The U.S. Supreme Court

and possibly his left nut

just awesome

http://www.tampabay.com/news/nation/justice-scalia-spent-his-last-hours-with-members-of-a-secretive-society-of/2266763#pq=RF79Em

and possibly his left nut

― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius)

cuz the right one was answered for

i knew i was settin you up

"Honoring God by honoring His creatures,"

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

No upside for Sandoval, obvs.

"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