Posted on 11/01/2020 9:52:06 AM PST by Who is John Galt?
...the senior Justice in the majority in any case is the one who assigns the majority opinion, and the Chief Justice is senior even to the Associate Justices who may have been on the Court longer than him...
But if the Chief Justice sides with the liberals, and winds up in the minority of a 5 to 4 case, the senior Justice in the majority would be Clarence Thomas . . . and Justice Thomas is by no means a shrinking violet.
[Quoting James Taranto] "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."
The Chief Justice could well decide to vote with the conservative majority in some cases not because he is strongly conservative, but to soften the impact of a decision... The Chief Justice could, in theory, assign to himself the majority opinion in a controversial case, yet see an opinion by Justice Thomas gain more concurrences than his own. If a strongly conservative cabal of Associate Justices Thomas, Barrett and Samuel Alito emerged, possibly including Neil Gorsuch, Concurring in the decision, opinions might be written which gained majority support, while the assigned majority opinion does not....
(Excerpt) Read more at redstate.com ...
(I've always thought that the biggest mistake of Dubya's presidency was his failure to nominate Clarence Thomas to be Chief Justice! ;>)
We need to find out who has what on Roberts, and expose it.
Take him for a ride in a Blackhawk.
I find it distasteful that the article author alluded to the ‘conservative’ Supreme Court justices as a “cabal”!!
But, then again, with “this wrong woman” now part of the SCOTUS team, I might have expected it.
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And also Kavanaugh it appears.
We know what we have on Roberts. He is the cleverest little shit from his Harvard class. What he lacks in wisdom and perspective he makes up for in ‘it’s a tax” smart-assedness, the defining phrase in his entire sad traitorous career.
Stop with the BS....
I like the concept, but
I strongly suspect that
Judge Thomas would like to retire soon, and is holding out for the duration of Trump’s first term only.
It may be time to make Supreme Court appointments not for a lifetime, but for perhaps 25 years.
COULD the Chief Justice be shouldered aside? What makes you think he has not ALREADY been reduced to irrelevance?
Donald J. Trump plays an amazing game of 3-D and even 4-D chess, with moves so arcane that even years from now, the full importance will still be getting revealed.
Yep, we need to use it to "motivate" him to become more conservative.
Justice Thomas is a great man, and a great American, and I would certainly wish him well if he retires. But he would be sorely missed - having him on the high court is about as close as we can get, to having one of the Founding Fathers/Framers of the Constitution seated there. Read his opinions; he writes like James Madison...
He recently in July struck his head while walking. That required a brief hospitalization
Sounds like someone did a partial “Harry Reid”. Roberts has a history of seizures so there is plausible deniability.
I am counting on ACB to shame Roberts into being more of an originalist. Her cold dry logic is irrefutable. I already sell challenge his legislating from the bench.
There’s a possibility that John Roberts may be more conservative IF Kavanaugh or Gorsuch do not defect.
Kananaugh has already defected and Trump was pretty upset.
Could? Has.
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