Worst SCOTUS cases
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jfern
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« on: March 23, 2013, 08:06:29 PM »

Here's some terrible ones.

Dred Scott
Elk v. Wilkins
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific
Plessy v. Ferguson
Morehead v. New York
Korematsu v. United States
Bush v. Gore
Citizen's United
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #1 on: March 23, 2013, 09:31:58 PM »
« Edited: March 23, 2013, 09:39:28 PM by Californian Tony »

These are all horrible indeed. The worst of the worst obviously being Dred Scott.

There is a particularly despicable one which people often overlook, but which had the most terrible consequences for this country: Buckley v. Valeo, where they basically established that money=speech (thus laying the groundwork for Citizens United).

Also, Dennis v. US flies in the face of the 1st Amendment so blatantly that it's almost a joke.

And of course, you have all the reactionary decisions that struck down New Deal policies.
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traininthedistance
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« Reply #2 on: March 23, 2013, 09:50:38 PM »

Here's some terrible ones.

Dred Scott
Elk v. Wilkins
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific
Plessy v. Ferguson
Morehead v. New York
Korematsu v. United States
Bush v. Gore
Citizen's United


Don't forget Lochner.
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politicallefty
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« Reply #3 on: March 24, 2013, 04:20:23 AM »

I'll limit my list to ten on this, not in any particular order:

Korematsu v. United States
Dred Scott v. Sanford
Lochner v. New York
Schenck v. United States
Kelo v. City of New London
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad
Plessy v. Ferguson
Morse v. Frederick
Citizens United v. FEC
Gonzales v. Raich

Of these, I think Korematsu stands as the absolute worst decision ever handed down by the Supreme Court. It outright and blatantly ignores the Constitution on several counts. Dred Scott is an abomination based on the ruling that African-Americans could never be citizens of the United States, which is ludicrous even prior to the Reconstruction Amendments. It has no constitutional basis whatsoever. I take a very strict view on freedom of speech, so I definitely had to put Schenck and Morse on my list. For those familiar with Supreme Court cases, the others on my list are fairly obvious.

To the OP, with respect to Morehead v. New York, your main problem should reside with Lochner v. New York. It and its progeny are responsible for the now-defunct "liberty of contract", which struck down virtually every economic regulation imaginable. It was that line of reasoning that made a point of targeting the early years of the New Deal.
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cope1989
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« Reply #4 on: March 24, 2013, 07:31:25 PM »

Roe vs. Wade

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bedstuy
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« Reply #5 on: March 24, 2013, 10:44:08 PM »

The obvious ones: Dred Scott, Korematsu, The Slaughterhouse cases, Plessy
Bowers v. Hardwick
Lochner and the crazy libertarian cases from the gilded age in general
DC v. Heller
Ex parte Quirin

I would actually defend a few of the ones previously mentioned.  I think Kelo is definitely the right result and Bush v. Gore was arguably the best solution to a complete mess. 
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« Reply #6 on: March 25, 2013, 09:22:09 AM »

Gregg v. Georgia

The "new" death penalty was hardly fair and non-arbitrary.
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traininthedistance
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« Reply #7 on: March 25, 2013, 03:58:19 PM »

Just want to second bedstuy here and emphasize that no matter its unpopularity, Kelo was ABSOLUTELY correctly decided.
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« Reply #8 on: March 25, 2013, 07:44:42 PM »

I tend to agree, despite the awfulness of the practice it upheld. I strongly support individual states and municipalities passing laws and ballot measures to ban it though.
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Bacon King
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« Reply #9 on: March 26, 2013, 08:57:50 AM »

I actually agree with the majority, for the most part in Dred Scott.  Not from a moral aspect, of course, but from a legal aspect.  The dissent's argument just doesn't make sense, and it's absurd to think that a country could allow people to be citizens in one state but not another.

I do agree with the dissent when it comes to analyzing the militia law, and I think the majority's argument there is weak and severely logically flawed, but it's not necessary to their overall argument.

The interesting part of the case is what could've happened had it been held the other way.  If that had happened, it's very possible that the Civil War would've started earlier, when the North was not yet strong enough to have one.

In my opinion, it's a legally sound holding based on an interpretation of a racist document written by a group mainly made up of racists (or those too weak to challenge the racist aspects of it).

Too many people work their way backwards on the case, knowing as we know today that it's a morally abominable holding, but that doesn't mean it's a legally "wrong" holding.

