The US Supreme Court and its decisions

[Patch]

Breyer's going to retire.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to retire: Live updates

Justice Stephen Breyer, a consistent liberal vote on the Supreme Court with an unflappable belief in the US system of government and a pragmatic view of the law, plans to retire. Follow here for the latest news and reactions.

www.cnn.com

 

[Paladin]

Can McConnell stall out an appointee for three years?

Spoiler

Yes.

 

[Patch]

He's not the majority leader, so this better get done before he is.

 

[Wheelimus]

Thank goodness, we couldn't have survived the Supreme Court winding up 7-2 conservative split. Good on him to retire.

Not that it's going to help us at the SC for a long long time. Sadness.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

And there's no filibuster for this. There is absolutely nothing McConnell can do about this as long as Manchin behaves.

 

[The Mighty Mollusk]

Don't tempt fate like that.

 

[Teufel]

Back in 2020 when there was speculation ACB's nomination could end up a tie, liberal constitutional scholar and occasional Biden Admin legal advisor Laurence Tribe opined that the Vice President can't break ties for appointments.

I don't think McConnell could get every single Republican to vote against the nominee unless it turns out to be an extremely crazy pick, but it might technically be possible to block the nomination if he could.

No hiding behind Pence’s skirt on the Supreme Court nomination - The Boston Globe

The vice president doesn’t have the power to break a tie on the appointment.

www.bostonglobe.com

While the vice president has the power to cast a tiebreaking vote to pass a bill, the Constitution does not give him the power to break ties when it comes to the Senate’s “Advice and Consent” role in approving presidential appointments to the Supreme Court.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Alexander Hamilton said the same thing way back in 1788, in Federalist No. 69: “In the national government, if the Senate should be divided, no appointment could be made.” Hamilton contrasted that rule with how appointments worked back then in his home state of New York, where the governor actually did have the power to break ties to confirm nominations to New York state offices.

Consistent with Hamilton’s understanding, as two thoughtful recent scholarly analyses have pointed out, no vice president in our history has ever cast a tiebreaking vote to confirm an appointment to the Supreme Court. If Pence tried to cast the deciding vote to confirm Trump’s nomination to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last week at age 87, it would be the first time that has ever happened. That should matter to everyone — it certainly matters (or used to matter) to “originalists,” who emphasize the importance of history when interpreting our Constitution.

But there is much more to this than historical practice. Giving the vice president tiebreaking power over judicial appointments would also break the Framers' careful constitutional structure.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

On one hand, this is very unlikely to be tested. There are Republican senators who have no qualms about confirming a Democrat Supreme Court nominee as long as it's not Merrick Garland.

On the other hand, it's an obscure Senate "rule" they probably don't actually have to follow but it's been around since the founding. Nothing would give McConnell greater joy in life than blocking another Supreme Court nominee with a trick like that. He is probably making some phone calls already.

 

[Pocket]

On one hand, this is very unlikely to be tested. There are Republican senators who have no qualms about confirming a Democrat Supreme Court nominee as long as it's not Merrick Garland.

Wasn't Garland specifically picked to be as uncontroversial a choice as possible?

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Yep. McConnell didn't care. It was war.

 

[MrBlud]

McConnell didn’t have a problem with Garland, he had a problem with the Supreme Court not being majority Conservative.

In this case it’s subbing out a Liberal judge for a liberal judge. He’s not apt to fight this in any serious sense. There’s not much he could actually do *and* he doesn’t want to make any waves that might make Biden consider court packing. He’s perfectly content to let the six in there pass unpopular Republican policies by judicial fiat.

 

[Rust]

McConnell's enough of a treasonous Lich he'll throw up unnecessary roadblocks then whine on the media that Biden is so incompetent he can't even get a Supreme Court Justice nominated and it's hurting the courts because the man has zero sense of actual shame.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1486731474615160840

It begins.

 

[Rust]

A "lifetime" appointment where so many just retire.

 

[Teufel]

I expect all the Republicans to say that after they took that standard out back and shot it, but she's the only one who voted against ACB over the nom being rushed. So she's the only one who can say it without being a giant hypocrite.

Frankly I'm surprised that a year into the administration the Biden team didn't have their choice locked in so they could hit the ground running. A couple weeks of meetings, hearings, whatever after the announcement, then vote. Waiting at least a month to announce, then however long for the proceedings to drag on. 50-50 margin in the Senate it seems like tempting fate that nothing can go wrong.

 

[Wheelimus]

You ain't wrong. We have a lot of Senators from red states who would be replaced with a Republican in the sad event that they passed. Best to just hurry this the hug up.

 

[Paladin]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1490810082002706435

it won't matter when they officially gut Roe because anyone who does not support them will not be allowed to vote against them.

 

[Spin-Out]

it's all for nothing anyway, by 2028 there'll be a lot more minority voters and a lot less white trash GOP voters. not just because of aging white boomers who support the GOP dying, but because the republicans are perfectly fine with killing their own voters via COVID.

the funny thing is that they've known for years that it's only a matter of time before demographic change utterly ***** them over. they've been trying their damnedest to delay that with gerrymandering and jim crow bullshit like this. thing is, they're so goddamned stupid they don't even realize they're actually accelerating that demographic change because they're telling their supporters to kill themselves to own the libs

 

[MrBlud]

All things being equal yes, within the next couple decades the minority portion of the electorate will vastly outnumber the racist whites.

That’s partly why said racist whites have decided to do away with free and fair elections.

We’ll probably still have the appearance of them sure; but enough Republican support will be baked into the system that no Democratic initiatives will be able to pass and anything that might somehow get through outside of Congress (or any attempt to fix the situation) will die at the Supreme Court.

 

[Spin-Out]

if people thought like y'all back in the mid-20th century, the civil rights movement would have never got off the ground. defeatism/doomerism is what conservatives/fascists want you to believe, guys. the more people who give up and believe change is impossible, the less people there'll be trying to change things. and then we'll really be screwed.

i mean, hell, i used to be a doomer. then i got over it and realized no matter how bad things look now, they looked just as bad if not worse only a couple of decades ago. less then a century ago public lynchings were something that were advertised in newspapers, LGBTQ+ people could never come out of the closet for fear of being thrown in goddamn prison, and almost nobody gave a flying hug about the environment.

tbh beau of the fifth column says it better than i ever could.