From "When the Supreme Court Lurches Right/What happens when the Supreme Court becomes significantly more conservative than the public?" by Emily Bazelon in the NYT.
I have little confidence that my excerpt will be comprehensible to anyone. One key is to understand that there's a theory that the judiciary is really a political branch, and that for all its posing as operating in a completely different mode — interpreting legal texts — it's really tracking democratic preferences. There's a concern that the new majority on the Court will permit redistricting and various voting law that will help Republicans win elections, putting them in control of the overtly political branches of government. And there's an idea that the Court will notice that those supposedly democratic branches are not properly majoritarian anymore and that distortion will motivate the Court — which is covertly political — to step into the role of representing what it knows to be the true majority.
I'm trying to put the argument in blunter language than Bazelon is using. I see that Bazelon is now the Truman Capote fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School, which sounds like a fantastic position. But I wonder, what would Truman Capote write?
ADDED: What exactly is "creative writing"? Wikipedia says:
Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature.... Both fictional and non-fictional works fall into this category....I'm all for jumping outside the bounds of "normal" legal writing, though I don't like the term "creative writing." First, "creative" is way overused in our culture. Everyone's child is so creative, and young people accept low-paying jobs that are portrayed as "creative." Second, if you're writing nonfiction, you shouldn't be "creating" your facts. You want to be creative in what facts you pursue and how you present them, but why invite the confusion? The use of Truman Capote's name in connection with writing about law is also interestingly confusing, since Capote — for all his excellent writing style — was known to have deviated from rigorous truthtelling in his nonfiction work, "In Cold Blood." From Wikipedia:
Writing in Esquire in 1966, Phillip K. Tompkins noted factual discrepancies after he traveled to Kansas and spoke to some of the same people interviewed by Capote... Tompkins concluded:
Capote has, in short, achieved a work of art. He has told exceedingly well a tale of high terror in his own way. But, despite the brilliance of his self-publicizing efforts, he has made both a tactical and a moral error that will hurt him in the short run. By insisting that "every word" of his book is true he has made himself vulnerable to those readers who are prepared to examine seriously such a sweeping claim.True crime writer Jack Olsen also commented on the fabrications:
"I recognized it as a work of art, but I know fakery when I see it... Capote completely fabricated quotes and whole scenes.... That book did two things. It made true crime an interesting, successful, commercial genre, but it also began the process of tearing it down. I blew the whistle in my own weak way. I'd only published a couple of books at that time – but since it was such a superbly written book, nobody wanted to hear about it."
११८ टिप्पण्या:
The fact that they teach creative writing in law school makes me even more suspicious of lawyers. To me, creative writing = fiction writing.
Where was this concern when the Pa Supreme Court went rogue and "struck down" the congressional districts we've used for three elections? Yeah I know
If you assume that this is going to be partisan, then the decision is always either “help the Republicans “ or “help the Democrats.” There’s no neutral ground where you just don’t advantage either party.
I’ve been listening to Bazelon almost weekly on Slate’s political podcast for almost as long as I’ve been reading Althouse, over 10 years. Yet I never fail to be amazed at how such a smart person can be such a poor thinker.
I remember similar think pieces when the Supremes did stuff.
Warren Court
Berger Court
/s
This is battlefield prep for the next Democrat to pack the Court.
FDR smiles.
Make the Court note majoritarian, more representative.
Ivy League or don’t apply.
Square the circle.
if a conservative majority of Republican appointees issued decision after decision that had the effect of helping Republican candidates win elections....
And as usual, progs look at the EFFECT of the law, NOT the execution of it. If it helps Republicans, then it's bad, therefore it's bad law. Exactly backwards.
Kind of like how abortion is "settled law" now- Thank you, 4th amendment, or 9th amendment, or 20th... So which amendment to the Bill of Rights contains the "Abortion is a Sacred Right" clause?
Maybe a lack of introspection helps Bazelon be more creative?
Well, we have heard Conservatives complain about legislating from the bench for decades, as well as claim some judges are partisan left.
I suppose that will all be swept under the rug and ignored by many commenters here as the SC is starting to politically lean their preferred direction.
Blog discussions allow this (along with encouraging tribalism and personal attacks), but I appreciate the naive hope by Althouse that this won't happen yet again.
Allowing 60 million illegals to vote couldn't be political, could it?
Democrats are so lucky the GOP does not confirm judges like they do, that use an end justifies the mean ethos and creates rights, instead of looking at the actual law/constitution.
I’m amused that on the Supreme Court the left members vote as a block pretty consistently, but the more conservative members don’t.
Vacancies in Congress should be filled by special elections except when we're in power which makes that method entirely unfair, inhumane and marginalizing of the will of voters so fo course the only appropriate method is for our governor to appoint them.
If the Supreme Court does its prescribed job and decides cases based on the Constitution as written, it is apolitical, but a Court that did that would be by its very nature conservative. A court that interprets the Constitution based on current culture is political. It seems the Democrats prefer a political Court.
Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission; it is the one case at the absolute top of my personal list of cases to be reversed under a Roberts/Thomas/Alito/Gorsuch/Kavanaugh majority. It was a remarkably and bitterly divided 5-4 win for the Democrats with Kennedy flipping to their side.
