members to reject their demands that he recuse himself from major Supreme Court cases involving former President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 rioters because of the flags, which are like those carried by rioters at the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a member of the Judiciary panel, had written Roberts a week ago to ask for the meeting and that Roberts take steps to ensure that Alito recuses himself from any cases before the court concerning the Jan. 6 attack or the Republican former president’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

“I must respectfully decline your request for a meeting,” Roberts wrote.

Justices decide for themselves when to step aside from cases, Roberts noted. Alito said he concluded nothing about the flags, both of which he said were flown by his wife outside their homes in Virginia and New Jersey, required his recusal.

Last year, Roberts declined to testify at a Judiciary Committee hearing on Supreme Court ethics, and he made mention of that Thursday in saying that chief justices only rarely have met with lawmakers.

“Moreover, the format proposed — a meeting with leaders only of one party who have expressed an interest in matters currently pending before the court — simply underscores that participating in such a meeting would be inadvisable,” he wrote.

Both Alito and an another conservative justice, Clarence Thomas, have rejected calls to recuse themselves from cases related to the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Thomas’ wife, Ginni, supported efforts to overturn the election results.

Public trust in the Supreme Court is at its lowest point in at least 50 years.

The justices are considering two major cases related to the Capitol attack, including charges faced by the rioters and whether Trump has immunity from prosecution on election interference charges.

[Red Five 40897]

What's the standard for recusal? The appearance of a conflict of interest right? 

Flying maga flags outside your house while deciding on Trump cases. No issues there. 

[chainsaw 9877]

Everyone knows by now that the supreme court is a joke

[SubliminalHorn 6811]

So the Supreme Court has no checks on it? Cool, cool, cool. I’m sure that’s exactly what the founders had in mind 

[TwiceHorn 31541]

20 minutes ago, SubliminalHorn said:

So the Supreme Court has no checks on it? Cool, cool, cool. I’m sure that’s exactly what the founders had in mind 

Without defending this court or any of the asshole justices, that is not true.

First, if we want to have an independent judiciary, which I think is a good thing overall, the judicial functions of the courts should not be directly answerable to either Congress or the President.

However, that does not mean that there are no checks.  As Steve Vladeck points out, Congress controls a number of things about the Supreme Court. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/15/opinions/congress-supreme-court-control-vladeck/index.html see also https://stevevladeck.substack.com/i/143557622/the-one-first-long-read-how-to-think-about-court-reform

These checks include:  the number of justices, the jurisdiction of the court, its budget, where and when it sits, etc.

Edited May 31 by TwiceHorn

[South Austin 52625]

1 minute ago, TwiceHorn said:

These checks include:  the number of justices, the jurisdiction of the court, its budget, where and when it sits, etc.

Cool.  Let's move their chambers to Gary, Indiana.

[TwiceHorn 31541]

3 minutes ago, South Austin said:

Cool.  Let's move their chambers to Gary, Indiana.

That has apparently been done before, well not Gary, but 

Throughout the antebellum era, Congress required the justices to “ride circuit,” spending as much as six months of every year traveling the country to hear cases on lower courts — not because it served any especially noble purpose, but because it helped to remind everyone of their relative place.

And the court’s place, for much of this period, was literally in the bottom of the US Capitol — without offices of its own, much of a budget or even full-time staff. (The court would move upstairs to the Old Senate Chamber in 1860, but not to its own building until 1935, and even then, only because Congress appropriated the money to build it.)

It is also worth noting that a fair number of the objectionable rulings of this Court could be fixed by Congress re-writing/recalibrating legislation such as the Clean Water Act, if there was the political will to do it and Congress was sufficiently functional.

Edited May 31 by TwiceHorn

[Dnaguy 12094]

2 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Without defending this court or any of the asshole justices, that is not true.

First, if we want to have an independent judiciary, which I think is a good thing overall, the judicial functions of the courts should not be directly answerable to either Congress or the President.

However, that does not mean that there are no checks.  As Steve Vladeck points out, Congress controls a number of things about the Supreme Court.  https://stevevladeck.substack.com/i/143557622/the-one-first-long-read-how-to-think-about-court-reform

These checks include:  the number of justices, the jurisdiction of the court, its budget, where and when it sits, etc.

Originalist / textualist justices refuses to honor the text of the Constitution by ignoring the power of Congress given by Article 3.

