Supreme court

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in one of the most important cases for voting rights in decades. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee centers on two Arizona measures aimed at voter integrity. The first prevents individuals from casting their ballot in the wrong precinct and the second prohibits ballot harvesting. The question at stake is whether these measures and others like them violate Section Two of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits election rules from disenfranchising minorities. The DNC's lawyers seem to argue that any election safeguard measure is discriminatory. If Biden thinks people of color don't know how to use the internet, then the DNC thinks they can't follow election laws.

‘Disappointed but not surprised.’ I suppose that describes my initial feeling about the summary dismissal by the Supreme Court last night of the ‘audacious’ (the New York Times) lawsuit brought by the state of Texas against Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan on December 8. In essence, Texas argued that those four states had trespassed on the civil rights of citizens by favoring some voters over others in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The amusing and perspicacious commentator known as Ace of Spades added a bit of hot sauce in his response to the news of the Court’s ruling. ‘The ultimate Friday Night News Dump,’ he wrote.

In the end, there was nothing the protesting left, the heavily slanted progressive media or the Democratic party could do. Amy Coney Barrett is now a Supreme Court justice. Cable news voices like Jake Tapper were left aghast that she dared to attend her swearing-in ceremony at the White House. That was it. Going forward, we are left with a litany of threats about court packing (legislatively expanding the amount of seats on the Supreme Court) and ending the legislative filibuster. The latter would allow Democrats to pass a radical agenda, which includes statehood for Washington DC and Puerto Rico, a Green New Deal to end fossil fuels and whatever other fanatical ideas have been floating around in progressive circles.

There was nothing original about Amy Coney Barrett’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee other than her incessant professions of her fidelity to an originalist approach to the American Constitution. Originalism is a convenient smokescreen for conservatives to act as what they claim not to be — judicial activists, ascribing their own views to the founders. But to acknowledge this would be to land Barrett in a host of difficulties. For the likes of Barrett, originalist theory is the judicial equivalent of an SDI shield. She wielded it well. Throughout, she dutifully supplied answers that were none at all. She has no ‘agenda’. She has no view on whether a president can delay an election. Voter intimidation at the polls? Once again, she punted. After Sen.

I don’t know who is going to win the election. I write this on the fourth anniversary of the Billy Bush Access Hollywood tape. At the time House Speaker Paul Ryan set the tone for the GOP leadership’s response by condemning Trump’s comments: ‘I am sickened by what I heard today. Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified. I hope Mr Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests.’ Ryan concluded his statement by withdrawing from an event the next day with Trump in Wisconsin. Mitch McConnell followed: ‘These comments are repugnant, and unacceptable in any circumstance.

The compulsive and self-righteous bellicosity of the Democratic leaders in Congress over the Supreme Court vacancy has opened an opportunity for President Trump to strike decisively. It is admittedly controversial for a president to fill a high court vacancy starting six weeks before a presidential election, but it is entirely constitutional. What’s more, it has applicable precedents, including most conspicuously the elevation of Chief Justice John Marshall by President John Adams after he had been defeated in the 1800 election. This is not a provocation to justify the extreme belligerency of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Americans hate the Supreme Court. You wouldn’t think so from a look at the polls, which usually show that the court is far more popular than the elected branches of government. But history tells a very different story. The conservative movement as it exists today was formed in large part as a reaction against the liberalism of the Supreme Court under chief justices Earl Warren and Warren Burger — both of whom were Republicans, as it happens. The progressive movement of the early 20th century and the populist movement of the late 19th century were also spurred to varying degrees by the character of the Supreme Court at the time, which was seen as conservative and elitist. Franklin D.

‘Oh the hypocrisy!’ cried the Democrats after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would bring President Trump’s new Supreme Court nominee to the floor for confirmation hearings and a vote ahead of the election. The screeching continued as swing vote after swing vote — Sens. Lindsey Graham, Chuck Grassley and Mitt Romney, for example — said they also supported taking a vote. Republicans are indeed treating the vacancy left by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away on Friday night, far differently than they did the one left by Antonin Scalia in 2016. The GOP had control of the Senate then, too, but refused to advance President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, citing the proximity of the presidential election.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away at the age of 87 on Friday due to complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer. Ginsburg was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1993 and was the second woman to ever serve on the court after Sandra Day O'Connor. Her work for gender equality, such as launching the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Women's Rights Project, and her sharp dissents earned her the nickname the 'Notorious RBG'. A movie about her life, On the Basis of Sex was released in 2018 and earned over $30 million at the box office. Ginsburg's death will set up an intense political fight, having occurred less than two months out from the 2020 presidential election on November 3.

President Trump announced Wednesday afternoon that he was adding 20 new names to his previous list of potential Supreme Court nominees in the event of a vacancy. The new list included three very familiar political names: Sens. Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley. Those names alone indicated that the president is bucking his 2016 method of allowing the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, to dictate his judicial choices. After a string of Supreme Court rulings that went against conservatives, who felt spurned that they could not get the outcomes they wanted even with a stacked court, the President is perhaps signaling to his base that he will nominate an avowed social conservative, rather than just a textualist or originalist.

I never understood why Plato wrote so harshly about democracy. Was he simply bitter over the death of his beloved mentor Socrates? And could his criticism of direct democracy in ancient Athens apply to a representative democracy like ours? Right now, the United States is looking increasingly Athenian. Plato characterized the birth of Athenian democracy as a rejection of expertise. The masses, previously content to defer to experts who knew what was good for the city, were led to believe that they could determine the good for themselves — and that the ‘good’ was whatever they subjectively found pleasurable.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is in the hospital — again. The 87-year-old has overcome many health concerns while sitting on the SCOTUS, but an additional liver cancer diagnosis and a recent number of hospital visits leave little room for optimism. The prospect of President Trump replacing an iconic Democratic-appointed justice is a big fear among leftists. But is this fear rooted more in media hysteria than honest judgment? A single SCOTUS seat is limited in power, especially considering the unpredictable voting patterns of recent GOP-appointed justices. The exact legacy of RBG is up for debate, but everyone, regardless of political leanings, can admire her perseverance.

The Supreme Court has ruled in June Medical Services, LLC v. Russo that the dismemberment and removal of unborn human lives was more important than a woman’s right to a high standard of care. From now on, no reasonable person can view the pro-life movement’s strategy — voting Republican, often with noses held and hoping that some future conservative majority will defend life — as anything but a failure. The foul spirit of Anthony Kennedy’s ‘mystery’ has possessed John Roberts and will no doubt possess some other ‘conservative’ host after him. Matthew Walther suggests a new strategy for the pro-life movement: if you believe that the Court’s rulings on abortion are illegitimate, you should act on your belief.

The conservative legal movement has again been bludgeoned. The culprit, as has far too often been the case, is once more the Supreme Court’s most mercurial chief justice, John Roberts. In June Medical Services LLC v. Russo, a 5-4 Court majority enjoined Louisiana’s enforcement of its law that would require abortionists to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of a prenatal abattoir. The Court’s four liberals, ever-reliable in their outcome-oriented efforts to further the progressive political agenda, wrote for a pro-abortion plurality. Roberts, for his part, wrote a separate opinion concurring in the judgment — notwithstanding the fact he dissented in a virtually analogous Texas case, Whole Women’s Health v.