Anytime I see gerrymandering discussions; I look at the Texas precinct maps. Then I remember the last two decades, after a Republican controlled state government redrew the maps based on new census data; a state judge claimed it gerrymandering, threw out the elected official drawn map, and then redrew their own map. We still have precincts connected by roadways and waterways, such that folks in Northeast Houston vote for the same member of Congress in west Houston, while folks in central Houston and Northwest Houston, and Southeast Houston all vote for a different Congressman. What's common about Northeast Houston and West Houston? They're mostly conservative neighborhoods.
This isn't civility bullshit, but it is all bullshit. Although I can make a claim for the civility part to; because it is the avowed racist NYT claiming that the public is less conservative than the Supreme Court. Hey NYT, the public is far less racist than you. Don't lump us in the same category as you.
It's funny: when the Court was well to the left of the American public it wasn't a problem for people like Bazelon but the idea that the Court might soon be to the right of the American public is for some reason terrifying.
What could possibly explain that difference, do you think?
So far I'm lazily not reading Bazelon. It would be foolish for the Court to try to consistently maintain positions that were clearly opposed by the more majoritarian branches of government. On the other hand, the Court is expected to be willing to take a stand that may be unpopular--at least for the time being. The Warren Court took a lot of conservative criticism, but arguably it was seeing just a bit into the future that majorities could be persuaded to want: more enforced rights for accused people (although federal prosecutors would eventually find ways around that), less religion in matters of law and public policy, more free speech for the mainstream media, etc. They probably went too far with busing as a way of enforcing Brown v. Board; lots of parents of all races learned to get their kids out of schools that were designated for busing. The Burger Court probably went too far with Roe v. Wade. They were thinking not so much of constitutional precedent, the 1st, 5th, 9th amendment etc., as of the trend toward keeping religion out of politics. If a decision about when life begins, or when it should be protected by law, is a religious decision, then leave it to individual women. Expressed in a certain way, this is a popular view. Gerrymandering was driving Democrats crazy even before Trump's election, and now they are convinced Trump didn't win the election. The majoritarian branches are (supposedly) not majoritarian at all, and gerrymandering makes this worse. My advice to all Dems, including African Americans who are probably the most loyal Dem voters, would be to take part in Republican primaries to get more candidates you can support.
not because the court aids in eroding the democratic process..
Oh, something new?
I believe it was a California Democrat (Phil Burton?) who developed the computer-aided gerrymander, which has so tarnished the golden state.
Mark said...
Well, we have heard Conservatives complain about legislating from the bench for decades, as well as claim some judges are partisan left.
I suppose that will all be swept under the rug and ignored by many commenters here as the SC is starting to politically lean their preferred direction.
Conservatives don't complain about judges being partisan left for ruling in ways that promote Democrats and/or progressive causes. We complain about judges being partisan left for ignoring the actual law and Constitution in order to rule in ways that promote Democrats and/or progressive causes.
If Republican-appointed judges ignore the actual law and Constitution in order to favor Republicans and/or conservative causes, then go ahead and complain: your complaints would have merit. But complaints that rulings which follow the law and Constitution are helping Republicans will be treated with deserved derision.
I often get Truman Capote confused with Andy Warhol. But perhaps I am a philistine. Oh yeah - Bazelon's article is long winded, without a point. Unlike Bazelon, I am giddy with anticipation for Kavanaugh to be confirmed.
"I’ve been listening to Bazelon almost weekly on Slate’s political podcast for almost as long as I’ve been reading Althouse, over 10 years. Yet I never fail to be amazed at how such a smart person can be such a poor thinker."
If you think she's an amazingly poor thinker, why have you been listening to her for 10 years? If you want to know the answer to the question how she can be this why, look to your own mind. What she is doing is working out very well for her. So in terms of what works, it isn't poor at all. It's great. Why does it work for you, consuming this kind of material?
It's like asking why a crowded restaurant makes this terrible food. Ask the people who are eating there.
Of course, decision after decision helping Republicans could be doing law and not politics if the current system is bent improperly towards Democrats.
She probably didn't think of that. Probably couldn't conceive of that. Because she's part of the problem.
I didn't cease reading Bazleton because she's a poor writer.
I ceased reading her because she's descended from legal royalty and her path thru life was greased from birth.
Yet she's an advocate of fucking over a redneck guy born into poverty like me because I'm white and male.
That bitch can fuck off. What a devious, rotten cunt.
You have to think the court was alright, to fear it's going wrong. I'm not there yet.
I never noticed much concern from people like Bazelon during the years 1932-1994 when the House of Representatives was held in durance vile by Democratic gerrymandering. I refuse to take them seriously now.
It was a dark and stormy night...legally speaking...
Bazelon writes, “And yet it could become increasingly difficult to believe the court is doing law, not politics, if a conservative majority of Republican appointees issued decision after decision that had the effect of helping Republican candidates win elections.” But if a liberal majority of Democratic appointees were to issue decision after decision that had the effect of helping Democratic candidates, you can be sure that would be just hunky-dory, a triumph for all that is right and good and noble in the law. What a crock.
I spent my entire working career in a covert and overt war against bitches like Bazleton in HR and management.
