Only Kentanji Brown Jackson dissented. Justice Sotomayor filed a concurring opinion. She says:
I agree with JUSTICE JACKSON that the President cannot restructure federal agencies in a manner inconsistent with congressional mandates. Here, however, the relevant Executive Order directs agencies to plan reorganizations and reductions in force “consistent with applicable law”... and we... have no occasion to consider whether they can and will be carried out consistent with the constraints of law. I join the Court’s stay because it leaves the District Court free to consider those questions in the first instance.
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36 comments:
From the article...
"In a two-paragraph order, the justices wrote that they had concluded that “the government is likely to succeed on its argument” that President Trump’s executive order announcing plans to downsize the government was legal."
Trump is following the law and his plans are legal? Worst dictator ever.
Can a Supreme be impeached for incompetence?
How does it go, her clerks are not setting her up for success are they?
"Can a Supreme be impeached for incompetence?"
Only if we have a competent majority in the House. Doubtful.
And a 2/3 competent majority in the Senate which is highly doubtful since this AA nominee received 53 votes to confirm (all the Ds plus Collins, Romney, Murkowski, Sanders, King)
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1172/vote_117_2_00134.htm
As I read the Article II, Section 4, the answer is no. It's "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Brown's persistent ignorance of the Constitution or the issues brought before the Court is appalling, but not felonious.
This strikes me as a gross oversight on the part of the Framers, considering the lifetime appointment and the likelihood Ms. Information will sit for the next 40 years. (Imagine America approaching her 300th birthday and the senescence of Justice Ketanji Brown.) In their defense, one assumes they could not imagine their newly won country could ever appoint a justice solely because of her sex and race. They were fine with white men, but not any white man. As they conceived it, a nominee would be someone with a formidable intellect and a command of logic who could follow, deconstruct, and critique the convolutions and cunning of lawyers. (No idiots, please. We're engaged in serious work. Next?) To fix this we need an new Amendment. Let's scrap the 25th as written and revise it to include a mechanism to purge the cretins. Stupidity is not a crime, but it ought to be when the job is so vital to the nation.
In the meantime, let's get her a brand new crew of clerks, people who can condense the issues and arguments for Madame Justice into small digestible bits, My Weekly Reader style, with illustrations, connect-the-dots puzzles, and no three-syllable words.
Ketenji has no business being on the supreme court.
Quaestor: as Gerald Ford said, though, the practical truth is that a High Crime or Misdemeanor is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives and two thirds of the Senate say is a High Crime or Misdemeanor. Even the CJOTUS sitting as judge of the removal proceeding can only enforce the rules the Senate drafts for him/her.
So a Justice who makes stuff up as she goes along can be impeached and removed by a Congress that makes stuff up as it goes along.
Perfect symmetry.
RR
JSM
Quaestor: "small digestible bits, My Weekly Reader style, with illustrations,"
Or Highlights for Children style. District Judge Goofus issues universal injunctions. Supreme Court Justice Gallant reverses them.
RR
JSM
We could save a lot of time and money and just jump aheas and prosecute the government unions under RICO.
Yes great idea ,continue with the rape of FEMA and make ABBOTT pay to fix the billions in damage, states should do that right Beautiful. Start with SIRENS on the river only about 1 billion...
I never finished law school. Actually, I never started it, either. However that doesn't preclude me from opining on this.
I don't think it's a big deal. They're telling plaintiffs to stop wasting time challenging a valid executive order when the real issue is legality of individual RIF plans.
When even the wide Latina is telling you that you aren't doing the judging thing right ...
"Highlights for Children"
Horrors. That counts as cruel and unusual punishment, JSM.
When I was about 8 years old, my parents put me under the care of an allergist-immunologist, who checked me over every three months for several years. He had lots of itchy, sneezy-wheezies like me so every office visit took hours and hours of waiting in the waiting room, followed by hours of waiting in an examination room dressed only in a surgical gown.
Before I figured out I could take along my own reading matter, an Analog or a Mad, I was forced by life-threatening ennui to read the Highlights editions piled hither and yon. I don't know the names of those responsible for that rubbish, but it must have been a coven of cannibalistic witches who dined on fricasseed waif morning, noon, and night.
didn't someone once say, something about how the moronic retards of the country should have a justice that reflects Their intellect?
The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.
Doesn't say that they need to be removed by impeachment. 50%+1 of both the Congress and Senate should be enough, and Congress could pass a law stating that any judge found guilty of any crime is automatically removed without further ado, as that demonstrates not good behavior.
Removal of judges has never been properly addressed by Congress. Possibly because, reading from history, judges behaving badly is a fairly new phenomena. No need to address a problem that doesn't exist... until it does.
That's some world class stupid from the NYT
Trump now gets to make plans. Nothing in the order lets him actually carry them out. Those will be different lawsuits.
And "legal reporter" who doesn't understand that is too stupid to read
gilbar writes, "[Didn't] someone once say, something about how the moronic retards of the country should have a justice that reflects [their] intellect?"
Yeah, Felix Dzerzhinsky.