If this isn’t the height of current right wing politics, idk what is.

Quote

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

How can Congress asses good behavior if the justices themselves won’t allow them to know if someone has violated the rules they set for themselves? 
Oh well, nevertheless…..

 

[Js1 85596]

32 minutes ago, SubliminalHorn said:

I’m sure that’s exactly what the founders had in mind 

SCOTUS: well, our job is to interpret what they thought.  And since we make things up all the time....

[TwiceHorn 31541]

7 minutes ago, Dnaguy said:

Originalist / textualist justices refuses to honor the text of the Constitution by ignoring the power of Congress given by Article 3.

If this isn’t the height of current right wing politics, idk what is.

How can Congress asses good behavior if the justices themselves won’t allow them to know if someone has violated the rules they set for themselves? 
Oh well, nevertheless…..

 

Well, Congress can impeach them for whatever they consider high crimes and misdemeanors.  Again, if they have the political will.

[Dnaguy 12094]

8 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, Congress can impeach them for whatever they consider high crimes and misdemeanors.  Again, if they have the political will.

Will who?

 

[Sawbonz 27594]

18 hours ago, bolverk said:

Not gonna talk about it. Wouldn't be prudent.

For a guy who's supposedly concerned about maintaining his legacy and the legitimacy of the court, he certainly has a funny way of showing it. Or, alternatively and more likely, he just doesn't give a shit about any of that. 

 

Chief Justice Roberts rejects Senate Democrats’ request to discuss Supreme Court ethics

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday declined an invitation to meet with Democratic senators to talk about Supreme Court ethics and the controversy over flags that flew outside homes owned by Justice Samuel Alito.

Roberts’ response came in a letter to the senators a day after Alito separately wrote them and House members to reject their demands that he recuse himself from major Supreme Court cases involving former President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 rioters because of the flags, which are like those carried by rioters at the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a member of the Judiciary panel, had written Roberts a week ago to ask for the meeting and that Roberts take steps to ensure that Alito recuses himself from any cases before the court concerning the Jan. 6 attack or the Republican former president’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

“I must respectfully decline your request for a meeting,” Roberts wrote.

Justices decide for themselves when to step aside from cases, Roberts noted. Alito said he concluded nothing about the flags, both of which he said were flown by his wife outside their homes in Virginia and New Jersey, required his recusal.

Last year, Roberts declined to testify at a Judiciary Committee hearing on Supreme Court ethics, and he made mention of that Thursday in saying that chief justices only rarely have met with lawmakers.

“Moreover, the format proposed — a meeting with leaders only of one party who have expressed an interest in matters currently pending before the court — simply underscores that participating in such a meeting would be inadvisable,” he wrote.

Both Alito and an another conservative justice, Clarence Thomas, have rejected calls to recuse themselves from cases related to the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Thomas’ wife, Ginni, supported efforts to overturn the election results.

Public trust in the Supreme Court is at its lowest point in at least 50 years.

The justices are considering two major cases related to the Capitol attack, including charges faced by the rioters and whether Trump has immunity from prosecution on election interference charges.

Why are they asking? Call a special committee and subpoena Roberts Alito and Thomas and have them explain themselves on the record under oath. You know utilize the checks rather than kowtowing to the balances

[Dnaguy 12094]

I think the real question here is, what flag does Martha-Ann fly today.

[LCHorn 2632]

On 5/29/2024 at 9:37 PM, C-Man said:

You had me until Merrick Garland

I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, but 4 years as an AD is a long time.  A second term Biden administration could rightly look to get a fresh face here.  

[tx 3 putt 77494]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

That has apparently been done before, well not Gary, but 

Throughout the antebellum era, Congress required the justices to “ride circuit,” spending as much as six months of every year traveling the country to hear cases on lower courts — not because it served any especially noble purpose, but because it helped to remind everyone of their relative place.

And the court’s place, for much of this period, was literally in the bottom of the US Capitol — without offices of its own, much of a budget or even full-time staff. (The court would move upstairs to the Old Senate Chamber in 1860, but not to its own building until 1935, and even then, only because Congress appropriated the money to build it.)

It is also worth noting that a fair number of the objectionable rulings of this Court could be fixed by Congress re-writing/recalibrating legislation such as the Clean Water Act, if there was the political will to do it and Congress was sufficiently functional.

thomas’s rv is ready to go !!!