You really have to read Heartiste to understand the sexual game she's playing. Heartiste is an ugly site in many ways, but it presents a kernel of truth that a white hetero guy needs to survive in the battle against the Bazletons.
The rape and exotic dick fantasies, along with the gay worship, that drive Bazleton and her cohorts is the underlying theme of Heartiste.
Heartiste has probably outlived its usefulness. You probably need to go back to its first year of posting to get that kernel of truth.
I haven't read the site for quite a while. It gets pretty repetitive.
if a conservative majority of Republican appointees issued decision after decision that had the effect of helping Republican candidates win elections....
Democrats view election rules the way Bud Abbot viewed the rules of poker.
The premise is wrong. Republicans are already winning elections despite Democrat attempts to rig elections. The Democrat party is the one making a hard turn to the left and lawlessness. What we are seeing is a political realignment brought about by the PTB's ever increasing demands that the citizens should shut up and sit down.
"If you think she's an amazingly poor thinker, why have you been listening to her for 10 years? If you want to know the answer to the question how she can be this why, look to your own mind. What she is doing is working out very well for her. So in terms of what works, it isn't poor at all. It's great. Why does it work for you, consuming this kind of material?"
Isn't this close to your defense for reading the new york times? "Sure, they're incompetent and lie, but where else can I find national news?"
Anyway, a lot of the New Journalism is turning out to be just as much Fake News as today. Hunter Thompson, according to his bio, wrote most of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas before he went there.
I was reading Larry McMurtry's memoir yesterday, and he talked about his friend Grover Lewis, who wrote for Rolling Stone, and flat out accused him of writing fiction. In particular, he wrote that he and McMurtry saw Elvis getting the shit kicked out of him outside a Wichita Falls honky-tonk in 1956. Complete bullshit, McMurtry wrote. Lewis also wrote an influential piece for RS about "The Last Picture Show" that was amazingly inaccurate.
Of course, there was the Kitty Genovese story, written by future NYTimes executive editor Abe Rosenthal, that was manipulated by him to meet his "urban apathy" narrative.
It seems that the "fake but true" narrative has been a leftist tactic for far longer than just the last few years.
But if a liberal majority of Democratic appointees were to issue decision after decision that had the effect of helping Democratic candidates, you can be sure that would be just hunky-dory, a triumph for all that is right and good and noble in the law. What a crock.
They can't even tell that that is what the effect of their demands is. It's not like Democrats could possible tack a little bit back towards the center, you know, maybe try to appeal to working people a little bit? Impossible! Who are you to question the One True Faith!
“If you think she’s an amazingly poor thinker, why have you been listening to her for 10 years?”
Ok, a fair enough question. (Funny how Althouse and she-who-must-not-be-named both jumped on the same thing there.). First, she’s not the only person on the podcast, the others are better, or at least, more thoughtful. If she were to take over entirely, I wouldn’t listen. Second, I have long tried to make sure that I listen to a steady diet of things outside my comfort zone; clearly, Ms. Bazelon’s thought processes, weak as they often are, have appeal, and I should understand that (note that she does not do the same, which is where most of her poor thinking lies- in bubbled off ignorance.). Third is just pure habit - it fit into my podcast lineup when I first got into them, and I’ve never found anything bettter to take its place. I’m open to suggestions, but I always worry about deleting things that are out of my comfort zone - am I avoiding a challenge? I don’t want to be that person.
But I agree that she’s been successful and must be doing something right. Like I said, she’s smart, and an excellent writer, and perhaps she’s a better thinker in other contexts, where she’s not emotionally invested in political outcomes.
But that’s why too much about me and her. My point was that she is only willing to look at this one way (helps Rs), which is a or way of thinking about it.
In 1956 Elvis was in basic training and then in Germany with the Army.
Where was this concern when the Pa Supreme Court went rogue and "struck down" the congressional districts we've used for three elections? Yeah I know
Of all of the alternatives for congressional districts, they chose the one outlier most favorable to Democrats.
It's like asking why a crowded restaurant makes this terrible food.
And the portions are so small!
"I spent my entire working career in a covert and overt war against bitches like Bazleton in HR and management. You really have to read Heartiste to understand the sexual game she's playing."
What if Emily Bazelon dropped in and read your post? Picture it from her point of view. Why would she do anything other than assume you're out of your mind? Maybe you know what you're talking about and it makes sense to you, but you ought to read your own writing as if you're someone who doesn't have access to your thought processes and then rewrite so it has a chance of making sense. Otherwise you're nothing but an incoherent bleat.
Under chief justice Ito things will be better.
To a Times scribe creative writing means: I’m so accomplished at my craft the rubes can’t see how I’m manipulating them! (hee hee- I’m so clever!)
Without delving deep, I'd assume the HR comparison is with fixers who assume agreement that needs to be argued first.
Elections are the only obvious, if indirect, way for the public to express its discontent with a wayward Supreme Court
And in one direction, it takes half a century, thanks to Kennedy and Souter. In the other, the Court folded on the New Deal soon after the failure of packing.
One key is to understand that there's a theory that the judiciary is really a political branch, and that for all its posing as operating in a completely different mode — interpreting legal texts — it's really tracking democratic preferences.
