If his complaint is that there's an executive discretion in executing the law or the expectation should be that congressional force only goes as far as its ability to write micromanagement into statute then it's hard to restrain from making "do you even constitution bro" or "who are you and why are you wearing that robe" remarks.
(Of course, in representative government, not only elections but agency and judicial appointments have consequences, so while it it may be inconsistent for justices to exercise that privilege for themselves while arguing away the right of another branch to do the same, it is not that big of a surprise, and it is entirely consistent with a philosophy based in elitist privilege for some that is likely behind much of today's ruling among others.)
And part of the point of institutions like courts is that the reasoning is subject to public review and discourse, both institutional and social.
I'm making a specific response to shortcomings apparent in the argument -- the opinion seems to treat the fact of differing interpretation of law or differing policy goals between different executive administrations to be some kind of bug or worse a surprise, when it seems entirely reasonable to expect it as a feature, one that certainly shouldn't be surprising to someone whose whole career (and indeed, features of this very decision) turns on the interpretive range often present within the law.
If you have specific commentary indicating how experts from a conlaw round table might engage this response, by all means, don't "just let slide", enlighten all of us in the course of doing the work that people genuinely combating Dunning-Kruger might do by elaborating on what, specifically, is overlooked in the response or missing from its counterargument.
So, for "specific commentary", me, a regular dude, can see straight through them. If you wanted a real, deep Roberts-quality response, you're in the wrong place. None of what you said was even presented in oral arguments, because two of the finest lawyers in the world could also see through that pretentious fallacy filled drivel, and knew that the 9 justices, all of whom are also leagues ahead of you or I in legal knowledge and skill, would equally scoff.
McConnell blocked the nomination of Merrick Garland for 293 days arguing that there was not enough time before the election.
Then, somehow, they turned around and passed through Amy Coney Barrett in 35 days, instead of following the same precedent of waiting for the election.
The hypocrisy is blatant and disgusting.
If you are actually a programmer, figuring you why Garland wasn't a precedent for ACB wouldn't be hard. You just conveniently left out an 'if' statement in your analysis
Amy was nominated September 2020
Go ahead and inform the class why we didn't have enough time for the appointment in March but did in September.
LOL. It's like taking someone seriously who wants to build my web stack on fortran.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nominations_to_the_Sup...
Notice that whenever there was an A1-A2 party split, especially when a nomination was approaching an election, either the nomination failed, or it didn't succeed until the lame duck (if the president's party won re-election).
The exceptions require some better historical knowledge. For example, Democrats approved Anthony Kennedy (the most liberal justice a modern republican has ever nominated) in late 1987, but only after they had blocked Robert Bork.
The historical precedent for compromise was even in the data: when it was successful, the votes were XX-0
The real failure here was on the part of Obama, who refused to budge at all with the political lean of his nominee. He looked at the polls, saw that Hillary was slated to crush someone who was essentially running as a joke, and thought "I don't need find a bipartisan compromise, Hill will just fill this in January."
But even when it's not close to an election year, look at the Nixon years. Democrats blocking everything until they got nominees they truly approved of. I'm sorry Obama had such hubris as to think Dems were a lock for 2016 that he didn't have to compromise, but he rolled the dice and lost. Sorry. That doesn't make it illegitimate. It makes it the same exact political situation that has always existed.
In 1954 John Marshall Harlan II lapsed in November of an Election year. That's probably the precedent you're looking for. The reason you probably didn't include him is because the reason he lapsed and was re-done in the next session of congress was because there was no time, and he was the first nominee to be questioned in front of the senate. So despite the session lapsing, he was again nominated, accepted as a nominee and eventually voted on.
The example before that is Pierce Butler, who again was nominated in November (21st, not an election year), and they couldn't make it before the legislative session ended. Similar to John Marshal Harlan, he was again nominated in December, and voted on in the same month.
The reality is we have to go past William B Hornblower in 1893, and past Stanley Matthews in 1881, all the way to 1866 with Henry Stanbery to find our last instance of a nominee who was lapsed, but not voted on. To skirt their responsibility to vote they passed the Judicial Circuits Act to reduce the number of justices to 7, denying Jackson his right of an appointment.
Looking back to modern day, none of these fit the Garland example.
- Garland was nominated in March, not at all at risk of missing the legislative session
- No Senate has ever decided to skirt it's responsibility by refusing to acknowledge the nominee.
- Garland was a moderate, and likely would have been confirmed. He was previously confirmed to the court of appeals in 1997 by a vote of 76-23.
