I agree with the point that the editors of the Washington Post are making here:
The Supreme Court hears one of its most important oral arguments of the current term on Wednesday, and much more is at stake than policy on the perennially divisive issue — abortion rights — at the heart of the litigation. The court’s integrity itself will be on trial. All Americans, and certainly all nine justices, should favor a ruling consistent with precedent — and the vital principle that constitutional rights do not vary according to which party gets to nominate members of the court.
but there’s something that you should notice in the editorial. Here’s how they characterize a recent decision of the 5th Circuit:
Nevertheless, in January 2019 the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, dominated by Republican appointees, finalized a ruling upholding a Louisiana law nearly identical to the recently rejected Texas one.
The phrase “dominated by Republican appointees” is an interesting one and contrasts with their characterization of Justice Anthony Kennedy:
Now you can see why the technical legal issues in the case, complex and weighty as they are, pale in comparison to the real question: whether the Supreme Court will reverse a freshly minted pro-choice precedent after the justice who cast a fifth and deciding vote for it in 2016, Anthony M. Kennedy, retired in 2018 — and Brett M. Kavanaugh replaced him.
Justice Kennedy was appointed by a Republican, too—Ronald Reagan. Why is one relevant and the other not?
Selective application of facts is one of the ways that news outlets have of conditioning the news, giving the reader an impression that may or may not be true but isn’t actually supported by the facts at hand, in this case that justices appointed by Republicans will inevitably decide abortion cases in a particular way. I don’t actually know the track record of judges around the country on this subject is and I doubt that the WaPo editors do, either. I suspect that judges, whether elected or appointed, appointed by Democrats or Republicans, in most cases including abortion cases render their decisions according to the law and precedent. It would be interesting to know whether that’s wrong or right.
“Justice Kennedy was appointed by a Republican, too—Ronald Reagan. Why is one relevant and the other not?â€
Further – invoking the principle that precedent setting rulings should not vary with the judge appointing political party ignores the fact that those very precedents are a product of one of the parties.
Conditioning, or sophistry?
Kennedy was notable because he was a Republican appointee who did not always follow the party line on important votes, unlike the others. There has been a lot of recent literature on this. We just discussed this recently when I went back did the numbers for you showing that the conservatives are more likely to vote in lockstep. The numbers are there for people to see if they want. Anyway, just one of the many papers at the link. (Rather a summation but original paper can be reached via link at bottom.)
You appear to think it would be journalistic malpractice to point out that most of the court are GOP appointees, but given that the majority of politically significant votes are now decided on an ideological basis wouldnt it be wrong to not note that?
https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/supreme-court-justices-become-less-impartial-and-more-ideological-when-casting-the-swing-vote
Steve
That isn’t quite what you showed. You showed that it was true for one year. I had previously shown that the “progressive” wing of the Court had voted in “lockstep” more frequently in another year. I hadn’t cherrypicked that year. It was just the most recent year for which we had results at the time I did it. What we are learning is that it varies by year and, presumably, caseload but there are certain justices (Thomas, Alito, Ginsburg, Sotomayor) who are more likely to vote ideologically than others.
I disagree with your repeated point, that the justices just vote politically. I think your claim that they vote politically on important cases is sophistry. Every case that makes its way to the Supreme Court is important to somebody and most are important to a lot of somebodies.
The large number of unanimous decisions tells us that other than a very few “hotbutton” issues, the justices are not voting politically. I don’t think the article to which you linked demonstrates what you think it does. It can just as easily be interpreted to demonstrate that Goldberg, Fortas, Sotomayor, Warren, and Kagan voted ideologically nearly all of the time.
Nope. I think it’s biased reporting when you cherrypick when you will or will not point out who appointed the justices.
‘The Supreme Court hears one of its most important oral arguments of the current term on Wednesday, and much more is at stake than policy on the perennially divisive issue — abortion rights — at the heart of the litigation. The court’s integrity itself will be on trial.’
The last sentence is the key one. If a leftist law or precedent is threatened, the SC’s integrity is always at stake. Always. ALWAYS. And precedent must, Must, MUST always be followed in that case.
Don’t see anybody mourning how the SC ignored precedent when they ruled on Brown vs Topeka. Plessy vs Ferguson, anyone?
And no Leftists said a peep about overturning millennia of law, common or otherwise or custom or tradition, in Obergefell vs. Hodges. The Founding Fathers, and every other law system outside of Utah, never explicitly spelled what sexes a married couple had to be because it was always ASSUMED. But because it wasn’t explicitly spelled out, the SC went strictly by the ‘letter of the law’ and now we are faced with the prospect of throuples, polygamy, polyandry, and other perversions of marriage that may be just fine and dandy with consenting adults but are f**king horrible to the children those arrangements produce. And that was the original purpose of marriage; reproduction.
Now many who live in Western Civilization countries are able to treat children as luxuries instead of necessities (Being childless I have to count myself in that number), but it doesn’t change the basic facts behind the reason for one-man-one-woman; REPRODUCTION. No matter how you shake it or bake it, like it or dislike it, without reproduction there will effectively be no civilization or society in a couple of generations. One-woman-one-man marriages tend to be the norm in societies for a reason; they tend to produce healthier more productive children than alternatives.
It is unfair to women that they are the one who have to bear children, but on the other hand, economically speaking, a childless woman is merely a smaller, slower, weaker man who needs special dispensations for those physical handicaps in order to survive and thrive in an androgynous society. Men and women are different and saying they’re not doesn’t change reality. Denying to themselves and others the greatest power they have, the ability to have children (a power that Men never can have and never will), in the end does no one any good other than human-hating wokesters.
Now if artificial wombs because a viable option to reproduction, that’s a game changer. But then what the hell do you think that will do to the sex that loses the struggle for power in society? Hint: It’ll be women. For a preview see what’s happening to women’s sports thanks to the abasement of authority to the trans activists, who like many men in Third World countries have utterly no sense of chivalry (which came about because reproducing women are a precious resource).
I know it’s a long rant, but I get tired of the constant hysteria regarding Supreme Court cases which if decided ‘wrong’ will mean the end of life as we know it.
“That isn’t quite what you showed. You showed that it was true for one year.”
As I recall, I went back several years.
“Every case that makes its way to the Supreme Court is important to somebody and most are important to a lot of somebodies.”
Not that many of the cases are very well known and important ideologically to most people. Just read through the case list for a year. Unless you read Scotusblog or something similar you wont be familiar with most of them. But if you track those 5-4 decisions in the cases most people know about, they are breaking along ideological biases. Or put another way, look at those 5-4 votes. Those are the SCOTUS cases most of us knew about even before they went to court.
Steve