Yes that's the standard Lefty line....but it ignores the Founders' intent. The whole point of making the appointments lifetime was to isolate the court from politics and the shifting whims of an electorate.
There's a concern that the new majority on the Court will permit redistricting and various voting law that will help Republicans win elections, putting them in control of the overtly political branches of government.
Where was the concern when a Leftwing majority was making decisions that explicitly helped Democrats win elections?
And O'Connor
Using the phrase "lurches right" tells me all I need to know about where the author wants to take the reader. "Those bastard originalists" would also get the point across.
"Here's the plan for overcoming the bad 50% without convincing them."
@Lyssa Thanks for responding.
The device of looking at this one way is so effective in the legal field. I know from personal experience.
The legal academic field, I mean.
Unless you go all in as a Federalist Society type person and make a strong alliance on the other side.
I'm no Elvis fan, but from Wikipedia:
Elvis Aron Presley entered the United States Army at Memphis, Tennessee, on March 24, 1958, and then spent three days at the Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, Reception Station. He left active duty at Fort Dix, New Jersey, on March 5, 1960, and received his discharge from the Army Reserve on March 23, 1964.
Why not instead of trying to force your will on voters why not try adopting some policies that would be attractive to them?
A great president of the United States once said: "Elections have consequences." But another Democrat was more truthful when he said "It's only over when we win."
"The device of looking at this one way is so effective in the legal field. I know from personal experience."
That seems like a terrible indictment of the legal field. You train yourself to be a blinkered partisan?
You train yourself to be a blinkered partisan?
Or worse, you train others.
Elvis went in the Army at the height of his music career. Anyone else since WWII, besides Pat Tillman?
My point was that she is only willing to look at this one way (helps Rs), which is a or way of thinking about it.
This is my complaint with R/V. He makes a bid deal of how is reading group cum league of extraordinary gentlemen read philosophy and history and so he is super smart, but he finds it impossible to even recapitulate an opposing argument to then use those incredible philosophical chops to dismantle it.
I guess Althouse is right that they view debates like this less as an investigation into the truth of any given matter, when people acknowledge arguments made by the other side and take on the best ones as best they can, but more like a courtroom where it is the other guy's job to make his own arguments and that their true audience isn't the group of commenters trying to engage, but the "jury," the lurkers who read but don't comment.
Lyssa: Yet I never fail to be amazed at how such a smart person can be such a poor thinker.
How can a person be a poor thinker and be "smart"?
(Aside: smart (not "smart"!) comment @8:00 for why you've listened to her for ten years.)
It's not uncommon for intelligent people to seem dumb when they presume to pontificate outside of their own fields. But that's just workaday hubris - the common human failing of over-estimating the extent of one's knowledge and expertise. Such people really are intelligent, as is apparent when they stick to the field where they know what they're talking about.
But law is Bazelon's area, no?
I think there are people with high verbal facility that makes them seem more intelligent than they actually are. I don't mean sophists, intelligent people of high verbal facility who "do it on purpose", but rather people who upon repeated exposure reveal themselves as a clever sort of parrot: they can re-arrange the forms they've memorized to more or less coherent effect, yet they cannot seem to ever get outside of them to any kind of objective or self-critical perspective. So we get internally consistent fairy-tales that don't describe reality.
Perhaps that's the source of the oft-observed tendency toward projection in contemporary lefty writers. When there's no way out of your own head, you have to project.
You train yourself to be a blinkered partisan?
Umm. Yes. Can you imagine the lawyer who goes to the judge and says, "Your honor, my client told me yesterday in our meetings that he was guilty."
"...will no doubt..."
Lawyer speak for "I don't know what will happpen, but I will now guess"
Well, I guess he would if he were Cohen and he were permitted to keep massive ill-gotten gains in return for a denouncement of his former client.
My father used to get the local paper just to get mad at the editorials. We also got the WaPo and WaTimes, so he had plenty to work with.
Blogger Wilbur said...
I'm no Elvis fan, but from Wikipedia:
Elvis Aron Presley entered the United States Army at Memphis, Tennessee, on March 24, 1958, and then spent three days at the Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, Reception Station. He left active duty at Fort Dix, New Jersey, on March 5, 1960, and received his discharge from the Army Reserve on March 23, 1964.
Perhaps be warned about Wikipedia.
I was stationed in Frankfurt from January or February to October 1956 when Elvis arrived with 4th Armored division in Operation Gyroscope.
If a decision about when life begins, or when it should be protected by law, is a religious decision, then leave it to individual women.
But it's not a religious decision.
"If a new dominant national alliance emerges to the left of the Roberts Court, maybe the justices will find a way to become a part of it."
Ah, just like Brennan et al. lurched right when they saw how much the surging conservative coalition despised them.
"I have little confidence that my excerpt will be comprehensible to anyone."
It is and it isn't. It is, as a conventional expression of prog sentiment. It isn't, in that it purports to comment on constitutional law but doesn't say anything about, or quotes anything from, the actual, you know Constitution. Which is all too comprehensible.
"One key is to understand that there's a theory that the judiciary is really a political branch, and that for all its posing as operating in a completely different mode — interpreting legal texts — it's really tracking democratic preferences."
Yeah, we get it
"to step into the role of representing what it knows to be the true majority."
