Worst SCOTUS cases

[Nichlemn]

Reading the Dred Scott discussion made me wonder if "mixed" cases might be more interesting. It's easy to rail against a decision that conflicted with your politics, but is there anything where you think the correct legal and moral decisions were quite separate?

So: Name SCOTUS decisions that you thought were legally correct, but morally wrong, or legally incorrect, but morally right.




 

[Illuminati Blood Drinker]

1. Dred Scott
2. Plessy v. Ferguson
3. Citizens United
4. Bush v. Gore
5. McCutcheon v. FEC

[Sol]

Reading the Dred Scott discussion made me wonder if "mixed" cases might be more interesting. It's easy to rail against a decision that conflicted with your politics, but is there anything where you think the correct legal and moral decisions were quite separate?

So: Name SCOTUS decisions that you thought were legally correct, but morally wrong, or legally incorrect, but morally right.

Roe v. Wade.

[SWE]

Reading the Dred Scott discussion made me wonder if "mixed" cases might be more interesting. It's easy to rail against a decision that conflicted with your politics, but is there anything where you think the correct legal and moral decisions were quite separate?

So: Name SCOTUS decisions that you thought were legally correct, but morally wrong, or legally incorrect, but morally right.




 

Legally correct, morally wrong: Shelby County v. Holder
Legally incorrect, morally right: Roe v. Wade

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Based on the ruling:

Dred Scott v. Sandford
Plessy v. Ferguson
Roe v. Wade

[MATTROSE94]

Based on the ruling:

Dred Scott v. Sandford
Plessy v. Ferguson
Roe v. Wade

I would also add the Civil Rights cases of 1883, in which the Supreme Court invalidated most of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which indirectly led us down the road to institutionalized discrimination against African-Americans.

[jimrtex]

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

United States v California
Oregon v Mitchell

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

United States v California

Which U.S. v. California?  Both the 1936 and the 1947 cases are ones I could see you finding fault with.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Bush v Gore
DC concealed weapons law overturned
Michigan affirmative action case 2014.

[politicallefty]

Michigan affirmative action case 2014.

Is it your belief that the Constitution requires affirmative action? If so, I would like to know your reasoning behind such a position.

[Blue3]

Any new thoughts?

[Vosem]

Any new thoughts?

It's amazing that we got through four pages without citing Wickard v. Filburn (although the modern case upholding it, Gonzales v. Raich, has been listed) or Steward Machine Co. v. Davis (and here the modern case, South Dakota v. Dole, hasn't been listed either).

Not really; the Court has not handed down any scandalously bad decisions since 2014. I don't think Rucho v. Common Cause is a decision that will stand the test of time or that history will remember particularly fondly, but it scarcely belongs on a list of the worst decisions ever.

There is probably a special place for decisions which weren't even wrong, but where the Court's reasoning was extremely malicious: the Warren Court tended to uphold good policy using the Commerce Clause in an attempt to underline that legislative power under the Commerce Clause was effectively unlimited, but it's hard to cite those cases since terrible policy has been upheld under the Commerce Clause as well. But Griswold v. Connecticut, a case where the majority opinion goes out of its way to say that the Court can make whatever determinations it wants regardless of the Constitution, has reasoning that's especially noxious, especially given that it would have been extremely easy to say there is a right to privacy or bodily autonomy in the plain language of the Fourth Amendment rather than reaching for penumbras.

[MarkD]

Any new thoughts?

It's amazing that we got through four pages without citing Wickard v. Filburn (although the modern case upholding it, Gonzales v. Raich, has been listed) or Steward Machine Co. v. Davis (and here the modern case, South Dakota v. Dole, hasn't been listed either).

Not really; the Court has not handed down any scandalously bad decisions since 2014. I don't think Rucho v. Common Cause is a decision that will stand the test of time or that history will remember particularly fondly, but it scarcely belongs on a list of the worst decisions ever.

There is probably a special place for decisions which weren't even wrong, but where the Court's reasoning was extremely malicious: the Warren Court tended to uphold good policy using the Commerce Clause in an attempt to underline that legislative power under the Commerce Clause was effectively unlimited, but it's hard to cite those cases since terrible policy has been upheld under the Commerce Clause as well. But Griswold v. Connecticut, a case where the majority opinion goes out of its way to say that the Court can make whatever determinations it wants regardless of the Constitution, has reasoning that's especially noxious, especially given that it would have been extremely easy to say there is a right to privacy or bodily autonomy in the plain language of the Fourth Amendment rather than reaching for penumbras.

