The U.S. Supreme Court

WASHINGTON (AP) — US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hospitalized for surgery for pancreatic cancer.

Jeez that sucks.

Although this makes it sound slightly less awful:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/02/05/us/AP-Scotus-Ginsburg.html?_r=1&hp

:(

;_;

All the justices should have short, catchy nicknames and wear trucker hats with their nicknames stitched on the front. This would improve their deliberations and def add more weight to their dissenting opinions.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SCOTUS_GINSBURG?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg plans to be back at work for the court's next public session, less than three weeks after surgery for pancreatic cancer.

Ginsburg intends to be in court when the justices hear arguments on Feb. 23, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said Friday.

The 75-year-old justice is currently recuperating at a New York hospital after undergoing surgery on Thursday. Arberg had no other information on Ginsburg's condition.

souter stepping down, it sez.

Time to watch Hugh Hewitt start crying into his beer.

oh boy! Weekend Corner fodder!

Why, it begins:

Supreme Court Justice Souter Retiring [Mark Hemingway]

NPR report here.

04/30 10:14 PM

--

Obama's First Supreme Moment [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

NBC is evidently reporting Souter will retire .... I see Mark posted this but I did from the Santa Monica pier and he didn't.

04/30 10:16 PM

So how quick for the 'he KNEW Specter was switching and waited!' conspiracy theories to go around?

amazing to remember now how souter was demonized during his nomination process from the left and now he's going out as some sort of semi-hero

Signs of the times -- all RedState can do is say 'we need Jeff Sessions to be the ranking member on the committee!'

Souter was Reason #235 why the right hated George H.W. Bush. I doubt he'll leave a lasting impact on the court; moderates and swing votes in the Potter Stewart-Owen Roberts decision rare do. But he at least curbed excesses from the right.

*decision = tradition

thanks, guys, i accept your nomination

I really expected Ginsburg to retire first, given her health problems.

has Stevens beat William O. Douglas in being the oldest serving judge (not the same as longest on the court)?

he just turned 89 last week iirc

i saw rbg speak last month actually and she seemed pretty sharp!

i guess douglas retired when he was 77

Eric Anderson (mbitsko) wrote:

Hmmm....a RINO chooses this week to switch sides, thus giving the Dems a veto-proof majority, and all of a sudden Souter announces he's retiring.

Coincidence? Only if you're an IDIOT.
Thursday, April 30, 2009 11:08:30 PM

Well that didn't take long.

this one had me roflmao-ing

It was a good bet that at least two of the Supreme Court justices wouldn’t last this term (Ginsberg, cancer-striken, 76, & Stevens, 89). Here’s the third. And now, good citizens, we see the realization of the scariest, most dangerous promise of Obama’s election/ascendancy: his appointment of Supreme Court justices.

I will pray for my country tonight. (And buy ammo tomorrow.)

You know, if the dude wanted to write his memoirs I'd be all for it.

hopefully ginsberg or stevens goes out w/ a massacre, otherwise this really just treading water at best, no?

Just the advantage of trading 70- and 80-somethings for 50-somethings.

plus we can please get another woman on there for god's sake. more wimmin!

not really a gain on the bench by replacing ginsberg, stevens, and souter though, is there? I mean, why won't scalia or thomas drop dead or retire or something, please?

Now you see the full deviousness of the Republican nomination strategy: pick 'em young, stonewall through the confirmation, and control that SCOTUS seat for 3 decades.

the Jeffrey Toobin book about SCOTUS claims that Souter was so bitter about Bush v Gore that he almost stepped down then.

I don't think it needs to be said on this board, but if the Specter switch had anything to do with Souter's decision, I'll be totally amazed. It's all Obama election + getting to the end of the current court term.