Like the "true majority" Brennan and Marshall conjured up to oppose the death penalty?
"I see that Bazelon is now the Truman Capote fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School, which sounds like a fantastic position."
True, a position dedicated to fantasy. Except prog fantasies turn into our nightmares.
"I'm all for jumping outside the bounds of "normal" legal writing"
We know. You've expressed your admiration for Tony K's excretions here repeatedly.
"Second, if you're writing nonfiction, you shouldn't be "creating" your facts."
Oh, why not? For example, if we can create a useful fact to show that segregation hurts black children, why not do it? What are facts, anyway?
"The use of Truman Capote's name in connection with writing about law is also interestingly confusing, since Capote — for all his excellent writing style — was known to have deviated from rigorous truthtelling in his nonfiction work"
"Interestingly confusing": ha! I suspect the Yalies didn't quite think of it that way. They are not confused because they don't give a damn about your and my sensitivities about truth and the American way.
"he has made both a tactical and a moral error that will hurt him in the short run."
But it did not hurt him in the long run, did it. As the Yale honor shows, if you are the right kind of liar, progs will embrace you. They are very creative that way.
"I recognized it as a work of art, but I know fakery when I see it"
Which makes the name of the position at Yale very appropriate: prog con law and the Living Constitution celebrate fakery.
Angle-dyne, I mean that she, and people like her, have the ability, but are not willing to use it. They will not ask questions and challenge their conclusions, will not consider that there are alternative arguments that may have some rational, even if they are not ultimately persuasive.
It’s fine lawyering, in the sense of litigation, but I really want academia and intellectual writing to be better then that. It’s a constant source of frustration to me.
Apologies for typos, I’m phoning things in today. (Literally.)
I'm more worried about creative reading than creative writing. You know, the type of reading where you read the 14th Amendment and conclude it legalizes abortion and homosexual marriage.
CNN = Creative News Network?
> Otherwise you're nothing but an incoherent bleat.
I understood him very well.
The U.S. Army says that "Elvis Aron Presley entered the United States Army at Memphis, Tennessee, on March 24, 1958, and then spent three days at the Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, Reception Station. He left active duty at Fort Dix, New Jersey, on March 5, 1960, and received his discharge from the Army Reserve on March 23, 1964.
During his active military career Mr. Presley served as a member of two different armor battalions. Between March 28 and September 17, 1958, he belonged to Company A, 2d Medium Tank Battalion, 37th Armor, stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. During this assignment he completed basic and advanced military training.
Mr. Presley's overseas service took place in Germany from October 1, 1958, until March 2, 1960, as a member of the 1st Medium Tank Battalion, 32d Armor. For the first five days of that period he belonged to Company D of the battalion, and thereafter to the battalion's Headquarters Company at Friedberg.
While in Germany Mr. Presley wore the shoulder sleeve insignia of the 3d Armored Division."
We were just the targeted consumers of a 20 year 100 Billion dollar creative writing exercise by tens of thousands of hack writers called Global Warming Science Mythology.
As for Capote, he never did anything he described in his "non-fiction" best seller. He wrote it all from his rent controlled Manhattan apartment and bragged to his friends about what fools his readers were. He created the fiction claiming to be non-fiction genre.
Elvis.com, under the year 1958:
"THE U.S. ARMY
Elvis arrives at the Memphis Draft Board and is inducted into the U.S. Army."
That's about what I remember, but it happened years and years before I was born. OK, year and year.
Hagar, maybe you should read about my Dad and Elvis on the previous post. /jk
Otherwise you're nothing but an incoherent bleat.
Bazelton is a mortal enemy. Sense has nothing to do with this bullshit.
That bitch should give up her job to somebody who needs the income more than she does.
Your feminism has nothing to do with rationality either. It's just greed and sexual hatred. You're very good at dressing up your greed and sexual hatred as an intellectual and moral cause.
I've been reading you for over a decade, I think, and I haven't bought that bullshit from you yet.
This feminist shit you and Bazleton advance isn't intellectual. It's war over turf. I regarded it as a war and fought it as a war, which is why I won.
I never wasted my time pretending that this bullshit was an intellectual argument. Your attempts to distract me with that are simply another one of your rhetorical weapons.
I fought and continue to fight women who use your and Bazleton's tactics in every way I can. No rules. You can shove your rules.
According to the Houston Chronicle, Elvis made 94 concert appearances in 1956.
I made the same argument about a Left-lurching Court back when I was sure HRC would win the Presidency. Since that time, the Democrats have dropped all pretense, as thin as it was even then, of caring about democracy or the rule of law. So fuck ‘em. We live in reality, not some idealized abstraction. The Left wouldn’t hesitate to weaponize the Court in the face of a contrary majority. They’d just say that it proves how high-minded and principled they are. Yes, in one direction or the other, the Supreme Court will become an increasingly partisan cudgel. Isn’t that an argument for decreasing it’s absolutist powers all around?
These idiots never cared when the court lurched to the left and made questionable rulings that were remarkably out of step with the majority of this nation. Never crossed their mind. All that matters to the Left is the lust for POWER. It’s “go go go” when they win the votes and “whoa we need to change the rules” when they lose. If Bazelon had a liberal majority now in the court she would be leading the charge to eliminate the electoral college. That’s how they roll. Scratch a Leftist, find a fascist.