Oh Gawd. Vosem, you’re another one of these advocates for substantive Fourth Amendment rights. You also mentioned that interpretation of the Fourth in the other thread, about “If the DEA scheduled alcohol, would it be found unconstitutional?” Your reading of the Fourth Amendment is just as much a mistake as the premise of “substantive due process,” and for the same reason. You are interpreting the Fourth as if it as more than one meaning, when one meaning was all it was intended to have. That’s according to its “plain language.”

You’re not the first to try doing this with the Fourth. So far as I can tell, Justice Louis Brandeis was the first. You may have heard of this quote before from Brandeis’s famous dissent in Olmstead v. United States.

The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment. And the use, as evidence in a criminal proceeding, of facts ascertained by such intrusion must be deemed a violation of the Fifth.

Justice Blackmun, in his dissent in Bowers v. Hardwick, also stretched the meaning of the Fourth to suit the same kind of reasoning as Brandeis used. And for that matter, so did Justice Douglas when he wrote Griswold v. Connecticut.

If I could talk to Brandeis himself, here’s what I would say. As soon as I read the words “whatever the means employed” in your interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, I get riled up. The Fourth Amendment was written for accomplishing only one thing: addressing the “means” that law enforcement officials “employ” to enforce whatever law they are enforcing. I am also very worried about your use of the word “unjustifiable.” Of course, I would be even more worried if you had left that word, or any synonym, out completely, because then your argument would be for sheer anarchy, since law enforcement would not be able to enforce any law at all. But the fact that you used the word “unjustifiable” means you are ready to pick and choose which laws that legislatures have passed they should not have passed, because enforcing some of them would be “unjustifiable,” “whatever the means employed.” This is a very, very gross misreading of the Fourth Amendment. And you framed your argument as if you knew what our Founding Fathers (or more specifically, the First Congress) were thinking when they penned the Fourth Amendment. How about some historic evidence to back up your claim, hmm?

So, Vosem, have you read the Brandeis quote before, and do you agree with it? Do you agree (with me) that without the word “unjustifiable,” the way that Brandeis used it, he would have been advocating for sheer anarchy? And that the word “unjustifiable” means that courts guided by this sort of reasoning will pick and choose which laws they think should not be enforced?

If your answer is “yes,” then you are giving the Fourth Amendment a double meaning, not a single meaning. You are saying that the Fourth protects us all from bad, unacceptable METHODS of law enforcement as well as it protects us from some bad laws. This double meaning is NOT justifiable under the “plain language” of the Fourth.

----------------------------------------------------------
To answer the OP, I would list these cases:
Allgeyer v. Louisiana, which led to the decision in the infamous Lochner v. New York, which led to more than a dozen other bad decisions.
Griswold v. Connecticut, which led to Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas.
Reynolds v. Sims, and Wesberry v. Sanders, which led to a really terrible one, Karcher v. Daggett
Levy v. Louisiana, which is the worst-written opinion I have ever seen.
Plyler v. Doe
Arizona v. Fulminante
Bush v. Gore.

[Former President tack50]

Trying to think of one that hasn't been mentioned, what about the Insular Cases? Why should Puerto Rico and the other territories be treated any differently than the rest of the US?

[Skill and Chance]

Any new thoughts?

It's amazing that we got through four pages without citing Wickard v. Filburn (although the modern case upholding it, Gonzales v. Raich, has been listed) or Steward Machine Co. v. Davis (and here the modern case, South Dakota v. Dole, hasn't been listed either).

Not really; the Court has not handed down any scandalously bad decisions since 2014. I don't think Rucho v. Common Cause is a decision that will stand the test of time or that history will remember particularly fondly, but it scarcely belongs on a list of the worst decisions ever.

There is probably a special place for decisions which weren't even wrong, but where the Court's reasoning was extremely malicious: the Warren Court tended to uphold good policy using the Commerce Clause in an attempt to underline that legislative power under the Commerce Clause was effectively unlimited, but it's hard to cite those cases since terrible policy has been upheld under the Commerce Clause as well. But Griswold v. Connecticut, a case where the majority opinion goes out of its way to say that the Court can make whatever determinations it wants regardless of the Constitution, has reasoning that's especially noxious, especially given that it would have been extremely easy to say there is a right to privacy or bodily autonomy in the plain language of the Fourth Amendment rather than reaching for penumbras.

The thing with the commerce clause rulings is it really does seem reasonable to argue that technological advance has made ~99% of all modern commerce interstate (and probably a majority of it international as well).  I do think some of the 1930's and 40's rulings on this went too far (particularly Wickard v. Filburn), but the economy has become even more connected since then.  Honestly, a blanket rule that "if any part of the business involves connecting to the internet, then it can be regulated as interstate commerce" would be quite sensible to me.   

[lfromnj]

Wickard v Filliburn.

[junior chįmp]

Finders v. Keepers

[Vosem]

Any new thoughts?

It's amazing that we got through four pages without citing Wickard v. Filburn (although the modern case upholding it, Gonzales v. Raich, has been listed) or Steward Machine Co. v. Davis (and here the modern case, South Dakota v. Dole, hasn't been listed either).

Not really; the Court has not handed down any scandalously bad decisions since 2014. I don't think Rucho v. Common Cause is a decision that will stand the test of time or that history will remember particularly fondly, but it scarcely belongs on a list of the worst decisions ever.

There is probably a special place for decisions which weren't even wrong, but where the Court's reasoning was extremely malicious: the Warren Court tended to uphold good policy using the Commerce Clause in an attempt to underline that legislative power under the Commerce Clause was effectively unlimited, but it's hard to cite those cases since terrible policy has been upheld under the Commerce Clause as well. But Griswold v. Connecticut, a case where the majority opinion goes out of its way to say that the Court can make whatever determinations it wants regardless of the Constitution, has reasoning that's especially noxious, especially given that it would have been extremely easy to say there is a right to privacy or bodily autonomy in the plain language of the Fourth Amendment rather than reaching for penumbras.

The thing with the commerce clause rulings is it really does seem reasonable to argue that technological advance has made ~99% of all modern commerce interstate (and probably a majority of it international as well).  I do think some of the 1930's and 40's rulings on this went too far (particularly Wickard v. Filburn), but the economy has become even more connected since then.  Honestly, a blanket rule that "if any part of the business involves connecting to the internet, then it can be regulated as interstate commerce" would be quite sensible to me.   

I agree; interstate commerce has become a much, much larger part of commerce than it was in the 1780s, and the rule you propose is perfectly reasonable. Of course the problem with Wickard and the cases that have relied upon it is that activities are being regulated which are not commercial at all. The 'aggregate effect' doctrine is a very pernicious one.

Any new thoughts?

It's amazing that we got through four pages without citing Wickard v. Filburn (although the modern case upholding it, Gonzales v. Raich, has been listed) or Steward Machine Co. v. Davis (and here the modern case, South Dakota v. Dole, hasn't been listed either).

Not really; the Court has not handed down any scandalously bad decisions since 2014. I don't think Rucho v. Common Cause is a decision that will stand the test of time or that history will remember particularly fondly, but it scarcely belongs on a list of the worst decisions ever.

There is probably a special place for decisions which weren't even wrong, but where the Court's reasoning was extremely malicious: the Warren Court tended to uphold good policy using the Commerce Clause in an attempt to underline that legislative power under the Commerce Clause was effectively unlimited, but it's hard to cite those cases since terrible policy has been upheld under the Commerce Clause as well. But Griswold v. Connecticut, a case where the majority opinion goes out of its way to say that the Court can make whatever determinations it wants regardless of the Constitution, has reasoning that's especially noxious, especially given that it would have been extremely easy to say there is a right to privacy or bodily autonomy in the plain language of the Fourth Amendment rather than reaching for penumbras.

Oh Gawd. Vosem, you’re another one of these advocates for substantive Fourth Amendment rights. You also mentioned that interpretation of the Fourth in the other thread, about “If the DEA scheduled alcohol, would it be found unconstitutional?” Your reading of the Fourth Amendment is just as much a mistake as the premise of “substantive due process,” and for the same reason. You are interpreting the Fourth as if it as more than one meaning, when one meaning was all it was intended to have. That’s according to its “plain language.”

You’re not the first to try doing this with the Fourth. So far as I can tell, Justice Louis Brandeis was the first. You may have heard of this quote before from Brandeis’s famous dissent in Olmstead v. United States.

The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment. And the use, as evidence in a criminal proceeding, of facts ascertained by such intrusion must be deemed a violation of the Fifth.

Justice Blackmun, in his dissent in Bowers v. Hardwick, also stretched the meaning of the Fourth to suit the same kind of reasoning as Brandeis used. And for that matter, so did Justice Douglas when he wrote Griswold v. Connecticut.

If I could talk to Brandeis himself, here’s what I would say. As soon as I read the words “whatever the means employed” in your interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, I get riled up. The Fourth Amendment was written for accomplishing only one thing: addressing the “means” that law enforcement officials “employ” to enforce whatever law they are enforcing. I am also very worried about your use of the word “unjustifiable.” Of course, I would be even more worried if you had left that word, or any synonym, out completely, because then your argument would be for sheer anarchy, since law enforcement would not be able to enforce any law at all. But the fact that you used the word “unjustifiable” means you are ready to pick and choose which laws that legislatures have passed they should not have passed, because enforcing some of them would be “unjustifiable,” “whatever the means employed.” This is a very, very gross misreading of the Fourth Amendment. And you framed your argument as if you knew what our Founding Fathers (or more specifically, the First Congress) were thinking when they penned the Fourth Amendment. How about some historic evidence to back up your claim, hmm?

So, Vosem, have you read the Brandeis quote before, and do you agree with it? Do you agree (with me) that without the word “unjustifiable,” the way that Brandeis used it, he would have been advocating for sheer anarchy? And that the word “unjustifiable” means that courts guided by this sort of reasoning will pick and choose which laws they think should not be enforced?

If your answer is “yes,” then you are giving the Fourth Amendment a double meaning, not a single meaning. You are saying that the Fourth protects us all from bad, unacceptable METHODS of law enforcement as well as it protects us from some bad laws. This double meaning is NOT justifiable under the “plain language” of the Fourth.

I've seen scare quotes before, but scare underlining is a new tactic. It is also perfectly clear neither the Constitution as a whole nor the Fourth Amendment specifically draws this sort of distinction between methods and laws:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...

There is no mention of whether laws are permitted to violate them, or methods of law enforcement. No violation. The distinction between 'substantive' and 'procedural' rights is an entirely artificial one devised in the 20th century which would have been alien to the writers of the Constitution. 'Substantive due process' is indeed a very odd term, and the whole point of the invention of the 'substantive due process' doctrine was to allow the Court to come up with rights it felt were 'due' (often specific applications of the right to privacy, but sometimes ridiculous things like a right to civil marriage in Redhail and 21st-century elaborations on this right), and enjoin the government not to violate those rights, while permitting the violations that it wants.

It is quite clear that 'the right to be secure in their persons shall not be violated' is a fairly absolute grant of a right to privacy and bodily autonomy, and that it was traditionally interpreted this way (and this is why the 18th Amendment, which violated the right to privacy when it was in effect, was necessary at all), but courts over the course of the 20th century largely shied away from enforcing it, except when they randomly wanted to in cases such as in Griswold or Roe.

[Yellowhammer]

Roe v. Wade -- little doubt about it in my mind.

[McNukes™ #NYCMMWasAHero]

Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas, Eisenstadt v. Baird, Carey v. PSI, Obergefell v. Hodges, and several others. There's also the recent transsexualism cases, and Prigg v. Pennsylvania.

[PragmaticPopulist]

Dred Scott vs. Sanford, Buck vs. Bell, Plessy vs. Ferguson, Korematsu vs. United States, Citizen's United vs. Federal Election Commission

[SingingAnalyst]

I'll go with Palmer v. Thompson, 1971, in which the Court held 5-4 that Jackson, MS could close their public pools rather than desegregate them.

Apparently, this decision was never overturned: the USDoJ cited it in defending Trump's travel bans.

A close second would be Bush v. Gore, in which the justices voted on party lines to stop the FL recount and install Bush as President. Had the recount continued, I believe with all my heart Gore would have won.

[darklordoftech]

Bennis v. Michigan, which led to civil forfeiture becoming “guility until proven innocent”.

[HarrisonL]

Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson

[mianfei]

It's amazing that we got through four pages without citing Wickard v. Filburn (although the modern case upholding it, Gonzales v. Raich, has been listed) or Steward Machine Co. v. Davis (and here the modern case, South Dakota v. Dole, hasn't been listed either).

Not really; the Court has not handed down any scandalously bad decisions since 2014. I don't think Rucho v. Common Cause is a decision that will stand the test of time or that history will remember particularly fondly, but it scarcely belongs on a list of the worst decisions ever.

I could list many others not cited here. Wickard is absurd, but what about:

• Newberry v. United States (though overturned; produced the absurd conclusion primaries were not elections)
• Corrigan v. Buckley
• City of Los Angeles v. Lyons – legitimized implicit bias in the criminal justice system
• Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe (vastly worse than Engel v. Vitale because it limited the voluntary freedom of students)

There is probably a special place for decisions which weren't even wrong, but where the Court's reasoning was extremely malicious: the Warren Court tended to uphold good policy using the Commerce Clause in an attempt to underline that legislative power under the Commerce Clause was effectively unlimited, but it's hard to cite those cases since terrible policy has been upheld under the Commerce Clause as well. But Griswold v. Connecticut, a case where the majority opinion goes out of its way to say that the Court can make whatever determinations it wants regardless of the Constitution, has reasoning that's especially noxious, especially given that it would have been extremely easy to say there is a right to privacy or bodily autonomy in the plain language of the Fourth Amendment rather than reaching for penumbras.

Flint v. Stone Tracy Co., decided back in 1911, has to be the worst example of that. The way the Court defended a corporate income tax before the Sixteenth Amendment seems to me to be totally lacking in logic, especially given its striking down of an income tax sixteen years before, although the Flint Court did have eight new members.