Wednesday, January 18, 2006

 

I don't want to hear it...


and I have tried in my yalie conservative-in-liberal's-birkenstocks way to embrace roberts and alito and a spirit of fairness and understanding. (See sympathy in earlier post this week). But for chrissake, doesn't the whole umpire metaphor (roberts' cutesy explanation that supreme court justices are like umpires, they apply the law rather than make it or the game) fall short when you look at the record. If everyone is so fair and balanced, why do scalia and Thomas (and now Roberts) come out of the wrong side of everything (except expanded eminent domain which seems like bs)? if you believe in states rights and strict construction, bully for you, I accept that, but then why dissent from upholding a state's asisisted suicide law? and why strike down california's medical marijuana law? I know their technical reasons of why, but it looks like there is plenty of room on any case to take your ideological opinion and then cloak it in defendable legal grounds. It is just too convenient that justices move in herds to look at this impartiality snowjob with any credulity.

Supreme court watchers are falling over themselves to distance themselves from ignorant liberalism (http://www.slate.com/id/2134287/?nav=navoa), but you have to call a spade a spade at some point. The Supreme court is a political body whose decisions move along party lines.

lawyers who read this blog, attempt to use your twisted logic to explain why this blather about impartiality isn't blatant hypocrisy.

Comments:
Conservative thought and ideology can lead to conservative deconstruction of the law, just as liberal thought and ideology lead to liberal deconstruction of the law. Neither is invalid, but not necessarily fair to call "political" either. The argument is that these justices believe they are impartially parsing the law, not trying to make their party somehow more powerful.

Also there are plenty of decisions where the justices do not follow party lines. For ex: O'Connor was really only good for liberals on abortion, she was conservative as hell most other places.
 
Just to add fuel to your fire, remember who applied the equal protection clause rather than honor state's rights in Bush v. Gore.
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?