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Does anyone else not recognize that the Supreme Court is a total and complete joke?
Who really cares what the Supreme Court has to say anymore? Why do we put up with their politically biased rulings anyway?
A couple recent 5-4 rulings that you might think about for a minute before you start hating on me, Citizens United(opened the way for SuperPac's and unlimited spending on campaigns), and Mcdonald v. Chicago(struck down gun-bans nationwide).
Even the recent Arizona immigration ruling went 5-3. In most years, about a quarter of all Supreme Court rulings end up 5-4.
It is rather obvious to anyone with a brain, that the Supreme Court is nothing but an extension of the legislature. In that, the Congress and the president appoints justices who are politically biased, and will rule in much the same manner as the president and Congress wants them to. To pretend that the Supreme Court is able to rule on the constitutionality of anything in an unbiased absolute way, is a massive joke.
I just don't know why we seem to hang on the words of the justices, and just accept their edicts.
Does anyone else not recognize that the Supreme Court is a total and complete joke?
Who really cares what the Supreme Court has to say anymore? Why do we put up with their politically biased rulings anyway?
A couple recent 5-4 rulings that you might think about for a minute before you start hating on me, Citizens United(opened the way for SuperPac's and unlimited spending on campaigns), and Mcdonald v. Chicago(struck down gun-bans nationwide).
Even the recent Arizona immigration ruling went 5-3. In most years, about a quarter of all Supreme Court rulings end up 5-4.
It is rather obvious to anyone with a brain, that the Supreme Court is nothing but an extension of the legislature. In that, the Congress and the president appoints justices who are politically biased, and will rule in much the same manner as the president and Congress wants them to. To pretend that the Supreme Court is able to rule on the constitutionality of anything in an unbiased absolute way, is a massive joke.
I just don't know why we seem to hang on the words of the justices, and just accept their edicts.
So the Supreme Court is a total and complete joke, and nothing but an extension of the legislature because many of their rulings are on a 5-4 vote. Would you be happier if they were all 9-0? Their job is to interpret the legality of laws based on the Constitution. It is all part of the checks and balances system as outlined in the Constitution. What part don't you like?
How do 5-4 decisions make it a joke? Aren't conservatives generally in favor of simple majorities? Moreover, as others have already pointed out, aren't checks and balances on the "do-nothing" legislative branch a good thing? Would you prefer it if the congressmen and women and the senators just passed laws willy nilly (keeping in mind, of course, that simple majorities could prevail and that the legislative branch changes party control quite frequently)?
I my world, I like the fact that there's a highest court in the land that has attained the power of judicial review. Otherwise, the American people could elect individuals who would be above the law and could change the Constitution without amendments (which are harder to get than mere laws). I think that during the immediate wake of 9/11 the Congress likely could have eradicated the first amendment, provided of course there was no supreme court lurking in the background, just waiting for a test case in such an event.
The supreme court, as evidenced by its recent rulings in controversial cases, merely underscores how it's largely above politics (although this is not always the case) and that its members (esp. Roberts) oftentimes disappoint the folks who put them there.
All I've got to say is thank god Bork never made it there. Scalia is about ideologue enough for one court.
I wonder if it would be a "joke" to the OP if the cases quoted were 5-4 the other way. If all the cases are 5-4 then it sounds like there are 4 liberals who are as biased as the 5 conservatives. Not to even mention today's mix bag decision.
Well, regardless of the OP's political leanings, does anyone disagree with the premise of the thread? I don't. The Court has always been partisan, but when you have idiots like Antonin Scalia on the bench who make no effort to conceal their partisanship, it makes a mockery of an institution that has enjoyed the most credibility of any of the branches of government over the years.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Interlude
SCOTUS is a joke when it's interpreting the Constitution, which is what it's specifically created to do under the Constitution. OK.
The thing is, when it comes to interpreting the Constitution, there have always been controversies which extend back to the Framers. One can look, for example, at the Federalist Papers, in which Madison and Hamilton disagreed about how the General Welfare Clause of Article One (I believe Section 8) of the Constitution should be interpreted, just for one example of a constitutional issue that should theoretically be informing modern debate. Madison argued for a very narrow interpretation of that clause, while Hamilton argued for a broad one. Some say that Hamilton was less involved in the Constitutional Convention than Madison was, and therefore Madison's interpretations should be given more credence, while others argue that Hamilton's views were more accepted during the administrations of Washington and Addams and that they thus most closely adhere to the intentions of the founders.
There is no way to know what the founders would have thought about modern and complicated problems, so issues of constitutional interpretation are almost by definition arguable. They all constitute issues that could be otherwise, those about which reasonable people should both be able to respectfully disagree and deliberate. I am merely trying to make the point here that the matter of constitutional deliberation has always been contentious in American politics--there really isn't one correct and simple answer today and there was never one in the past. Remember, what the framers were trying to do was to create a form of government that was "more perfect," not perfect in and of itself, something which would have been and still is an impossible endeavor.
The fact is Scalia is 100% correct. It is the liberals who have made a joke out of the Constitution.
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