I have to differ with you here, regarding the majority opinion's legal logic. Since Taney concluded that the case lacked diversity jurisdiction because Missouri courts had already concluded he was a slave and not a citizen, there is absolutely no sound justification for the remainder of the opinion. How could the Court possibly determine that blacks couldn't be citizens and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional while simultaneously concluding that they didn't have a basis for hearing the case in the first place?
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #10 on: March 26, 2013, 02:36:45 PM »

I'm not really familiar with the Dred Scott ruling apart from the right to property bit. How exactly did the court come up with this notion that blacks (including those who were free) could never be US citizens? I don't see any possible legal rationale to justify it.
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Bacon King
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« Reply #11 on: March 26, 2013, 05:20:22 PM »

I'm not really familiar with the Dred Scott ruling apart from the right to property bit. How exactly did the court come up with this notion that blacks (including those who were free) could never be US citizens? I don't see any possible legal rationale to justify it.

The majority opinion's summary of its own legal rationale:

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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #12 on: March 26, 2013, 05:39:40 PM »

I'm not really familiar with the Dred Scott ruling apart from the right to property bit. How exactly did the court come up with this notion that blacks (including those who were free) could never be US citizens? I don't see any possible legal rationale to justify it.

The majority opinion's summary of its own legal rationale:

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From a purely legal standpoint... that sounds like utter nonsense to me.

So the rationale is basically "a US citizen now is someone who was a US citizen when the constitution was ratified". Huh... why exactly? Where in the Constitution does it say that?

How the hell can you even determine who is a "citizen" and who is a "foreigner" based on whether or not they would have been at the time? So does that mean immigrants who became citizens after the ratification of the Constitution actually are not citizens? What about their children? They shouldn't be citizens either if we follow that logic. And what about someone who's the son of an immigrant and of a citizen?

Seriously, disregarding any moral consideration, this might be the most blatantly stupid ruling I've ever seen.
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Blue3
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« Reply #13 on: March 26, 2013, 08:17:40 PM »

Seems like they all fit into two categories:

1. Civil Rights and Liberties
(of slaves, of African-Americans, of Native Americans, of Asians,
of Students,
of Corporations and how many rights they are entitled to if any and how much the government can interfere with them,
of the limits of Free Speech especially when relating to government overthrow,
of Convicted Felons on death row,
of those who want to "pursue happiness" without government interference by taking drugs,
of those who want to "bear arms" without being in a militia,
of those who want sexual relations with another consenting adult in private without government interference,
etc.)

2. Bush v Gore




Hmmm... one of these is not like the other... Wink
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #14 on: March 26, 2013, 08:24:08 PM »
« Edited: March 27, 2013, 03:14:19 AM by Senator North Carolina Yankee »

@ Antonio, BK and Inks -
It is also a factually inaccurate depiction of the history. It is ironic that Inks bemoans us applying modern biases onto the Dred Scott decision, when in reality that is exactly what the Supreme Court was doing in 1857, applying the biases of Southern politicians from that 1850's onto the 1780's.

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This is factually innaccurate as they were in fact treated as such in Massachusetts stemming from the 1780 Constitution and subsequent interprations by the State Supreme Judicial Court in the years following its adoption. These were prior to 1787. There were other examples as well, that Justice Curtis points to in his dissent, but MA is the best case study in my opinion. It was suits by blacks in court that led to interpretations by state's highest court to determine that slavery was illegal in the state, prior to the convention in 1787. Brom and Bett v. Ashley, followed by Quock Walker's suit, which cited the former case as proof that the Constituion of 1780 barred slavery by declaring that "All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quock_Walker#The_cases
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Such as citizenship, Mr. Chief Justice?

If the Constitution of the United States grandfathered in all of the citizens under the Articles and if the Articles of Confederation left that determination up to the states and then a single state had given such citizenship (determined by the ability of blacks to sue in court if by nothing else), then how could said Constitution have denied blacks citizenship if such isn't expressly stated in the document (and it isn't)? The only basis for denying blacks citizenship is for Taney and his collegues to have 1) ignored these historical facts and then 2) conjectured as to what the opinions of the Convention members were in order to provide a answer to a question they were pretending was not easily answered.

Having multitple different standards of citizenship was not the crux of the matter Inks, though Justice Curtis' dissent does reference that later on. The primary issue in the first part of the rulling centers around whether or not the Constitution denied them citizenship and as far as I can see, Curtis' opinion is correct.