[NeverMarryAStripper 21935]

*Thomas'

[Pancho 45044]

 

[Red Five 40897]

And what reasons has the Speaker of the House given for disagreeing with the jury’s decision so vehemently that he wants the fucking Supreme Court to intervene?

[Neonmoon 38130]

23 hours ago, chainsaw said:

Everyone knows by now that the supreme court is a joke

Exhibit 5.264A

26 minutes ago, Pancho said:

 

 

[DigglerontheHoof 21254]

5 minutes ago, Red Five said:

And what reasons has the Speaker of the House given for disagreeing with the jury’s decision so vehemently that he wants the fucking Supreme Court to intervene?

[NWBuck 8587]

5 hours ago, South Austin said:

Cool.  Let's move their chambers to Gary, Indiana.

Damn! What did Gary ever do to you?? That'd really eff up the property values...

[Dnaguy 12094]

3 hours ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

*Thomas'

When it’s Clarence Thomas, it’s always “ass”

[Nivek 16988]

On 5/29/2024 at 9:35 PM, bolverk said:

 

Jamie Raskin presents a compelling case that Alito and Thomas must recuse themselves. As we've seen, he's pretty tenacious, and I imagine he's going to be applying some pressure.

 

Jamie Raskin: How to Force Justices Alito and Thomas to Recuse Themselves in the Jan. 6 Cases

Many people have gloomily accepted the conventional wisdom that because there is no binding Supreme Court ethics code, there is no way to force Associate Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to recuse themselves from the Jan. 6 cases that are before the court.

Justices Alito and Thomas are probably making the same assumption.

But all of them are wrong.

It seems unfathomable that the two justices could get away with deciding for themselves whether they can be impartial in ruling on cases affecting Donald Trump’s liability for crimes he is accused of committing on Jan. 6. Justice Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, was deeply involved in the Jan. 6 “stop the steal” movement. Above the Virginia home of Justice Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, flew an upside-down American flag — a strong political statement among the people who stormed the Capitol. Above the Alitos’ beach home in New Jersey flew another flag that has been adopted by groups opposed to President Biden.

Justices Alito and Thomas face a groundswell of appeals beseeching them not to participate in Trump v. United States, the case that will decide whether Mr. Trump enjoys absolute immunity from criminal prosecution, and Fischer v. United States, which will decide whether Jan. 6 insurrectionists — and Mr. Trump — can be charged under a statute that criminalizes “corruptly” obstructing an official proceeding. (Justice Alito said on Wednesday that he would not recuse himself from Jan. 6-related cases.)

Everyone assumes that nothing can be done about the recusal situation because the highest court in the land has the lowest ethical standards — no binding ethics code or process outside of personal reflection. Each justice decides for him- or herself whether he or she can be impartial.

Of course, Justices Alito and Thomas could choose to recuse themselves — wouldn’t that be nice? But begging them to do the right thing misses a far more effective course of action.

The U.S. Department of Justice — including the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, an appointed U.S. special counsel and the solicitor general, all of whom were involved in different ways in the criminal prosecutions underlying these cases and are opposing Mr. Trump’s constitutional and statutory claims — can petition the other seven justices to require Justices Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves not as a matter of grace but as a matter of law.

The Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland can invoke two powerful textual authorities for this motion: the Constitution of the United States, specifically the due process clause, and the federal statute mandating judicial disqualification for questionable impartiality, 28 U.S.C. Section 455. The Constitution has come into play in several recent Supreme Court decisions striking down rulings by stubborn judges in lower courts whose political impartiality has been reasonably questioned but who threw caution to the wind to hear a case anyway. This statute requires potentially biased judges throughout the federal system to recuse themselves at the start of the process to avoid judicial unfairness and embarrassing controversies and reversals.

The constitutional and statutory standards apply to Supreme Court justices. The Constitution, and the federal laws under it, is the “supreme law of the land,” and the recusal statute explicitly treats Supreme Court justices like other judges: “Any justice, judge or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” The only justices in the federal judiciary are the ones on the Supreme Court.

This recusal statute, if triggered, is not a friendly suggestion. It is Congress’s command, binding on the justices, just as the due process clause is. The Supreme Court cannot disregard this law just because it directly affects one or two of its justices. Ignoring it would trespass on the constitutional separation of powers because the justices would essentially be saying that they have the power to override a congressional command.