It’s fine lawyering, in the sense of litigation
I thought good lawyers constructed all the possible opposing arguments they could think of before the trial/negotiations in order to counter them.
I understood him very well.
Most people aren't going to know who or what Heartiste is.
I cutted and pasted this directly from the paragraph the Professor quotes:
it could become, if, if, Maybe,can somehow, If, maybe,could
I'm not sure if it's possible to make a more direct assertion in a single paragraph
This is what is called "projection." Democrat operatives know what they and their nominees do when they gain power, and cannot believe that Republicans would not behave in the exact same fashion. They cannot even imagine people who believe in interpreting the Constitution as it was written, rather than using "creative writing" and creative interpreting to make the Constitution say what they want it to say. People with no principles and no scruples cannot imagine anyone else having them, either.
Lyssa: Angle-dyne, I mean that she, and people like her, have the ability, but are not willing to use it. They will not ask questions and challenge their conclusions, will not consider that there are alternative arguments that may have some rational, even if they are not ultimately persuasive.
But my question is, do they really have the ability? That's what I mean by the clever parrot - they can seem very intelligent at first encounter or with limited exposure to them, but they never "deliver the goods" (as described by you above).
Since you follow her I assume you've seen her deliver the goods - be self-aware and self-critical, make disinterested examination of alternative views - in other circumstances. If not, I assume a superficial verbal facility is masking a lack of real smarts.
Steve Sailer has been writing quite a bit for the past few months about the left's "War Against the Beckys."
The left has decreed that liberal white women are racist because they call the cops when they're being assaulted or raped by black men.
Hard not to appreciate the irony here.
Feminist white women who grew up in wealth and in powerful families have been telling us for decades that they were "oppressed just like blacks under Jim Crow."
Nice to see them getting their shit thrown back in their faces. This Bazleton is one of the worst. One can only hope life kicks her in the ass good and proper.
Hagar@8:28 with a hoary warning about distrusting Wikipedia, the greatest single resource of facts and knowledge in human history, while erroneously asserting something which is immediately and repeatedly disproven. Don't denigrate Wikipedia, people. That's so 10 years ago.
Perhaps be warned about the fallibility of personal memories.
From "When the Supreme Court Lurches Right/What happens when the Supreme Court becomes significantly more conservative than the public?" by Emily Bazelon in the NYT.
What happens when the media and the schools become significantly more left-leaning than the public?
What is the daily effect of that?
Attorney ad: Reasonable Doubt at a Reasonable Price
Armstrong and Getty
A wiki entry is only as good as the sourcing, also you need to check the talk section to see that they left out.
"to step into the role of representing what it knows to be the true majority."
IIRC gay marriage NEVER survived any of the efforts to win directly at the ballot box. That seems as sure a test of the "true majority" as we get in this imperfect world.
So, obviously she opposes gay marriage, right?
Nah, me neither.
Elections are the only obvious, if indirect, way for the public to express its discontent with a wayward Supreme Court.
I think it is worth repeating that Democrats were losing elections at an increasing rate to Republicans during Obama's presidency. It was during Obama's presidency that the public began to reject the Democrat party. And yet, here we are, with a Democrat party in denial, using street thugs and corporate censorship to stifle opposition.
This is why Amazon blocked him:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/08/manafort-and-cohen-convictions-dont-change-much-politically/
The Democrat party's message seems to be that the United States is a crap country, our culture is crap, and working class white people are moral reprobates who should hurry up and die so that better Americans who will work for less can be imported to replace them. How can they lose?
"One key is to understand that there's a theory that the judiciary is really a political branch, and that for all its posing as operating in a completely different mode — interpreting legal texts — it's really tracking democratic preferences."
That's enough. I call bullshit. Use homosexual marriage as an example. At the time SCOTUS took the homosexual marriage, case not a single vote of the people showed anything like a democratic preference for homosexual marriage. (my time line might be a little off, not much)
What you mean, are rather what the facts show, that you are now trying to force into an opinion that you can comfortably defend, is that the Judges are eagerly pushing the voters toward a social positions leftist judges would like to be democratically supported, but need a nudge from the enlightened elite, like themselves
Scalia, on at least one occasion accused his peers of using their power to make law as a way to hurry the democratic process. Scalia was clear that the court should not short circuit the will of the people. Scalia was clear that while he had no opinion on something like sodomy laws, he knew that in a self governing republic, it is the people, not judges that have the power to make value decisions.
What a concept. People making the laws they live under.
Also from Wikipedia, the history of the 3d Armored division states they relieved the 4th Infantry Division by Operation Gyroscope in the spring of 1956 at Frankfurt.
So I was wrong about the division identities.
However, I am not wrong about the service dates on my DD214 nor my memories of the rumors of Elvis' arrival in the spring of 1956 and my fellow draftees muttering about how they were going to take care of that @#$%^! if they ever met up with him, but then the word went around to forget it, Elvis really was quite a nice person and nothing like all that Hollywood hype made him out to be. And then that off duty he lived in an off base apartment with his security guard, but quietly spent his duty hours just like any other draftee private.
Good thread discussion.
