Category Archives: Courts

Kancel Kulture and Racism

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Here’s a textbook example of the intersectionality of kanceling and racism.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer spoke last week against the idea of tampering with the Supreme Court’s makeup or structure.

To make those whose initial instincts may favor important structural change, or other similar institutional changes, such as forms of court packing, think long and hard before they embody those changes in law.
If the public sees judges as politicians in robes, its confidence in the courts and in the rule of law can only diminish, diminishing the court’s power, including its power to act as a check on other branches.

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In Which the Court Got It Right

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…and the 9th Circuit Court messed it up again. This case (Ritesh Tandon, et al. v. Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, et al.) involves California Governor Gavin Newsom’s (D) restrictions on church gatherings against his more permissive approval of bar, salon, etc gatherings [emphasis added].

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Slander

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Our slander laws are convoluted, and as part of that convolution, they put certain Americans—celebrities and politicians, for instance—out of effective reach of their protection, and they put other Americans—journalists, for instance, functionally immune to their restrictions. Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, in his Thursday Wall Street Journal op-ed, wants to niggle around their edges to improve them.

No. It’s time, to coin a phrase, to go big. Libel law, in fact, is simple enough to simplify: if someone lies about or otherwise slanders another, the liar/slanderer is liable. If someone mistakenly mischaracterizes another and doesn’t correct the mischaracterization when advised of the error, mischaracterizer is liable, if to a lesser degree.

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What’s Important in a Jury

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The jury in the Derek Chauvin case, concerning the cop who’s accused of murdering George Floyd, is seated, and much is being made of its “diversity.”

…settled on [the first] 13 jurors, including five men and eight women in the trial against Derek Chauvin. Of those, seven identified themselves as white, four as Black, and two as multiracial.

And

The seated jurors include a chemist, an auditor, a nurse, a nonprofit executive, and a retiree. At least four of the 13 are married, and one is engaged. Two identified themselves as single parents, including one woman who said she is a widow.

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The Pace of Court Cases

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And the reasons for rejecting or dismissing cases.

Recall the kerfuffle over the mechanisms by which the 2020 elections, particularly for President were carried out. Recall, also, the plethora of election fraud-related cases that were brought in State and Federal courts. Recall, further, that the vast majority of those cases—all but one or two—were rejected by those same courts over standing, or “ripeness,” or other procedural and technical grounds and not on the merits of the cases. Even our Supreme Court ducked—twice—hearing cases strictly on a technical matter and not on any merit.

Now, we’re getting different court outcomes.

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Opposition

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Republicans in the Senate put Progressive-Democrats on the record on a number of amendments to Party’s budget reconciliation move—itself a deliberate act to sideline any dissent—which Republicans offered during a Thursday afternoon through Friday morning vote-a-rama. Party’s budget reconciliation then was voted up strictly along party lines.

Here’s some of what the Senate’s Progressive-Democrats oppose. Notice that every one of these would have enhanced Americans’ national security, economy, and individual liberty had they had the support of even a single Progressive-Democrat.

  • 50-50 on a failed amendment to support the border wall
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment supporting the free exercise of religion
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A Trump Legal Legacy

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Brent Kendall had a piece in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal, Trump Appointees Poised to Influence Legal Outcomes for Decades to Come, that explored this item. It’s well worth the read.

One statement in particular caught my eye, though.

Republican and Democratic [judicial] appointees often embrace differing legal philosophies that lead to divergent results.

This is at the core of the problem. As our Constitution’s Article I, Section 1 makes clear, there is only one legitimate legal philosophy for judges and Justices. They’re sworn to uphold the Constitution, not some mythical document that better comports with what they want to uphold.

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In Which the Supreme Court Gets One Right, Sort Of

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The Supreme Court has ruled, for now, that the Trump administration’s policy of not allowing census-counted illegal aliens to be included in States’ post-census Federal Congressional reapportionment decisions can stand.

Following its ruling earlier this month that allowed the Trump administration to remove illegal aliens from the 2020 Census count, the Supreme Court on December 28 threw out two lower court decisions that went the other way, that barred the government from eliminating that population from the process of allocating congressional seats and Electoral College votes that officially determine the presidency.

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Obfuscating Harm

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The Wall Street Journal has an opinion on the nature of Texas’ suit against four other States regarding their conduct of the 2020 Presidential election in their States.

This legal analysis will upset many readers….

The Editors’ analysis is itself flawed:

Can a state be harmed by the way other states conduct their elections?

and

This one [Texas’ suit] concerns election law in states other than Texas.

And many other, similar statements. These are attempts to change the subject that would make Saul Alinsky proud.

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The Dangers of a Biden Judiciary

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It’s well enough known that Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden disdains the conservative nature—which is to say that of adhering to the actual text of our Constitution and any statute in a case—of the judiciary as populated by President Donald Trump (courtesy of Biden’s BFF, ex-President Barack Obama (D), who left so many judicial seats empty).

Now, it’s become especially crystalline. Here’s Cynthia Hogan, who was then-Vice President Biden’s counsel and earlier, then-Senate Judiciary Committee member Biden’s counsel:

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