Though he will not do President Trump’s bidding, Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, is supremely more qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice than Donald Trump is to be president, and in “clear” cases, he will not destroy our democracy. However, there are no “clear” cases (cases in which reasonable minds may resolve differently) that make it to the Supreme Court. In such cases, he will do social and business conservatives' bidding.
This is because all “close” cases (such as those that arrive at the Supreme Court) can usually turn upon the thin sliver of personal bias, preference, or politics. While that is actually how they are decided, they are usually well-grounded and buttressed by some mixture of law, fact, and reason.
When the argument falls upon interpretations of the doctrine of original intent, it is because a particular Supreme Court Justice uses the original intent that burgeons from his or her own mind, and then that judge projects that intent in a reverse, historical exorcism by implanting his intent into some poor founding forefather and claiming that is where the meaning originated, thus claiming it to have been originally infused into the Constitution.
What is more contortionist than the contortions of the reverse exorcisms that Justices Thomas and the late Scalia have gone through to claim to be the “high priests of the Originalists,” is the Republicans’ hypocritical pleas for bi-partisanship in anointing Judge Gorsuch to the Supreme Court when, over a year and a half ago, they denied President Obama's appointment of his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland. If that was not partisan, then it will not be partisan when Democrats (when they have a majority) refuse to give any Republican president a hearing for his or her court nominees, regardless of what stage in his or her presidency that Republican president is in.
I hope I live to see that day. Not that I think the Republicans' underhandedness justifies the same, but it will simply be a fun jaunt through political theater and the payback that the Republicans will have fairly earned.
Loren M Lambert © March 22, 2017.
This is because all “close” cases (such as those that arrive at the Supreme Court) can usually turn upon the thin sliver of personal bias, preference, or politics. While that is actually how they are decided, they are usually well-grounded and buttressed by some mixture of law, fact, and reason.
When the argument falls upon interpretations of the doctrine of original intent, it is because a particular Supreme Court Justice uses the original intent that burgeons from his or her own mind, and then that judge projects that intent in a reverse, historical exorcism by implanting his intent into some poor founding forefather and claiming that is where the meaning originated, thus claiming it to have been originally infused into the Constitution.
What is more contortionist than the contortions of the reverse exorcisms that Justices Thomas and the late Scalia have gone through to claim to be the “high priests of the Originalists,” is the Republicans’ hypocritical pleas for bi-partisanship in anointing Judge Gorsuch to the Supreme Court when, over a year and a half ago, they denied President Obama's appointment of his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland. If that was not partisan, then it will not be partisan when Democrats (when they have a majority) refuse to give any Republican president a hearing for his or her court nominees, regardless of what stage in his or her presidency that Republican president is in.
I hope I live to see that day. Not that I think the Republicans' underhandedness justifies the same, but it will simply be a fun jaunt through political theater and the payback that the Republicans will have fairly earned.
Loren M Lambert © March 22, 2017.
No comments:
Post a Comment