One has to remember that the extent of the racism at play grew over time. In Thomas Jefferson's time, slavery was considered as an evil that was dying of its own accord. In the 1820's, it was a considered a "necessary evil", thanks to the growth of cotton after invention of the Cotton Gin. Around this time period, you had a shift in Southern churches, who had been critical of slavery prior to the switch, but now switched and began to promote it as a means to "civilize" blacks, mostly to keep their flocks coming. They didn't appreciate being told they were going to hell because they owned slaves. The changed in the church, as well as the reaction to Nat Turner's rebellion created a new generation of Southern politicians who thought that not only was slavery not immoral, but that was in fact a moral, civilizing institution. That was the view of Jefferson Davis. John C. Calhoun and likely Chief Justice Roger B. Taney as well, shifted from the "necessary evil" opinion that defined their generation of southern politicians and came into line with the view of the 1850's. There is a quote from Calhoun from 1838 indicating this shift of opinion and the extent to which it was a generalized trend amongst southern politicians.  

The people of this "de-generation" of Southern politicans were desperate. It is hard to describe them as anything else. As you move closer to the Civil War, their demands and their views became more extreme, more demanding and less alligned with any kind of principles. They willingly embraced things like states rights to protect the slave states, and then abandoned them (some went as far as to insist that only through the embrace of slavery by the north, could the South's rights be preserved), when it served their purpose. I can't see Dred Scott v. Sanford, as anything more then an appropriation of the Highest Court in the land for the effecting of this process.

Thus I get to nine:

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This was the height of hypocrisy and in my view, the classic case of covering yourself by accusing someone else of doing the exact same thing that you are doing.

In my view, the Supreme Court was projecting its own biases onto the Constitutional Convention for the purposes of convenience. There were states that granted as much as the right to vote to blacks in the 1787, and nothing in the Constitution strips these persons of that right. The insinuation otherwise is that Elbridge Gerry and his collegues from MA, were either voting in ignorance of the consequences for some of their state's citizens or willfully voting to strip person's within their states, or that well known Abolitionists such as Ben Franklin and Alexander Hamilton were purposely affixing themselves to a document that would have forceably implanted on a group of states, views of slave owners regarding who was and was not a citizen in those said states. Considering the debates in the convention that occured over the three-fifths compromise, and other such sectional issues, I find that completely ridiculous.

If anything, the delegates of the convention were envisioning an America one day free of slavery, but that for the moment they thought best path towards that end was to structure a union that could stand the tests of time and in the process correct its own mistakes, even if that meant accepting the three-fifths compromise as a way to get started on that road without a breakup. That would certainly be more reflective of the true views of Washington, Franklin and many of the other delegates there. Regardless, as it is irrelevant to the intent of the Constitution and unless the Constitution specifies exemption to the clauses that grandfather in the citizens under the Articles, there is no way any reasonable construction could hold that it denied citizenship to blacks.

Of the Court at that time, only four of the justices were Northerners and only one of them was not a Democrat (Curtis). At least one of the Northern Democrats was pressured into joining the majority by the President, James Buchanan, who violated the seperation of powers with abandon as he desperately (Buchanan was of northern man of southern principles, even his tastes in boyfriends were Southern), in a misguided attempt to "end the issue forever", thought putting a northerner in with the Southerners comprising the majority, would add to its legitimacy.
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Benj
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« Reply #15 on: March 27, 2013, 08:18:45 PM »
« Edited: March 27, 2013, 10:44:01 PM by Benj »

Just want to second bedstuy here and emphasize that no matter its unpopularity, Kelo was ABSOLUTELY correctly decided.

Agree with this. Anyone who thinks Kelo was wrongly decided needs to pull out their Constitution and read. It is blatantly correct. (It is also unequivocally correct from a policy standpoint, though many people seem to have a visceral reaction against it and/or don't really understand what the case was about.)

Most of the other major bad decisions are on here already, though the bad women's rights cases are missing, such as Goesaert v. Cleary.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #16 on: March 27, 2013, 09:19:57 PM »

I'm not really familiar with the Dred Scott ruling apart from the right to property bit. How exactly did the court come up with this notion that blacks (including those who were free) could never be US citizens? I don't see any possible legal rationale to justify it.

The majority opinion's summary of its own legal rationale:

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From a purely legal standpoint... that sounds like utter nonsense to me.

