Posted on 10/26/2020 4:38:50 PM PDT by ameribbean expat
The chief justice is an especially potent swing voter, because he also has the power to assign authorship of the majority opinion, including to himself. That can help shape a decision’s scope and direction—usually, in Chief Justice Roberts’s case, by making it more tentative.
If the chief justice is in dissent, however, the assignment power falls to the most senior associate justice in the majority. Clarence Thomas is now the most senior justice, so he will assign authorship any time he is in the majority and Chief Justice Roberts dissents.
Justice Thomas is something of an anti-Roberts. His lone concurrences and dissents are usually not incremental but adventurous, urging colleagues to break new legal ground or rethink old precedents. In June Medical Services, he argued that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overturned—a position no other sitting justice has endorsed since Antonin Scalia died in 2016.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
I know its hard to tell, but I think there are probably ways to better vet them. Hoping for the best.
And I may be wrong about how it turns out with her even though I’ll be hardly convinced a man with the same originalist credentials would have been more reliable. No one here even argues that to any coherent rationale.
But I’m not wrong about the Women’s Movement.
BUT don’t assume that he can’t peel off Kavanaugh or Gorsuch or both.
It seems pretty obvious to me that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will take turns voting with Roberts and the three Democrats. I’m happy to have ACB on SCOTUS but assuming she is solid it’s still 5-4 against us on most big cases.
(snicker)
Roberts is a politician. Rather than let justice Thomas write the decision he would vote with him
I am no expert but it seems Roberts is turning into one of the most political CJ in history. More than a little hypocritical given his genuflecting about judges being non partisan
In relation to elections for president, the Safe Harbor clause essentially says that as long as states certify the electors by a certain date (usually about a week prior to the Electoral College voting) the the state’s electoral votes are safe from being challenged is Congress.
“There’s also a time limit prior to the election. 90 days maybe? It’s called a “Safe Harbor” law, and references the House abiding by the law as it stands so many days prior to the election.”
I’m not talking about the House acting on any matter. Seems to me the PA Supremes changed the existing rules. I was hoping a separate legal challenge exists challenging the Supremes right to make the change, which lies exclusively with the Legislative.
Betrayal by justices we thought were going to be conservative has a long track record and its mostly male - Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, John Roberts vs. Sandra Day O’Connor as the only female who has betrayed conservatives.
Yep. Also John Paul Stevens, Earl Warren and Harry Blackmun. If we’re going to pick judges based on history we would probably pick all women. Ha ha.
Roe was decided in 1973, O’Connor was appointed by Reagan in the ‘80s.
Any justice on either side of a decision has the ability, and I would say “RESPONSIBLY” to write an individual assessment of whatever case they are handing do n.
The Pennsylvania GOP filed a motion for reconsideration today. I expect the Supreme Court to rule for the GOP this week or on Monday.
Who thought we had one? I never did.
We need to find all of Roberts’s secrets and then quietly let him know we know.
[Scalia’s] judicial philosophy is mine too.” — Justice Barrett
It’s because of this tradition that Rehnquist would join what would have been a 5-4 decision and make it 6-3, so he could assign himself the opinion and limit “the damage” done,
Bush's big boo-boo was when Rehnquist died. Originally, Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement FIRST, and Bush was set to replace her with Roberts. This was thought to be an "upgrade" at the time, as Roberts was presented a pro-life devout Catholic, federalist society member, and loyal Rehnquist clerk. He turned out to be much more like O'Connor ideologically (usually votes the "right" way but has a weird liberal streak and turns traitor on key cases), so it essentially would have been a wash.
Post-Rehnquist death, Bush decided to swap around his nominees and have Roberts fill Rehnquist's job as CJ, which turned out to be a huge blunder. He should have elevated one of the sitting justices instead of a tap a rookie judge for that job. The Roberts Court turned out to essentially be the Warren Burger Court 2.0. (they had a "conservative majority" on paper, but a weak CJ who was easily swayed by liberals, and let the liberals run rampant on the court establishing all kinds of Marxist "landmark precedents")
Scalia was the intellectual powerhouse of the court, but my choice, post-Rehnquist death, would have been Thomas as CJ. The CJ job is much more of a behind-the-scenes organizer, and Thomas does that very well. Of course the media would ignore the fact that Bush's pick would result in the first time in history a black person headed a branch of the federal government.
We could have "cemented a conservative majority for decades to come" back in 2006 if the choices were Thomas for CJ, Raoul Cantero for O'Connor's seat, and Alito to fill Thomas's seat.
Likewise, Trump could have ended up with an actual conservative court if he had tapped Thomas Rex Lee for Scalia's seat, Jennifer Elrod for Kennedy's seat, and eh, Barrett works for the Darth Bader post as she is an actual conservative (wouldn't have been my first choice though)
Then we WOULD have a 6-3 court consisting of six staunch conservatives outvoting three commies on EVERY case.
I agree 100% on nickcarraway's take. I think its iffy if Roberts will overturn Roe, while I'm pretty certain BOTH Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will not.
It's weird how FReepers pretend Roberts is a communist in GOP drag and curse out Bush for nominating him, but give Trump a pass and pretend he "kept his word to give us pro-life justices in the Scalia mold". Only 1 out of 3 of Trump's picks fits that description. There is zero evidence the other two will vote that way, and plenty of evidence suggesting they won't.
As as I've noted, Gorsuch has already voted to the LEFT of Roberts on at least three notable cases.
Plus, Harriet Miers, a woman.
But if you wanna add more men to the list, Trump's so-called "originalist" pick, Gorsuch, has already voted to the LEFT of Roberts on at least three notable cases.
“Given Senate acrimony, Rehnquist may go down as the last Associate Justice elevated to Chief.”
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IMHO, if Roberts were to retire or die within the next ten years, the next CJ will be either Barrett (if there’s a GOP president) or Kagan (if there’s a Democrat president). Presidents still would want to name someone young to the Court, and it is more difficult to get a forty-something confirmed as CJ than as AJ.
For example, let’s assume that Trump is reelected and Roberts goes camping at Isle Royale, Michigan next Fourth of July and is eaten by wolves. (Unlike Gerald Ford, Roberts likely would not be delicious.) Do you really think that Trump would rather nominate someone with enough experience so as to get confirmed as Chief Justice—likely someone in his mid-to-late 50s—instead of, say, Judge Britt Grant, who would have just turned 43 and who could serve in the Court for over 40 years? Besides, after our experience with Roberts, I don’t think that conservatives would be very happy with someone who hasn’t yet proven his mettle at SCOTUS being given the power to assign opinions over more senior justices such as Thomas and Alito.
FDR got particularly clever though, tapped a Coolidge SCOTUS judge who had "evolved" on the bench and turned into a leftist traitor (Harlan F. Stone) so he could claim he giving an olive branch to the GOP by naming one of their own as CJ. Bastard.
Famously, Charles Evans Hughes was both Associate Justice and Chief Justice, but those were non-consecutive. He was Secretary of State in the intermin. The court members were quite different when he returned to the court as CJ.
The most famous CJ's were never associate justices prior to becoming Chief... notable examples include Thomas Marshal, Roger B. Taney, and Earl Warren. Of course, their previous job WASN'T "career federal judge" either.
I think a future RAT president would be unlikely to name any of the existing RAT judges as CJ. They would instead install another commie from outside the court. But they'd probably want to "pack the court" with more commies, regardless.
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