Gus Russo wrote an excellent book, "SuperMob", about how the Chicago Outfit (Capone heirs) sent a powerful attorney, Sidney Korshak, out West to Beverly Hills "where the gold was" to run things out there, particularly the movie studios.
Emily's Dad, David Bazelon, was one of the players. He used his government position to sell confiscated Japanese properties from WWII to his cronies to make big bucks:
From Russo: "There, using money from organized crime, they began buying land throughout Southern California, tipped to the best deals by Chicago tax attorney David Bazelon, who was serving as director of the Office of Alien Property in the Truman administration. From that office, he oversaw the disbursement of land seized from Japanese Americans sent to internment camps during World War II."
Several years ago I began to write an essay comparing Truman Capote's novella Breakfast at Tiffany's with the movie of the same name. I did not finish my essay. However, here I will provide what I did write.
-----
Truman Capote was born on September 30, 1924, in New Orleans. When he was four years old, his father left the family, and then his mother turned Truman over to be raised by four elderly, spinster female relatives in a small, Alabama town, Monroeville (in the year 2000 the population still was only 6,500).
In 1931 Truman’s mother – it will be relevant to mention that her birth name was Lillie Mae – moved to New York City, changed her name to Nina, and married a wealthy Cuban immigrant Joe Capote, who eventually adopted Truman, who joined his mother and step-mother in New York City in 1933, when he was nine years old.
In the following years, Truman maintained contact with and often visited his relatives in Monroeville, Alabama. One of his childhood friends there was Harper Lee, who later became famous as the author of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird (some people believe that Capote wrote much or all of that book for Lee).
In 1941, at the age of 17, Truman dropped out of high school began working in the art department of The New Yorker magazine. In his free time, he began to write short stories, hoping to become a professional writer. At about the time of his 19th birthday, at about the beginning of October 1943, he moved out of his parent’s luxurious home and moved into a small, third-story apartment in the area of the East 70s in Manhattan.
These were the circumstances of Truman Capote’s life that were depicted in his 1958 novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (made into a popular movie in 1961). The novel’s main events take place from October 1943 to October 1944 – essentially the year between his 19th and 20th birthdays.
Toward the end of that year, Capote was fired from his job at The New Yorker because he insulted the famous poet Robert Frost by walking out of the room during the middle of one of his poetry readings. The novella mentions this firing but does not provide any details.
And there's an idea that the Court will notice that those supposedly democratic branches are not properly majoritarian anymore and that distortion will motivate the Court — which is covertly political — to step into the role of representing what it knows to be the true majority.
Most people call that "concern trolling."
Continuing my comment at 9:54 AM
---------
The novella mainly describes Capote’s troubled friendship with the female renter of the apartment below his, on the second story. At the time he moved in to the building, she was two months short of her 19th birthday, so she was about two months younger than he. In the novella, she went by the name Holiday (“Holly”) Golightly.
World War Two is a significant circumstance of the novella.
* When Truman is fired from his job, he is doubly upset by having to look for another job because he fears that he might be conscripted into the military anyway.
* Holly and her female roommate both have boyfriends who are characterized as German sympathizers.
* Holly’s brother is serving in the military, and she wants to mail him some peanut butter. Because sales of peanut butter are limited by wartime rationing, she and Truman spend a day going from store to store to buy a lot of small portions of peanut butter.
* After Holly’s brother is killed in combat, she suffers a nervous breakdown.
The 1961 movie, however, seems to take place around the year 1961, judging by the clothing fashions, automobiles, etc. A character in the movie mentions that a particular event had happened several years previously in 1955. The brother’s death is attributed to an automobile accident in Kansas, not to combat in Europe.
Also the movie’s characters are much older than the novella’s two main, 19-year-old characters. The actor George Peppard, who played Truman Capote, was 33 years old, and the actress Audrey Hepburn, who played Holly Golightly, was 32 years old.
And there's that word "true" again.
Continuing my comment at 9:56 AM
------
The 19-year-old Truman character in the novella still is unpublished, but when he meets Holly he has recently written his first short story. He has mailed his manuscript to a university literary journal that does not pay its authors, and he is waiting for a response.
His story is about two spinster schoolteachers who live together. When one of the women is courted by a bachelor, the second woman spreads bad rumors about the first in order to sabotage the courtship.
Truman reads the entire story to Holly, who then immediately declares the story to be boring and meaningless. She presumes that both women must be lesbians and that the courted woman must be interested in marriage only for the social status of acquiring a married name.Truman is dismayed by Holly’s presumptuous criticism of his story.
Readers familiar with Capote’s life assume that the story sympathetically depicted some complex relationships among the spinsters who had raised Truman as a child.
AS the first conversation between Truman and Holly progresses, she tells him about her own strange relationship with a criminal who is imprrisoned in Sing Sing prison. She visits this criminal there once a week and passes coded messages back and forth between the imprisoned criminal and his lawyer.
She receives large payments for doing these tasks. She suggests to Truman that he write a story loosely based on the life of this imprisoned criminal.
In 1952, Joe Capote was caught embezzling money from his employer and so was ruined financially. As a consequence, Nina committed suicide in 1954, and Joe was sentenced to prison in 1955.