When the arguments are properly before the court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Sonia Sotomayor will have both a constitutional obligation and a statutory obligation to enforce recusal standards.

Indeed, there is even a compelling argument based on case law that Chief Justice Roberts and the other, unaffected justices should raise the matter of recusal on their own (or sua sponte). Numerous circuit courts have agreed with the Eighth Circuit that this is the right course of action when members of an appellate court are aware of “overt acts” of a judge reflecting personal bias. Cases like this stand for the idea that appellate jurists who see something should say something instead of placing all the burden on parties in a case who would have to risk angering a judge by bringing up the awkward matter of potential bias and favoritism on the bench.

But even if no member of the court raises the issue of recusal, the urgent need to deal with it persists. Once it is raised, the court would almost surely have to find that the due process clause and Section 455 compel Justices Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves. To arrive at that substantive conclusion, the justices need only read their court’s own recusal decisions.

In one key 5-to-3 Supreme Court case from 2016, Williams v. Pennsylvania, Justice Anthony Kennedy explained why judicial bias is a defect of constitutional magnitude and offered specific objective standards for identifying it. Significantly, Justices Alito and Thomas dissented from the majority’s ruling.

The case concerned the bias of the chief justice of Pennsylvania, who had been involved as a prosecutor on the state’s side in an appellate death penalty case that was before him. Justice Kennedy found that the judge’s refusal to recuse himself when asked to do so violated due process. Justice Kennedy’s authoritative opinion on recusal illuminates three critical aspects of the current controversy.

First, Justice Kennedy found that the standard for recusal must be objective because it is impossible to rely on the affected judge’s introspection and subjective interpretations. The court’s objective standard requires recusal when the likelihood of bias on the part of the judge “is too high to be constitutionally tolerable,” citing an earlier case. “This objective risk of bias,” according to Justice Kennedy, “is reflected in the due process maxim that ‘no man can be a judge in his own case.’” A judge or justice can be convinced of his or her own impartiality but also completely missing what other people are seeing.

Second, the Williams majority endorsed the American Bar Association’s Model Code of Judicial Conduct as an appropriate articulation of the Madisonian standard that “no man can be a judge in his own cause.” Model Code Rule 2.11 on judicial disqualification says that a judge “shall disqualify himself or herself in any proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” This includes, illustratively, cases in which the judge “has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party,” a married judge knows that “the judge’s spouse” is “a person who has more than a de minimis interest that could be substantially affected by the proceeding” or the judge “has made a public statement, other than in a court proceeding, judicial decision or opinion, that commits or appears to commit the judge to reach a particular result.” These model code illustrations ring a lot of bells at this moment.

Third and most important, Justice Kennedy found for the court that the failure of an objectively biased judge to recuse him- or herself is not “harmless error” just because the biased judge’s vote is not apparently determinative in the vote of a panel of judges. A biased judge contaminates the proceeding not just by the casting and tabulation of his or her own vote but by participating in the body’s collective deliberations and affecting, even subtly, other judges’ perceptions of the case.
Justice Kennedy was emphatic on this point: “It does not matter whether the disqualified judge’s vote was necessary to the disposition of the case. The fact that the interested judge’s vote was not dispositive may mean only that the judge was successful in persuading most members of the court to accept his or her position — an outcome that does not lessen the unfairness to the affected party.”

Courts generally have found that any reasonable doubts about a judge’s partiality must be resolved in favor of recusal. A judge “shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” While recognizing that the “challenged judge enjoys a margin of discretion,” the courts have repeatedly held that “doubts ordinarily ought to be resolved in favor of recusal.” After all, the reputation of the whole tribunal and public confidence in the judiciary are both on the line.

Judge David Tatel of the D.C. Circuit emphasized this fundamental principle in 2019 when his court issued a writ of mandamus to force recusal of a military judge who blithely ignored at least the appearance of a glaring conflict of interest. He stated: “Impartial adjudicators are the cornerstone of any system of justice worthy of the label. And because ‘deference to the judgments and rulings of courts depends upon public confidence in the integrity and independence of judges,’ jurists must avoid even the appearance of partiality.” He reminded us that to perform its high function in the best way, as Justice Felix Frankfurter stated, “justice must satisfy the appearance of justice.”