So the rationale is basically "a US citizen now is someone who was a US citizen when the constitution was ratified". Huh... why exactly? Where in the Constitution does it say that?

How the hell can you even determine who is a "citizen" and who is a "foreigner" based on whether or not they would have been at the time? So does that mean immigrants who became citizens after the ratification of the Constitution actually are not citizens? What about their children? They shouldn't be citizens either if we follow that logic. And what about someone who's the son of an immigrant and of a citizen?

Seriously, disregarding any moral consideration, this might be the most blatantly stupid ruling I've ever seen.

The rationale is that only someone who was a US citizen at ratification is a citizen, or people who the federal government has made citizens are citizens.  The majority's argument was that states could make people citizens of their own state, but this does not necessarily mean that they are Federal citizens.  Federal citizenship can only be defined by the Federal government.  Federal citizenship is an issue that the federal government, not the state government, must determine.  It would be ridiculous to think that States could have different criteria for who was a U.S. citizen; otherwise immigrants could go to states with easy citizenship definitions and become U.S. citizens.

You seem to be narrowly focused on this issue of "federal citizenship versus state citizenship", and use that as the basis for disagreeing with the dissent. Yet that wasn't even the main thrust of the dissent, a dissent which sough to challenge every point of the majority's opinion (Have you read the Curtis Dissent in full?). It also sought to establish that some states did in fact do so at ratification, contrary to the historical "facts" embraced by the majority opinion. I don't see how even after acknowledging what you say above as the truth, one could come up with the first part of the Dred Scott rulling, as I detailed in my previous post. If you could vote and sue in court, then wouldn't that imply citizenship? If so, and if just one state allowed such at ratification, they would have been grandfathered in as US Citizens, no? Thus meaning that the Constitution couldn't have denied them citizenship on the basis of "no state considered them as such, at the time?"
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #17 on: March 27, 2013, 11:09:04 PM »

I have nothing to add to NCY's excellent rebuttal, but I must say I really don't get why Inks seems to care so much about defending Dred Scott. Of course a morally awful decision is not necessarily legally incorrect... but Dred Scott was blatantly both.
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politicallefty
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« Reply #18 on: March 27, 2013, 11:40:07 PM »

To those that support Kelo, I strongly disagree that it was the correct decision based on the Fifth Amendment. The Court has effectively wiped out the Public Use Clause with its overly broad interpretation of government taking authority. The idea that the Constitution permits takings for the sake of economic development is a broad and dangerous expansion of power. As Justice O'Connor's dissent notes, the distinction between private and public use is of vital importance. I think her dissent would have been the proper result in the case, keeping in line with a more appropriate interpretation of what "public use" actual means. The Court's decision does not take seriously the "public use" limitation on eminent domain.
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bedstuy
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« Reply #19 on: March 28, 2013, 11:59:48 AM »

To those that support Kelo, I strongly disagree that it was the correct decision based on the Fifth Amendment. The Court has effectively wiped out the Public Use Clause with its overly broad interpretation of government taking authority. The idea that the Constitution permits takings for the sake of economic development is a broad and dangerous expansion of power. As Justice O'Connor's dissent notes, the distinction between private and public use is of vital importance. I think her dissent would have been the proper result in the case, keeping in line with a more appropriate interpretation of what "public use" actual means. The Court's decision does not take seriously the "public use" limitation on eminent domain.

Two things:

-There is no public use clause.  "Public use" is just explaining the type of situation where just compensation is going to be required. Amendment doesn't say: Private property may only be taken for a public use, but not a private use. 

-There's no way for a judge to make a clear line between what's a private and public purpose.  That's inherently a political decision.  There may be some nightmare scenario with eminent domain but, it's either going to be averted by the just compensation requirement or perhaps substantive due process or some rational basis challenge. 
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politicus
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« Reply #20 on: March 28, 2013, 02:21:42 PM »

Gotta go with Dennis v. United States as the worst. The ruling was simply absurd.
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The Mikado
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« Reply #21 on: March 28, 2013, 04:01:25 PM »

Worth pointing out that Dred Scott was one of the reasons that the Fourteenth Amendment would end up including birthright citizenship, to make it absolutely clear and unambiguous that the descendants of slaves were US citizens.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #22 on: March 28, 2013, 08:14:27 PM »
« Edited: March 28, 2013, 08:18:09 PM by Senator North Carolina Yankee »

I have nothing to add to NCY's excellent rebuttal, but I must say I really don't get why Inks seems to care so much about defending Dred Scott. Of course a morally awful decision is not necessarily legally incorrect... but Dred Scott was blatantly both.