-----
I stopped writing my essay there, although I intended to write much more.
I am happy that I finally have this opportunity to share this incomplete effort of mine.
Also from Wikipedia, it says the 10th (Mountain) Division was replaced by the 3d Armored and that Elvis wore a 3d Armored shoulder patch.
So was right about the 10th Div. after all, I think.
My memory is that the incoming divisions in Operation Gyroscope would not accept any materials from the outgoing in excess of the TO&E, so the 10th dumped their excess at the Frankfurt City dump, and we (V Corps Headquarters) had a deuce and a half on standby to pick up any useful materials we could talk the dump operator out of, i.e. stuff he could not sell on the black market. I finally got a replacement muffler, a rearview mirror, and the second fanbelt for my truck out of it.
She lost me with the word lurch.
P.S. I the Army at that time, listing the deficiencies of your vehicle on your morning report was considered just as good as actually having those deficiencies taken care of.
I did not see it that way, but that was the Army's view.
Is there a rule that SCOTUS commentators have to be female? I mean, Nina Totenberg, Linda Greenhouse, Emily Bazelon, and I'm positive I'm missing one. I cannot think of any male equivalents.
Lithwick of slate, there's also a fmr reporter with the tribune.
What happened when the Warren Court became significantly more conservative than the public?
On a separate note, Ms. Althouse, have you become more verbose? Have you compared your average word count wit that of, say, one year ago?
One key is to understand that there's a theory that the judiciary is really a political branch, and that for all its posing as operating in a completely different mode — interpreting legal texts — it's really tracking democratic preferences.
It's not a theory, it's been the practice of the Democratic Party for quite some time.
The Kabuki gets interrupted when judges invent new rights which overturn years of legal precedent and election results, or cite foreign law or rulings to justify what in no way can be construed from our own legal history.
"How will you vote on X?" shouldn't even be question asked by Senators of prospective Justices if the Constitution is to be followed. The fact they're asking tells us all we need to know.
"About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers." -- Calvin Coolidge
When Silent Cal talks, people should listen.
I woouldn't trust anything in the NYT.
The gerrymandering and redistricting occurred through refugee crises (i.e. redistributive populations), excessive immigration, illegal immigration, Planned Parenthood, redistributive change, and other anti-native policies designed to disenfranchise American citizens.
Birkel has it right- this is preparing the ground for the day that the Democrats can expand the court to more than 9 justices. Otherwise, the entire essay is asinine.
From "When the Supreme Court Lurches Right/What happens when the Supreme Court becomes significantly more conservative than the public?" by Emily Bazelon in the NYT.
Except the "problem" here is that the Democrats and their enablers are significantly to the Left of the public, so the public is going to celebrate the actions of the Supreme Court
70% of Americans, including a majority of "African-Americans", think it's a good idea to require people to show photo ID before they vote.
You show a GOP "gerrymandered" district, that's contiguous, compact, and honors community boundaries, then you show the Democrat "fixed" district, that isn't, and the vast majority of the voters are going to agree with the Supreme Court that the GOP district is the better one.
The delusion is strong in the Left.
Ginsburg wants to use the laws of other countries as guidelines for rulings.
That, to me, seems an impeachable offense in her position as a Supreme Court Justice.
And you're concerned that the actual US Constitution might become the basis for Court rulings? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
What happened when the Warren Court became significantly more LIBERAL than the public?
Maybe you know what you're talking about and it makes sense to you, but you ought to read your own writing as if you're someone who doesn't have access to your thought processes and then rewrite so it has a chance of making sense. Otherwise you're nothing but an incoherent bleat.
Shouting Thomas, it pains me to agree with Emerita, but it's true, your writing is sometimes unclear on the way she describes. Not that I myself disagree with you, but I have the advantage of having read you for years. A naive subject would not take you so clearly.
Odd how nothing ever "lurches left".
Or any worry that any group of people is "more liberal than the general public".
narciso @ 9:29... I'm inclined to agree with the article, however my hard left friends are of the opinion in short, "Jesus can't they nail Trump without this faked-up bullshit"? They can't get over the smell.
"What happens when the Supreme Court becomes significantly more conservative than the Public?"
I am waving the BullShit flag on that. The Supreme Court has long been significantly more statist than the Public. What you are now seeing is the reaction - the awakening of the Public.
More of the productive, tax paying Public who just want to live their lives and mind their own business are understanding how the growth of Government has restricted their freedoms. More people now understand that the Political Class is - unsurprisingly - primarily interested in its its own welfare.
More people now, properly, view Government watchfully and with suspicion.
Late to this, but I want to echo Lyssa in saying that Bazelon is a very, very shallow thinker with no capability of seeing any perspective other than that of a kneejerk leftist caricature such as herself. And she's just plain loathsome. On that podcast, she has said: a) that Republicans care about only one thing, "wrecking the country." That's their only goal. and b) With one of her co-hosts introducing a hypothetical about potential SCOTUS picks with, "What if Thomas or Scalia were to drop dead ..." she interrupted to answer: "I'd throw a party."
Cunt.
Its cute that she thinks years of endless 5-4 decisions haven't already eroded any sense that judges are actually basing their rulings on law and not ideology.
टिप्पणी पोस्ट करा