On an unrelated note, Dahlia Lithwick has a funny play-by-play on the Voting Rights Act case currently before the Court.

i saw rbg speak last month actually and she seemed pretty sharp!

well, yeah

?

i meant for someone who is old and has cancer and people expect to retire

lol malkin and her "legal sources" http://michellemalkin.com/2009/05/01/obamas-choices-gird-your-loins/

Okay so for a trifecta we need one more old-line GOP-affiliated government person to make a decision that causes most everyone to go WTF with a last name that starts with S and ends with 'er'

-It is also unclear that a Justice Kagan would be an adequately independent check on executive excesses. She has argued in favor of greatly enhanced presidential control over the bureaucracy, which is concerning in light of President Obama’s unprecedented centralization of power in the White House.

o_O

Anything to keep themselves happy.

ok lololololol at Kagan on the Supreme Court

JUSTICE HI DERE

I mean, I have heard from RELIABLE SOURCES that it's something she desperately wants, but I'm categorically opposed to that for the exact same reason I was categorically opposed to Harriet Miers; you should have served as a judge if you're going to be on the Supreme Court.

. . .or at least argued a case in front of the Supreme Court

As Legal Times reported in January, the selection of experienced appellate litigators for the position of solicitor general is a relatively recent phenomenon that parallels specialization at the Court generally. Past solicitors general who had not argued before the Court until after their selection include Robert Bork, Wade McCree, and Kenneth Starr.

i meant for someone who is old and has cancer and people expect to retire

neither cancer nor age nor the possibility of retirement necessarily make someone weak of mind.

you should have served as a judge if you're going to be on the Supreme Court

there are lots of smart people, lawyers included, who disagree

wow i didn't know thanks xp

don't assume for a second this is going to be status quo OR a move to the lib side

"Honoring God by honoring His creatures,"

honoring god's creatures by splattering their guts on the ground

― crüt, Thursday, February 25, 2016 11:43 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

literally spent the last ten minutes trying to put together a joke about latin conjugation but it just wasn't happening

deguts-tabus very disgusting.

oh man!

http://ww3.hdnux.com/photos/06/23/03/1650890/3/920x920.jpg

do they hunt in those?

poon, maybe

These fossils remind me of our college paper adviser's wife, who on learning our editor in chief was of Honduran descent chirped, "Oh, yes! Our gardener is Honduran."

what if a democrat gets elected, and Rs just never approve another judge? now they have the "excuse" that obama's a lame duck that everyone knows is bullshit but is maybe just enough of a veneer to waste time. so presumably it would get harder to justify, but really what's stopping them? and then if the next judge to die is a D, we're back to conservative majority

http://thumbs2.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mddG8ri5JF9lvR7b23elzGw.jpg

xp this has never really happened before so it is hard to know, if obama nominates someone and the democrats sustain coherent messaging around this it could be hard for the republicans to keep an obstruction campaign going that long, idk though

Nothing stops the Senate from simply refusing to consent to any more justices.

The Court has had six, seven, and even ten justices at various times. Nothing magical about nine.

Any of them could die of course, but the next easily foreseen vacancy is Ginsburg's retirement (which will presumably be either five minutes after the next Democrat is elected, or five minutes after the next Democrat is inaugurated).

And Republicans could lose the Senate majority, which would complicate their ability to block justices by committee inaction (but they may retain the ability to filibuster).

Is there really no procedure to force a committee to hold a hearing on something?

Yes, it's called "win the majority so that you control the chair."

anything else is Stalinism

Ginsburg's retirement (which will presumably be either five minutes after the next Democrat is elected, or five minutes after the next Democrat is inaugurated).

I think she wants to stay on the court and will not retire even if a Dem gets elected

Well, let's at least agree she won't retire voluntarily under President Trump or President Cruz.

Washington Monthly sez Amy Klobuchar would be a good pick.

If she got nominated and the Senate refused to hold a hearing, how would that affect her own job as a US Senator?

In other news:

Scalia's law clerks have to learn how to write for other justices, and not like Scalia:

By Supreme Court custom and tradition, the four law clerks will be absorbed by the chambers of other Justices and will be allowed to finish the Court Term. As a result, it is likely that several Justices will have a fifth law clerk for the next five months into July after the Court Term ends.

This will present them with some challenges and adjustments. Scalia told a law student group in fall 2014 that he took pride in the fact that his law clerks over the years had learned to imitate his writing style, even his very unique forceful, colorful, and acerbic style of dissenting opinions. The clerks will have to adapt to new ways of doing things.

The four clerks may also have some responsibilities for helping to organize Scalia’s papers, assuming that those papers may be donated to an archive in the future. This issue is discussed more below.