The Supreme Court has been especially disposed to favor recusal when partisan politics appear to be a prejudicial factor even when the judge’s impartiality has not been questioned. In Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., from 2009, the court held that a state supreme court justice was constitutionally disqualified from a case in which the president of a corporation appearing before him had helped to get him elected by spending $3 million promoting his campaign. The court, through Justice Kennedy, asked whether, quoting a 1975 decision, “under a realistic appraisal of psychological tendencies and human weakness,” the judge’s obvious political alignment with a party in a case “poses such a risk of actual bias or prejudgment that the practice must be forbidden if the guarantee of due process is to be adequately implemented.”

The federal statute on disqualification, Section 455(b), also makes recusal analysis directly applicable to bias imputed to a spouse’s interest in the case. Ms. Thomas and Mrs. Alito (who, according to Justice Alito, is the one who put up the inverted flag outside their home) meet this standard. A judge must recuse him- or herself when a spouse “is known by the judge to have an interest in a case that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.”
At his Senate confirmation hearing, Chief Justice Roberts assured America that “Judges are like umpires.”

But professional baseball would never allow an umpire to continue to officiate the World Series after learning that the pennant of one of the two teams competing was flying in the front yard of the umpire’s home. Nor would an umpire be allowed to call balls and strikes in a World Series game after the umpire’s wife tried to get the official score of a prior game in the series overthrown and canceled out to benefit the losing team. If judges are like umpires, then they should be treated like umpires, not team owners, team fans or players.

Justice Barrett has said she wants to convince people “that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.” Justice Alito himself declared the importance of judicial objectivity in his opinion for the majority in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overruling Roe v. Wade — a bit of self-praise that now rings especially hollow.

But the Constitution and Congress’s recusal statute provide the objective framework of analysis and remedy for cases of judicial bias that are apparent to the world, even if they may be invisible to the judges involved. This is not really optional for the justices.

I look forward to seeing seven members of the court act to defend the reputation and integrity of the institution.

 

[tx 3 putt 77494]

Totally legit Supreme Court ….

 

[Nivek 16988]

You are too stupid to understand how legitimate they are.

[tx 3 putt 77494]

7 minutes ago, Nivek said:

You are too stupid to understand how legitimate they are.

many here can verify that I am indeed stupid 

[tx 3 putt 77494]

 

[wildcat09 29416]

Not SCOTUS, exactly, but: How a Luxury Trip for Trump Judges Doomed the Federal Mask Mandate:

Quote

Buried in the April 2022 ruling that struck down the Biden administration’s mask mandate was a section that was unusual for a court decision.

The outcome itself was far from surprising. Places all over the country were dropping local mask requirements, and the judge hearing this case — a challenge to the federal mandate to mask on planes and other public transportation — was a conservative Trump appointee, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle for the Middle District of Florida. Mizelle ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mask requirement overstepped the agency’s legal authority.

What was eye-catching was her explanation of why. In her ruling, Mizelle wrote she had consulted the Corpus of Historical American English, an academic search engine that returns examples of how words and phrases are used in select historical texts. Mizelle searched “sanitation,” a crucial word in the 1944 statute that authorizes the CDC to issue disease-prevention rules, and found it generally was used to describe the act of making something clean. “Wearing a mask,” she wrote, “cleans nothing.”

Searching large linguistic databases is a relatively new approach to judicial analysis called legal corpus linguistics. Although it has gained in popularity over the last decade, it is barely discussed outside of an enthusiastic group of right-wing conservative legal scholars. Which raises the question: How did this niche concept wind up driving such a consequential decision in the country’s health policy?

Now, new disclosures seen by HuffPost shed some light. Just weeks before she issued the ruling, Mizelle had discreetly attended an all-expenses-paid luxury trip from a conservative group whose primary mission is to persuade more federal judges to adopt the use of corpus linguistics. For five days, Mizelle and more than a dozen other federal judges listened to the leading proponents of corpus linguistics in the comfort of The Greenbrier, an ostentatious resort spread out over 11,000 acres of West Virginia hillside.

The newly formed group that picked up the tab, the Judicial Education Institute, received more than $1 million in startup funding from the billionaire libertarian Charles Koch’s network and DonorsTrust, a nonprofit that has funneled millions in anonymous donations to right-wing causes and has been dubbed “the dark money ATM of the conservative movement.”

Trump appointed Mizelle to the federal bench in late 2020 over objections from the American Bar Association that she had not been practicing law long enough to be qualified. A search of her other rulings found she had never previously applied corpus linguistics.

