InfoWars: Anthony Kennedy is retiring.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

BREAKING: Trump to nominate Neil Hardigan, per Roger Stone.

I wonder if Thomas Hardiman has heard the news that he was passed over again...

A 78-years old nominated to replace an 80-years old?

Suuuure.

That would be like Taft's nominee whose advanced age only served to give Wilson the chance to fill the seat within just a few short years.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Somehow, I have my doubts about this being accurate. Just call it a hunch

[Associate Justice PiT]

Imagine the left left/media meltdown if Infowars is right and got this information before every othe news organization, media outlet, blog etc. pp :-D

     I must admit that it would be funny if InfoWars broke a legit story before everyone else.

[The_Doctor]

I really don't get why people focus so much on the court becoming more conservative.

Hasn't the court (with the exception of the Warren court) always been more conservative?

It usually matches the country's alignment. It takes a few years to catch up after every alignment. The last two alignments saw matching Courts and part of the Lincoln - McKinley one too (I can't be arsed to see when the Courts became Lincoln GOP but I know by the 1920s they were extremely conservative and Republican).

The Roosevelt Court went from roughly 1937-1986 and the Reagan court was probably after Rehnquist become Chief Justice. Maybe when Thomas joined the Court replacing Marshall in 1991.

Reagan appointed 3 justices, Bush 2 (one turned out to be liberal) but combined with Rehnquist the Court became decidedly conservative by 1991 at the latest. Every Court appointment between 1969 and 1993 were GOP made. But a lot of Nixon people were moderate to liberal. So was Ford's lone appointee.

The federal judiciary has been more conservative than liberal on balance since the 80s in their rulings.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Imagine the left left/media meltdown if Infowars is right and got this information before every othe news organization, media outlet, blog etc. pp :-D

     I must admit that it would be funny if InfoWars broke a legit story before everyone else.

Infowars has broken news stories before, just not ones that matter this much. I remember in 2009 infowars was the first place to publish the MIAC report where law enforcement claimed that Ron Paul bumper stickers are a sign of terrorists. I attribute this to the broken clock rule though.

[MarkD]

I'm looking forward to the day when we no longer analyze the ideology of the Justices, because we don't have to. It'll be the day when all nine Justices actually are what they are supposed to be: the nine most highly objective interpreters of law that we can find in the country. If we had a Supreme Court filled with people like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Benjamin Cardozo, and Hugo Black, we wouldn't be worrying about what are their ideologies, and we wouldn't have to be having partisan fights over each nominee being appointed.

[Mr. Reactionary]

I'm looking forward to the day when we no longer analyze the ideology of the Justices, because we don't have to. It'll be the day when all nine Justices actually are what they are supposed to be: the nine most highly objective interpreters of law that we can find in the country. If we had a Supreme Court filled with people like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Benjamin Cardozo, and Hugo Black, we wouldn't be worrying about what are their ideologies, and we wouldn't have to be having partisan fights over each nominee being appointed.

In their own time, even they were probably criticized for partisanship.

Hugo Blackkk was nominated while he was a Democratic Senator who backed the court packing scheme. Still turned out to be a fine Justice

[MarkD]

I'm looking forward to the day when we no longer analyze the ideology of the Justices, because we don't have to. It'll be the day when all nine Justices actually are what they are supposed to be: the nine most highly objective interpreters of law that we can find in the country. If we had a Supreme Court filled with people like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Benjamin Cardozo, and Hugo Black, we wouldn't be worrying about what are their ideologies, and we wouldn't have to be having partisan fights over each nominee being appointed.

In their own time, even they were probably criticized for partisanship.

Within a few years of being appointed, Holmes was very strongly criticized by the President who appointed him -- Teddy Roosevelt -- because Holmes disagreed with the Roosevelt administration's accusation that a certain corporation had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. Over the years, Holmes was nicknamed the Great Dissenter, because so many of his dissenting opinions were recognized, by critics of the Court, for having come to the right conclusions and the Court majorities, that he was dissenting from, were coming to the wrong conclusions. I cannot think of any reason why he would have deserved to be accused of having any ideological bias. Certainly, many scholars consider Holmes to be one of the greatest Justices we've ever had. The only opinion he wrote that I've heard contemporary Court observers criticize was his majority opinion in Buck v. Bell (and I don't even agree with the contemporary critics about that).
Hugo Black was often accused of being a liberal activist during the first 3/4s of his 34-year-career on the Court, and then his fellow liberals accused him of veering rightward during the last 1/4 of that career. Some of that criticism was deserved, but not all of it.
"No justice of the Court conscientiously and persistently endeavored, as much as Justice Black did, to establish consistent standards of objectivity for adjudicating constitutional questions." -- (James J. Magee, "Mr. Justice Black; Absolutism on the Court," published in 1980.)

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I happen to think that Black was correct to support the "court packing scheme," and FDR ultimately did get what he wanted -- FDR lost a battle but ultimately won the war. I think that Black was almost always one of the best Justices. I agree with that quote, right above by James J. Magee, that no one else on the Court strived to establish consistent standards of objectivity for adjudicating constitutional questions. You sound like Robert Bork, who described Black in such a way as to imply that Black was one of the worst Justices in the early part of his career, but he improved quite a lot later on.

[Sir Mohamed]

LOL at Infowars

[MarkD]

I'm looking forward to the day when we no longer analyze the ideology of the Justices, because we don't have to. It'll be the day when all nine Justices actually are what they are supposed to be: the nine most highly objective interpreters of law that we can find in the country. If we had a Supreme Court filled with people like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Benjamin Cardozo, and Hugo Black, we wouldn't be worrying about what are their ideologies, and we wouldn't have to be having partisan fights over each nominee being appointed.

That implies that humans can actually be impartial and unbiased. We've certainly had some amazing justices over the years, but there will never be a justice who is perfect, let alone an entire court full of that. Plus what you consider a justice is actually supposed to be is different than what I or anyone else would consider you just aren't going to see something like this happen.

If no humans are capable of being objective, then why do we bother having a judicial branch that is insulated from political pressure? The reason we use trial by jury is because jurors will be impartial, and jurors are selected by the officers of the court -- the judge and the attorneys -- based on screening out potential jurors if they are not going to be objective. Attorneys move that certain judges recuse themselves if the judge has a bias -- like the fellow several years ago who asked that Justice Scalia recuse himself given the fact that Scalia had already made public comments about the merits of the specific issue that was going to be litigated.

I did not say I expect perfect objectivity on the Supreme Court, I said the most objective people should be on it. Some people are capable of being objective so long as they remember that they have a duty to be. I think that the names I mentioned have been the best Justices the Court has had in the last 100 years, and I want more people like them to be appointed. It isn't impossible to find more people like Holmes, Cardozo, and Black, is it?

[publicunofficial]

How dare people call this an unreliable source: