Supreme Court Justices

[bmaup1]

I personally prefer a conservative reading of the constitution, surely a stricter reading will make sure that laws aren't to unclear or too freely giving.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The supreme court is too powerful and should have less power to strike down democratically enacted laws. Then again I'm a Brit, so i have bias for parliamentary supremacy.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Interpreting the Constitution should have nothing to do with one's political opinions (abnormal).

[TJ in Oregon]

Interpreting the Constitution should have nothing to do with one's political opinions (abnormal).

I agree. Unfortunately, the precedent in the US is to interpret words to mean something other than their plain textual meaning. That means wishful thinking and politics guide a significant fraction of hot-button rulings.

[Illiniwek]

I would rather our justices be more pragmatic and less originalist. Conservatives are usually more original than not and liberals are usually more pragmatic than not. So the justice I would rather go with is likely to be liberal.

[Bismarck]

I would rather our justices be more pragmatic and less originalist. Conservatives are usually more original than not and liberals are usually more pragmatic than not. So the justice I would rather go with is likely to be liberal.

Aren't you afraid that having no firm foundations to what the constitution means leaves it open to abuse? I know that conservative judges use originalism to push conservative policy outcomes but at least they leave it open for the congress to make changes.

[Associate Justice PiT]

I would rather our justices be more pragmatic and less originalist. Conservatives are usually more original than not and liberals are usually more pragmatic than not. So the justice I would rather go with is likely to be liberal.

Aren't you afraid that having no firm foundations to what the constitution means leaves it open to abuse? I know that conservative judges use originalism to push conservative policy outcomes but at least they leave it open for the congress to make changes.

     A Constitution without firm foundations cannot properly carry out its due function. This is for much the same reason that stare decisis is a fundamental legal principle; continuity is important.

[Beet]

This is old fashioned, but I would like justices to involve themselves as little as possible in politics, and stick to legal minutae. I don't want to open my newspaper one morning and read a huge Supreme Court political decision in the headlines. While that means things like upholding Roe v. Wade on the basis of stare decisis, it also means no liberal activism extending new rights or striking down state laws, either. I do think the Court's rulings on economic matters and consumer/regulatory issues are underappreciated, however.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Interpreting the Constitution should have nothing to do with one's political opinions (abnormal).

[Person Man]

Interpreting the Constitution should have nothing to do with one's political opinions (abnormal).

[MarkD]

I can't and won't answer this question with either "liberal" or "conservative," because IMO the only correct answer should be "objective." Either a liberal, a conservative, or a moderate can be objective so long as they choose to be. We don't need any more Ruth B. Ginsburgs or more Antonin Scalias on the Supreme Court. We surely don't need any more moderates like Anthony Kennedy. We need people on the Supreme Court who are dedicated to objectivity, like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black, and Learned Hand.

Oliver Wendell Holmes: "[T]he accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States." (From Holmes's dissenting opinion in Lochner v. New York, 1905.)

Benjamin Cardozo: "The traditions of our jurisprudence commit us to objective standards. I do not mean, of course, that this ideal of objective vision is ever perfectly attained. We cannot transcend the limitations of the ego and see the everything as it really is. None the less, the ideal is one to be striven for within the limits of our capacity. ...
"The judge, even when he is free, is still not wholly free. He is not to innovate at pleasure. He is not a knight-errant roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness. He is not to yield to spasmodic sentiment, to vague and unregulated benevolence. He is to exercise discretion informed by tradition, methodized by analogy, disciplined by system, and subordinated to the primordial necessity of order in the social life." (From "The Nature of the Judicial Process," published in 1921.)

Hugo Black: "I repeat, so as not to be misunderstood, that this Court does have power, which it should exercise, to hold laws unconstitutional where they are forbidden by the Federal Constitution. My point is that there is no provision of the Constitution which either expressly or impliedly vests power in this Court to sit as a supervisory agency over acts of duly constituted legislative bodies and set aside their laws because of the Court's belief that the legislative policies adopted are unreasonable, unwise, arbitrary, capricious or irrational. The adoption of such a loose flexible. uncontrolled standard for holding laws unconstitutional, if ever it is finally achieved, will amount to a great unconstitutional shift of power to the courts which I believe and am constrained to say will be bad for the courts, and worse for the country. Subjecting federal and state laws to such an unrestrained and unrestrainable judicial control as to the wisdom of legislative enactments would, I fear, jeopardize the separation of governmental powers that the Framers set up, and, at the same time, threaten to take away much of the power of States to govern themselves which the Constitution plainly intended them to have." (From Black's dissenting opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965.)

Judge Learned Hand: http://mtweb.mtsu.edu/cewillis/Hermeneutics/Hand%20How%20Free%20is%20a%20Judge.pdf

[Tartarus Sauce]

Interpreting the Constitution should have nothing to do with one's political opinions (abnormal).

[TJ in Oregon]

I would rather our justices be more pragmatic and less originalist. Conservatives are usually more original than not and liberals are usually more pragmatic than not. So the justice I would rather go with is likely to be liberal.

Doesn't "pragmatic" in the context of judges mostly mean to rig the premises to come to the conclusion the judge wants?

[Mercenary]

I prefer neither. I am sick of judges being soo partisan. You can have your views but if you are judge you should try to be impartial. So someome may disapprove of X but know that it isnt unconstitutional and therefore they such a law stand and likewise may approve of something but know it is unconstitutional and strike it down.

I do not particularly like any of the justices.

[yankeesfan]

Interpreting the Constitution should have nothing to do with one's political opinions (abnormal).

[MarkD]

I prefer neither. I am sick of judges being soo partisan. You can have your views but if you are judge you should try to be impartial. So someome may disapprove of X but know that it isnt unconstitutional and therefore they such a law stand and likewise may approve of something but know it is unconstitutional and strike it down.

I do not particularly like any of the justices.

Yahoo!!!!
It does not have to be the case that only independents could want this.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Interpreting the Constitution should have nothing to do with one's political opinions (abnormal).

That's exactly what Gorsuch said during his confirmation hearing.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Interpreting the Constitution should have nothing to do with one's political opinions (abnormal).

That's exactly what Gorsuch said during his confirmation hearing.

Everybody says they do that, yes.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Interpreting the Constitution should have nothing to do with one's political opinions (abnormal).

That's exactly what Gorsuch said during his confirmation hearing.

Everybody says they do that, yes.

I'm glad our new Justice agrees with you, Tony. 

[Bojack Horseman]

A conservative court rules based on the Republican Party platform (Citizens United, Hobby Lobby).
A liberal court rules based on the Constitution (Roe, Obergefell, Miller V. Alabama)

[MT Treasurer]

A conservative court rules based on the Republican Party platform (Citizens United, Hobby Lobby).
A liberal court rules based on the Constitution (Roe, Obergefell, Miller V. Alabama)

There is zero evidence that Gorsuch will vote to overturn Roe, in fact I don't think it's likely at all. He could very well turn out to be another Souter.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

A conservative court rules based on the Republican Party platform (Citizens United, Hobby Lobby).
A liberal court rules based on the Constitution (Roe, Obergefell, Miller V. Alabama)

There is zero evidence that Gorsuch will vote to overturn Roe, in fact I don't think it's likely at all. He could very well turn out to be another Souter.

Then he should not be confirmed until it is confirmed. Period. Otherwise he is just a corporate hack polluting the system.

[Tartarus Sauce]

A conservative court rules based on the Republican Party platform (Citizens United, Hobby Lobby).
A liberal court rules based on the Constitution (Roe, Obergefell, Miller V. Alabama)

Yeah, see this is why I don't think we should base judicial appointments on partisan scorekeeping. All judicial appointments would ideally revolve around the credentials of the candidates themselves. Let's not kid ourselves, the majority of the people concerned with the composition of the Supreme Court couldn't give a fig about how well-grounded the judges are in their philosophical approach to interpreting the Constitution, they just want a partisan hack in a robe whose rulings would be coterminous with their own partisan preferences.

[Dereich]

I always liked Cardozo's frustration with people who act like there's One True Interpretation that liberal/conservative judges have strayed from:

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A conservative court rules based on the Republican Party platform (Citizens United, Hobby Lobby).
A liberal court rules based on the Constitution (Roe, Obergefell, Miller V. Alabama)

That being said, I HAVE to assume this is a parody. Roe was made with a tenuous link to the already hilariously shaky interpretation of "penumbras and emanations of Bill of Rights guarantees" in Griswold. Obergefell explicitly ignored standard equal protection analysis and used a strained substantive due process analysis to avoid recognizing gays as a protected class. Miller, unable to rely on standard "evolving standards of decency" analysis because states were actually moving toward stronger punishment of juveniles, instead unconventionally relied on psychiatric papers as its primary justification. None of these are consistent and none are good hallmarks for "rules based on the constitution."

Citizens United was a logical, if unexpected, leap in the corporate personhood doctrine which has existed in common law for centuries. It followed from the ruling in Buckley that contributions to campaigns were speech and that this speech could only be restricted in certain ways.  

[Santander]

The Supreme Court's role should be reduced to the size that you could drown it in the bathtub, or at least to the size where the justices never make the news barring a scandal. Same with Congress.