Neither Mizelle nor the Judicial Education Institute responded to requests for comment.

In response to the new disclosure, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who chairs the subcommittee on federal courts and oversight, called for more disclosure surrounding when judges attend ideological educational retreats.

“The multi-pronged billionaire-funded scheme to influence the judiciary includes flying amenable judges to luxury resorts to bathe them in the latest fantastical right-wing legal theories,” he said in a statement to HuffPost. “At the very least, the public ought to know when judges are attending lavish ‘seminars’ promoting the agenda of partisan special interests. The Judicial Conference should take a close look at tightening its rules to ensure transparency around such junkets.”

Legal corpus linguistics is not inherently ideological. Nevertheless, as the right-wing legal movement increasingly insists that courts must interpret the law based on “history and tradition,” conservatives have seized on corpus linguistics as a useful source of legitimacy.

“History,” as described by the conservatives who dominate the federal courts these days, has an uncanny way of mirroring the political beliefs of the modern GOP on issues like gun laws, school prayer, organized labor and abortion rights. Corpus linguistics, the thinking goes, with its air of big data, offers a potential retort to the accusations that judges are simply cherry-picking their view of the past.

But skeptics argue that it’s just as easy for an ideologically motivated judge to cherry-pick results from a search engine.

“A lot of what legal corpus work tends to do is allow you to pick and choose your history,” Anya Bernstein, a professor studying legal interpretation at the University of Connecticut School of Law who has written critically of legal corpus linguistics, told HuffPost in March. “You pick and choose your corpus, you pick and choose what you’re putting into the software, you pick and choose your results.”

Corpus linguistics have popped up sporadically over the years, including in opinions written by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas’ former clerk, Thomas Lee, is one of the concept’s original pioneers.

But Mizelle’s ruling, and the resulting sea change in public health, may be the most resounding proof-of-concept to date.

Although legal scholars protested the ruling as odd — one professor interviewed by NPR said she probably wouldn’t accept that level of analysis from a law student — almost immediately, the Biden administration announced it would not enforce the mask mandate while it appealed her decision. An appeals court later declared her ruling moot because the administration ended the COVID-19 public health emergency and made no moves to enforce another mask mandate.

HuffPost first revealed the existence of these luxury trips and the Judicial Education Institute’s conservative political ties in March. When it launched in 2022, the group convened more than two dozen judges at The Greenbrier and at the exclusive ski resort of Deer Valley, Utah.

The story renewed scrutiny on the lack of rules to prevent overtly ideological groups from rewarding federal judges or trying to influence by mixing legal education with lavish accommodations and travel.

“With The Greenbrier and Deer Valley, they’re indoctrinating judges … by taking them to fancy, fancy, fancy resorts so that they can learn what they’re supposed to do,” Whitehouse said while discussing the story on MSNBC’s The Last Word.

Now, in addition to the group’s influence on the decision that brought an end to the mask mandate, new disclosures reveal the group has continued to convene federal judges at prime vacation destinations.

Last summer, at least a half-dozen judges flew with the group to Orlando, Florida. This February, the group returned to The Greenbrier, where it held its inaugural retreat in 2022.

The group also held two conferences in Washington, D.C., in March of 2023 and March of this year. Disclosures say DonorsTrust provided funding for both the February 2024 Greenbrier retreat and the March 2024 D.C. retreat.

You mean to tell me legal rulings about the mask mandate may not have been on the up and up?

We're going to find out some time in the next five years that these Trump judges aren't even writing their own opinions, but outsourcing them to lobbying groups like this. 

[Nivek 16988]

ALEC

[HenryJames 66185]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/judges-luxury-travel-mask-mandate_n_665e065be4b0a8b68eea43fa

[Willfully Horn 8050]

Filters may not sanitize, but they fucking clean; ie less particulate, dirt, etc.

[Satchel 6949]

On 6/3/2024 at 3:45 PM, tx 3 putt said:

Totally legit Supreme Court ….

 

The black guy in this shot is a biscuit from Garland.

[Willfully Horn 8050]

3 minutes ago, Satchel said:

The black guy in this shot is a biscuit from Garland.

What’s a biscuit?

[tx 3 putt 77494]

1 minute ago, Willfully Horn said:

What’s a biscuit?

[Willfully Horn 8050]

2 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

Closest I come to making sense of the term, as used, is a biscuit is a “side piece.”