Quaestor said...
Can a Supreme be impeached for incompetence?
Ketanji Brown Jackson is doing exactly what she needs to do.
She is going to humiliate the left and legal academia so badly they will eventually have to drag her out of that chair.
She is more of a gift to the right than the idiot "wise latina."
Years will go by with daily assurances from Jake Tapper that she's sharp as a tack.
Mr. T. said..."We could save a lot of time and money and just jump aheas and prosecute the government unions under RICO."
It also is interesting how monopolies are supposed to be Really Bad Things, except when they are unions. Union monopolies are good!
Thank you Gospace for that informative and thoughtful comment.
I doubt most agencies run with legislation explicitly telling the executive who and how many to hire. Most of the time the legislation simply gives a pot of money to hire enough at the discretion of the agency and its leadership until the pot of money is used up.
The Supreme Court hears cases and decides (or chooses not to decide or even hear) complicated issues. But the decision process is a debating society. If Ketanji Brown Jackson wants to have her view of an issue prevail, she has to persuade at least four other Justices to agree with her. Based on her truly bad start, I don't think that's going to happen very often. But she did get the wise Latina off the schneid as the least effective Justice on the court.
Serious question: do law schools have any classes about the strategy of lawsuits? Not what the law says, but whether it's a good idea to make the court rule on a particular issue at a particular time.
Because going all the way to the Supreme Court to contest an executive order that, at least facially, says that plans should be made consistent with applicable law, is a terrible idea strategically. You are never going to get five justices to say that "the President says to follow the law, but we all know he's lying."
The only winnable way to contest these cuts is after they're announced, when you can claim, and the judges can rule, that they *do* violate some statutory provision.
Sotomayor and Kagan are quite right to keep their powder dry for the real fight.
First lesson of strategy class:
You want to DIVIDE the bloc of judges most likely to vote against you, and UNITE the bloc most likely to vote for you. Even if you lose, the decision against you should have lots of opinions because the majority can't make up their mind why you should lose.
Liberals, making Jackson write lots of solo dissents is bad strategy. If you can't get at least two of Kagan/Sotomayor/Jackson to agree with each other, this is not a good case to put in front of the Supreme Court.
No more excuses, now. Gutting the federal bureaucracy will go the way of the Epstein files.
gilbar said...
didn't someone once say, something about how the moronic retards of the country should have a justice that reflects Their intellect?
Senator Roman Hruska (R-Nebraska)
"Even if he [G. Harold Carswell] were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they? We can't have all Brandeises and Frankfurters and Cardozos."
Here is a fun thought experiment - imagine that Sotomayor and Jackson represent the most accomplished legal thinkers for their respective races and genders. Could you build or sustain a civilization if that was the best you could do?
Musk should be heartened by this ruling.
When Sotomayor is the voice of reason explaining to KBJ that her crazy dissent is about an issue not before the court at all then we have indeed entered new territory for SCOTUS rants. KBJ is more suited for ghostwriting Kak’s posts than any legal opinion.
The left has persistently tried to destroy and belittle Clarence Thomas. He followed the black lefty justice Thurgood Marshall and was...perceived as a sarcastic right-wing black DEI placement on the court. "You want a black man, well here's a black man you'll all hate. But he's black and that's all that matters." Still, Thomas stands head and shoulders above KBJ.
KBJ is the pure embodiment of a DEI hire. She was praised to the heavens by the left, but her epitaph will state that she was unable to define "woman." Every decision so far...she's not a judge but a symbol of black female achievement. She's an angry activist given a platform to spout angry activism, but then be patted on the head and given a cookie by the adults. Take a nap KJP, you don't understand anything.
Her main legacy will be to put a nail in the DEI coffin.
Oso: "Could you build or sustain a civilization if that was the best you could do?"
Unfortunately, many civilizations have lasted hundreds or thousands of years with court systems that just made stuff up to justify naked exercise of power.
Rome, Imperial China, Papacy, Egypt, Persia, etc.
We arguably did for a big chunk of our history: Dred Scott, Korematsu. And still do it with our Commerce Clause crap.
RR
JSM
Justice Jackson's clerks are setting her up for nothing more than what she wants them to do. She is the one sitting on the bench; it is her signature. I give her full credit for her stupidity and no soft bigotry assigned to her clerks. She could reject this absurd behavior. But she approves of it. It plays to the audience she seeks.
If we're going to have politicians on the Supreme Court, can't we at least have ones who are good at either lawyering or politicking?
@Tina Trent: "If we're going to have politicians on the Supreme Court, can't we at least have ones who are good at either lawyering or politicking?"
The SC has been a political body since FDR threatened to pack the court to allow his 1930s New Deal efforts to move forward. The court bent the knee, and then became its most political ever in the early 1970s with Roe v. Wade and the "discovery" that the death penalty was unconstitutional.
Everything in politics and law is Kabuki Theater, and willing play-acting. Every society functions in accord with the character and values of each person in power, be they Christians, Buddhists, Jewish, Islamic, atheists, capitalists, communists, socialists, hedonists, or whatnot.
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