Who are the clerks? The three men and one woman hail from law schools at the University of Virginia, Chicago, Northwestern, and Harvard. All four clerked for federal appeals court judges before going to work for Scalia, and two also clerked for a federal district judge. Three graduated from law school in 2013 and one in 2011.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/02/scotus-for-law-students-questions-about-the-court-after-justice-scalias-death/#more-238831

I know Roberts is the only justice who writes a considerable portion of his own opinions, but learning a couple years ago the degree to which Antonin Scalia, Brilliant Prose Stylist, uses clerk ghost writers amused me no end.

I'm sorry to hear that the clerks of a dead justice are not expected to leap onto the funeral pyre, or undergo seppuku in order to be buried with their late master.

buried alive in the same pyramid

Meanwhile here's something interesting: a 1983 opinion piece written by one Antonin Scalia.

"The basic difference between the parties is quite simple: The Democrats want to run the country, and the Republicans don't want them to." I have since come to call this profound insight the Saxbe Hypothesis - the proposition that the basic goal of the Republican party is not to govern, but to prevent the Democrats from doing so.

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/regulation/1981/1/v5n1-3.pdf

I know Roberts is the only justice who writes a considerable portion of his own opinions, but learning a couple years ago the degree to which Antonin Scalia, Brilliant Prose Stylist, uses clerk ghost writers amused me no end.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, February 26, 2016 12:15 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that is pretty amusing! i had long thought that the CW was that Scalia was at the very least an entertaining writer, even when making bad decisions

he was like Sid Caesar, did the awesome slapstick but hired a great staff

just replace "slapstick" with "language that routinely demeans marginalized groups"

that seems like more of a Don Rickles thing

judicial slapstick defined

antonin scalia, the don rickles of jurispudence

what a legacy

https://bol.bna.com/scalias-death-prompts-dow-to-settle-suits-for-835-million/

The Midland, Michigan-based company disputed a jury’s finding it had conspired with four other chemical makers to fix urethane prices and asked the Supreme Court to take the class- action case on appeal. Scalia, one of the court’s most conservative members, had voted to scale back the reach of such group suits.

“Growing political uncertainties due to recent events with the Supreme Court and increased likelihood for unfavorable outcomes for business involved in class-action suits have changed Dow’s risk assessment of the situation,” the company said in an e-mailed statement.

^^^ a big deal.

This not so much:

Antonin Scalia generally detested science. It threatened everything he believed in. He refused to join a recent Supreme Court opinion about DNA testing because it presented the details of textbook molecular biology as fact. He could not join because he did not know such things to be true, he said. (On the other hand, he knew all about the eighteenth century. History books were trustworthy; science books were not.) Scientists should be listened to only if they supported conservative causes, for example dubious studies purporting to demonstrate that same-sex parenting is harmful to children. Scientists were also good if they helped create technologies he liked, such as oil drills and deadly weapons.

I worked for him early in his tenure on the Supreme Court. He had visited my law school when I was a student, and I was smitten by his warmth and humor and sheer intellectual vibrancy. When I applied for a clerkship at the Court, my hero Justice Brennan quickly filled all his positions, so Scalia became my first choice. He offered me a job and I thought I’d won the lottery. I knew we differed politically, but he prized reason and I would help him be reasonable. A more naive young fool never drew breath.

I can attest to the many nice things people have said about the Justice. He was erudite and frighteningly smart. He said what he thought, not what was expedient. He was generous to friends and family. He loved his clerks and helped them get dream jobs. And we returned the favor by not thinking about what we were doing, then or afterward. What I took for the pursuit of reason in those chambers was in fact the manufacture of verbal munitions, to be deployed against civilian populations. From the comfort of our leather chairs, we never saw the victims.

Saw that last bit from a Prof who had clerked. Helps put the lie to his genius and originalist text reading nonsense.

The absence of Scalia is really sending shockwaves through the court:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/thomas-asks-questions

the jokes write themselves obv

i wish the mic would have have awful feedback or cut out or something

unleash the booming baritone!

Hey Alfred, where did you get that quote from the Scalia clerk?

http://www.salon.com/2016/02/27/i_thought_i_could_reason_with_antonin_scalia_a_more_naive_young_fool_never_drew_breath/

closing thread. Go here:

U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Nino Edition