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the official new supreme court thread - Very political

Could go on several threads…I’ll put it here.

Our view: Another serious threat to American democracy


If you like the recent changes effected by the U.S. Supreme Court, you’ll be pleased to know that more are likely on the way. The court has agreed to take up a case with its roots in North Carolina that could, quite literally, end democracy as we know it.

We know that sounds like hyperbole. But consider:

A few years ago, when the Republican-led state legislature was trying to pass gerrymandered voting maps that would give Republicans control of 11 of 14 congressional districts, the state Supreme Court said no; the unbalanced maps gave Republicans too much of an unfair advantage and disenfranchised too many voters.

Rather than accept the court’s judgment, leading Republicans argued that the state court had no authority to alter the legislature’s maps, even if they were unfair. They referred to what they call the “independent state legislature doctrine” — their claim that when it comes to how elections are run, no checks and balances apply; no court should be allowed to weigh in; the legislature trumps all.

Despite the fact that previous legislatures had written the court’s authority into our state constitution.

Not satisfied with the state court’s ruling, the legislature appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court — where you’d think the matter would be rejected. After all, the “independent state legislature” theory is a legal outlier. It’s never been implemented; it’s not an originalist or traditional view; it’s inconsistent with the federalist view that state courts have the final say over the meaning of state law; and the Supreme Court has consistently rejected it in past cases as an inaccurate interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

Instead, the court has agreed to take up the case, Moore v. Harper, in October.

The mere fact that the court has agreed to hear the case — and that justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh have indicated their desire to reconsider the debunked doctrine — is of extreme concern.

But it fits with a court that seems eager to place its own stamp on our nation, as exemplified not only by its disregard for stare decisis, but by what many see as rank partisanship in many of its decisions. A majority of Americans see the court today as politically biased — for good reason.

And a favorable decision would have far-reaching implications.

“The theory would disable state courts from protecting voting rights in federal elections by eliminating state constitutional protections in those elections,” legal experts Leah Litman, Kate Shaw and Carolyn Shapiro wrote in The Washington Post earlier this month.

Former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig, a preeminent conservative jurist, has warned that those who promote this debunked theory would also seek to apply it to presidential elections.

In practical terms, that means that state legislators could not only gerrymander to their twisted hearts’ content, but in 2024, they could assign their Electoral College votes to whomever they please — even if their decision differs from that of the majority of voters in their states.

At that point, our votes would no longer have any meaning.

Unchallenged power. It must seem like a dream come true to House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger.

Make no mistake; Democrats have done their fair share of gerrymandering and continue to do so in some states.

But they’ve never gone to the Supreme Court to fight for unchecked power over elections.

To protect our voting rights, we must consider what we can do in response. Signing petitions won’t accomplish anything. Some of the options offered on the left — eliminating the filibuster to pass the John Lewis Voting Act and expanding the Supreme Court to negate the power of a supermajority of conservative justices — seem extreme.

But are they more extreme than handing our elections over to partisans who are more concerned with power than political representation?

One thing we could do, if enough North Carolinians understand the threat, is vote out the Republican majority in the state legislature.

This seems unlikely.

But in this era in which so many of our traditional institutions have been denigrated, if we don’t find a way to turn from this trajectory, we’ll instead find ourselves being ruled by partisans who won’t hesitate to take more and more power from the people and impose their own will — no matter the consequences.

That’s not a democracy. And no, it’s not a republic, either. If the state legislature wins this case, all 50 state legislatures will be allowed to override their states’ constitutions, governors, courts — and any principle of fairness to voters. Our freedom to govern ourselves is on the line. This could not be more serious.
 
Buttigieg is money almost every time he goes on Fox News. One wonders why they still invite him.

 
The first part and the last part sum it up perfectly.
 
He’ll be a great President. No way we’d see Ice Town.
 
 
So add him to the justices with axes to grind against people who’ve wronged him
 
Our formerly supreme court really has become a bunch of partisan political hacks with overflowing grievance.
 
Our formerly supreme court really has become a bunch of partisan political hacks with overflowing grievance.