- There is no precedent for refusing to vote on a nominee in an election year. There have been 7 election year nominations since the civil war, and all 7 were confirmed (only one without a vote)
My original claim was that they are hypocrites, and they are. Amy's nomination was done in an election year, in September before the election.
> The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president. - McConnell (2016)
> I want you to use my words against me. If there's a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first time, you can say Lindsey Graham said "let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination" - Lindsey Graham (2016)
> "I will support President @realDonaldTrump in any effort to move forward regarding the recent vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ginsburg." - Lindsey Graham (2020)
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> look at the Nixon years. Democrats blocking everything until they got nominees they truly approved of.
Untrue, Democrats voted on all 6 of Nixon's nominees, and only 2 were rejected. This is precisely what I mean, even when congress doesn't agree with the president their responsibility is to call the vote, and show the disagreements in the vote.
> Notice that whenever there was an A1-A2 party split, especially when a nomination was approaching an election, either the nomination failed, or it didn't succeed until the lame duck (if the president's party won re-election).
Feel free to share an example.
There are only two reasons votes get held: they already know the result, or they want to make senators accountable on record. Either way, it was a waste of time for Garland.
Additionally, it's far from clear the examples reviewed were representative vs written to support the conclusion, so in addition to the problem of how variance is framed as a bug rather than a feature, it's not even really clear how much is actually occurring.
"Elections have consequences" is a well-known phenomena, and the idea that a branch other than the legislature might have influence over how the law is interpreted or executed shouldn't be news to anybody, least of all a member of the judiciary, many of whom will in fact be no doubt less qualified to make judgments vs agencies with specific technical and legal expertise.
It doesn't matter if the example is representative. It doesn't matter if it is 1%, 10%, or 50%. If agencies are able to act as a political branch and use Chevron as a cover to make these political decisions immune to judicial review, then the system is broken and needs to be fixed.
This is like defending qualified immunity for police by saying "well the arrests you presented where the police used the QI defense to cover over egregious rights violations are not a representative sample of all arrests made by the police."
And he's ok with this, because his political ideology is such that fewer regulations and less rulemaking is a good thing.
Ultimately Congress cannot take on all of the executive branch's current rulemaking authority without some huge changes to how the body works. Those changes will not happen, because conservatives don't want these rules.
We've gone through significant uncertainty and convulsive change as a result of the Supreme Court throwing out decades of precedence. This isn't to say this is always a bad thing, but the reasons for their past few decisions do not pass muster.
That's sort of the point, because congress has abdicated their responsibility for so long, many of the "laws" and "rights" that exist in our legal framework are mere shadows of actual legislation. They're executive whims or judicial policies, both of which are inherently fragile and subject to sudden change. Roe v. Wade was the "law of the land" only to the extent that the courts continued to interpret an ambiguity in the law the same way as they always had. Congress had decades to shore up a case that even the jurist who were part of it said was extremely weak. Everyone knew it was fragile and the DNC cashed in on that fragility every election.
Or consider medical marijuana, which is currently only un-prosecuted at the federal level because the president told the DEA to chill out for a bit. The fact that in November the next president could change their mind and conduct federal raids of dispensaries across the country is not a good thing. You might argue that they couldn't do that because the medical marijuana industries and laws are crafted to avoid crossing state lines, but that depends on A) ignoring decades of Wickard (which admittedly the current SCOTUS might be willing to do, but boy if you think this decision or Roe was controversial, that would be a doozy) and B) ignore the very obvious fact that some of that legal supply is leaking across state lines illegally.
The fact that Net Neutrality is on again/off-again is another example of this. Major legal decisions are being left to the whims of two octogenarians who it's a miracle manage to get through the day without shitting their pants, and a judicial system that is inconsistent at the best of times. The courts have always been political, but if they are uniquely so at this time, it's because the folks interested in politics have figured out its easier to get what they want via executive fiat and judicial wrangling, and congress has learned their jobs and income are more secure when they don't have to take the blame for those things.
> How bad is the problem? Take just one example. Brand X concerned a law regulating broadband internet services. There, the Court upheld an agency rule adopted by the administration of President George W. Bush because it was premised on a “reasonable” interpretation of the statute. Later, President Barack Obama’s administration rescinded the rule and replaced it with another. Later still, during President Donald J. Trump’s administration, officials replaced that rule with a different one, all before President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.’s administration declared its intention to reverse course for yet a fourth time. Each time, the government claimed its new rule was just as “reasonable” as the last. Rather than promoting reliance by fixing the meaning of the law, Chevron deference engenders constant uncertainty and convulsive change even when the statute at issue itself remains unchanged.