You could probably find minor aspects of the decision that were sound, but there is certainly no justification not only for the entirety of the second half of the ruling, which if nothing else stands as a gigantic adminission of bias on the part of the justices (since it just happened to be the prevailing position and demand of the most extreme Southern politicans at the time, yet we are trust them on the historical record and determination of original construction in the first half? like hell!), but also the primary basis for first half denying free blacks citizenship through a convoluted process of first ignoring the historical record, not only in MA, but also other states, as well as then proceeding to substitute in its absence the wild conjectures of biased Southern politicians onto the motivations of the founders as a flawed means of discovering "original" construction, which for obvious reasons would not work to provide a true discovery of such since it was the product of a flawed process.

I think the second half of the ruling pertaining to the Missouri compromise is the product of Buchanan's meddling and his desire to "settle the issue" in this manner. We can establish that he was deeply involved in the case, to the extent that no President should ever be involved in the jurisprudence on the part of Supreme Court Justices, we know he corresponded with Taney and other Justices on the matter, that he directly swayed the opinions of at least one northern Democratic justice who was on the fence so that it wouldn't be a bunch of Southerners and a token Northerner forming the opinion, and his inaugural address even stated something to the effect of "The issue of slavery will soon be forever put to rest by the Supreme Court".  

Worth pointing out that Dred Scott was one of the reasons that the Fourteenth Amendment would end up including birthright citizenship, to make it absolutely clear and unambiguous that the descendants of slaves were US citizens.

Yes, and we certainly needed a citizenship amendment. However, I do find it unfortunate that Dred Scott never got overturned by a later court (its equivalent of Brown v. Board of Education), since virtually all of its legal basis was flawed and the process of its consideration and independence during such, was tainted by the interefence of the Executive branch.

What Dred Scott illustrates more then anything with regards to the Court, is the need to preseve its independence from the political whims of the day regardless of which party they originate from (thus no to term limits), from the influences of the executive branch, and the need for the appointment of judges who will adhere as strictly as possible to not only the Constitution and precedents (that are likewise based of an independently analysed assessment of the constitution and prior precedents before it), but also as unbiased an interpretation of original intent as possible. Perhaps no other branch can be as dangerous if its power is abused, nor is as difficult to correct its mistakes as that of the Supreme Court and thus I would hope that liberals could embrace at least some degree of conservatism with regards to its function. Once a rulling is given, that is it  until a subsequent decision overturns it (which takes either a completely membership change, which had taken place by the 1860's), or a Constitutional Amendment, the process for which is obviously very challenging.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #23 on: March 28, 2013, 08:38:06 PM »

Perhaps no other branch can be as dangerous if its power is abused, nor is as difficult to correct its mistakes as that of the Supreme Court and thus I would hope that liberals could embrace at least some degree of conservatism with regards to its function.

I actually 100% agree with that. While I certainly won't describe myself as a Conservative, I often happen to disagree with my fellow liberals on our respective approaches to the SCOTUS. See my long rants here as an example. I just hate it when judicial bodies become politicized and start using the law to push for their own political views (conservatives actually do this more often than liberals, but that doesn't mean it's OK for liberals to do it). And indeed, the Supreme Court being so powerful makes it even more important that its members don't overstep their boundaried.
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traininthedistance
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« Reply #24 on: March 28, 2013, 08:42:46 PM »

I think the second half of the ruling pertaining to the Missouri compromise is the product of Buchanan's meddling and his desire to "settle the issue" in this manner. We can establish that he was deeply involved in the case, to the extent that no President should ever be involved in the jurisprudence on the part of Supreme Court Justices, we know he corresponded with Taney and other Justices on the matter, that he directly swayed the opinions of at least one northern Democratic justice who was on the fence so that it wouldn't be a bunch of Southerners and a token Northerner forming the opinion, and his inaugural address even stated something to the effect of "The issue of slavery will soon be forever put to rest by the Supreme Court".  

Wow, I didn't know that.

I think Buchanan now automatically rockets up to "number one worst President ever".  Not that he was anywhere but safely ensconced in the  Bottom 5 already, but this makes it so, so unambiguous.
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