Reflecting their party, their base, and the voters they’re trying to attract. It’s just angry people trying to make other people miserable.
 
Wow Alito, so embarrassing. You're not only a rights slayer but a standup comedian. Who knew?
Can you get any more unprofessional, Douche?
 
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Republicans' next big play is to 'scare the hell out of Washington' by rewriting the Constitution. And they're willing to play the long game to win.


Article V to the US Constitution provides two ways to amend the nation's organizing document — the most difficult, but most dramatic way to alter American society's very foundation.

The first is for a two-thirds majority of Congress to propose an amendment, with three-fourths of states ratifying it. This is how all 27 of the current amendments to the Constitution were added, but it's a path that today is largely blocked because of intractable partisan divisions. No American under 30 has experienced the nation amending the Constitution in his or her lifetime.

The second method — never before accomplished — involves two-thirds of US states to call a convention. The power to call for a convention belongs solely to state legislatures, who would pass and ratify amendments without a governor's signature, Congress' intervention, or any input from the president.


ADVERTISING

The First Printing of the Final Text of the United States Constitution is on display during a press preview at Sotheby's on September 17, 2021 in New York City.
The First Printing of the Final Text of the United States Constitution is on display during a press preview at Sotheby's on September 17, 2021 in New York City. Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images
Some states have tried and tried — without result — to prompt a constitutional convention. They've together issued hundreds of pro-convention resolutions or calls over 200 years to reroute constitutional amendment powers away from Washington. What's new now is the ever-evolving power coupling of a corporation-backed ideological juggernaut led by ALEC, a nonprofit organization with close ties to large tobacco and drug companies, and a determined Republican Party increasingly dominating many of the nation's 50 statehouses.

If they were successful, a constitutional convention led by conservatives could trigger sweeping changes to the Constitution.

Their goals include gutting federal environmental standards, nixing nationwide education requirements, and creating an incredibly high threshold for Washington, DC, or a territory to earn statehood. Some would like to make it difficult, if not impossible, for someone — National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, for example — to work for decades within the federal government.


Six years later, the Academy of States 3.0 is taking place Sunday ahead of the National Conference of State Legislatures' 2022 summit in Denver. On its website, the group boldly forecasts that a new constitutional convention could take place in 24 months and quotes former President Barack Obama in emphasizing, "You can't change Washington from the inside."

"​​It's a heavy lift, but it's not out of reach," Arn Pearson, the Center for Media and Democracy's executive director and a close watcher of the convention movement, told Insider. "I think it's a real threat."
 
Balls and strikes everyone !

If nothing else, trump gave a lot of people the chance to show off their true colors. In a way that's good. I guess.
 
Is Ketanji Brown Jackson ushering in "liberal originalism?"


A few minutes later, Jackson took things a step further, not just questioning the court’s recent decisions, but opening a line of reasoning — and reality — that has been missing from the court’s discussions altogether for decades.

“I don't think we can assume that just because race is taken into account that that necessarily creates an equal protection problem,” Jackson told Alabama Solicitor General Edmund LaCour Jr. — and, just as likely, the justices alongside her.

This was not a standalone point. It was a windup to a dismissal of an entire motivating principle of the conservative legal (and, at times, political) movement. It was what I imagine is just the beginning of Jackson’s argument — on conservatives’ own ground of “history and traditions” — against “race-neutral” constitutional standards in a nation (and world) of regular, systemic and extreme examples of racism.

Referring to the “history and traditions” standard — so often invoked by Thomas and others using some version of originalism or “original intent” as their means of constitutional interpretation — Jackson said, “[W]hen I drilled down to that level of analysis, it became clear to me that the framers themselves adopted the equal protection clause, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth Amendment, in a race-conscious way.”

The amendments and legislation at the time, she explained, were devised to help ensure that recently freed slaves were “actually brought equal to everyone else in the society.” She buttressed this by citing and quoting from “the report that was submitted by the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which drafted the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Then Jackson, the first Black female justice, quoted the lawmaker who introduced the Fourteenth Amendment as saying of its purpose: "nless the Constitution should restrain them, those states will all, I fear, keep up this discrimination and crush to death the hated freedmen."



 
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