Merovingian

Hold onto your butts, cus I'm gonna deliberately comb through Justice Jackson's dissent. Thread:

First thing to note is that NOBODY joined her dissent. Not even Sotomayor or Kagan. That alone does not bode well.

(3) I really want to see KBJ's LSAT results, because I suspect her logical reasoning scores were among the lowest ever admitted to Harvard Law.

Apparently KBJ believes Art. III courts lack any remedy other than universal injunctions. This isn't true, but she thinks it is. 

(4) My assessment of her view based on oral argument was spot-on. KBJ views the traditions that invest courts with power and encumbers them with limitations as "a smokescreen" that stand between the court and a judicially-mandated utopia.

https://x.com/Merovingianus/status/1923055408710881451 

(5) KBJ genuinely believes and plainly asserts that the Court is the end-all-be-all of the law. Everyone is bound by the law, except necessarily the Courts, from whom the law proceeds. KBJ genuinely believes Art. III Judges wield Imperium, and only they may do so. 

(6) KBJ either cannot comprehend that her position grants Art. III Judges the ability to rule by fiat, or she knows this and actively desires that power. 

(7) To support her argument about what our Founders believed, KBJ cites a French Judge whose position would be eliminated a few decades later because the French Revolutionaries believed those judges wielded too much power.

KBJ is either unaware of this or has no sense of irony whatsoever.

(8) Something of a tangent, but this passage is exactly why I despise worship of Founder Philosophy. This Federalist excerpt is sophistry. The systemic checks across branches, if they even actually exist at all, do not empower individual citizens; it merely limits the institutions. Those are not the same thing.

(9) And this is why "Rule of Law" is an imbecilic concept. This is circular sophomoric reasoning. Law is act of government. The only way this works is if you get out in front and limit the exercise and passage of law before it happens. That's why once we started straying into problems that the Constitution was silent about lawfare became a major political industry.

(10) And here is the activism we all knew was underlying this. KBJ does not believe the Court should be confined by jurisdiction and authority, but only that if it sees something wrong it must address it with as wide a range of power as it can muster. Nevermind the fact these cases have not been fully litigated, and nevermind the fact the Court was not invested in this kind of power; bad thing happened, so the Court MUST do something. She would have a judiciary that invents its own power, with no limit on its exercise, because the unelected technocratic body of the judiciary is a better body in which to invest Imperium than the elected President who is Constitutionally invested with the lion's share of Imperium.

(11) First, KBJ belongs on Twitter, not on a bench. Second, she has announced her predetermination, without any case before her to adjudicate, that the Trump Administration is "presumably lawless," "power hungry," and deliberately violating the Constitution. 

Remember all throughout SCOTUS nomination hearings whenever candidates say, "I can't judge a case that hasn't been brought before me?" Yeah, KBJ doesn't believe in that.

(12) And the majority is correct. This is actually black letter law of the Constitution, and the very first President asked SCOTUS to provide an assessment on the Constitutionality of a planned Executive action before it was undertaken. The Court responded that the Constitution explicitly prohibited it from doing so, because its power is Constitutionally, fundamentally, limited to cases in actual controversy.

(13) This is actually completely false pop history. 

First, Independence was declared as a direct result of the King refusing to exercise his Royal authority, which is what the Colonies explicitly asked for in the Olive Branch Petition and the Petition to the King of 1774. 

Second, numerous Founders explicitly sought the creation of a Monarchy, including the author of the Federalist Papers that KBJ herself cites. 

Third, the creation of the Art. II Executive was an attempt to aggrandize *somebody* with most of the power of a King in explicitly response to the failure of the Articles of Confederation that withheld all of those powers.

(14) As alluded to above, Hamilton was THE biggest Monarchist in America--everyone knew this, that is why he had to write The Federalist Papers under a pseudonym!

Second, who are "the People?" Who specifically? This is an example of the sophistry of liberalism; acting on behalf of "the People," but with no ability to specify who "the People" are. Are they the populace? Who originally were only to include white male landowners and were only supposed to be able to vote for the House of Representatives?

Third, what KBJ is explicitly condemning here is the very concept of Common Law--that we look to the legal tradition and prior decisions of earlier courts. Yes, Ketanji, you stupid bitch, that means looking at the mother country's legal tradition.

(15) It is a sign of low political IQ to believe that America's legal system is "rights-based." I can only guess they get this from the Declaration of Independence--which I must remind everyone is not actually part of any law at all--and the Bill of Rights, which was an appendix enacted nearly a decade after the rest of the Constitution.

America's legal system is Constitution-based and Common Law-based.

(16) KBJ somehow simultaneously holds the positions that (a) Lower Courts may re-issue the same universal injunctions consistent with the Majority, but also (b) the Lower Courts are rendered powerless by the Majority. 

(17) This is already the case and has been a major point of discussion among jurists for centuries. Nothing in the Opinion today changes this whatsoever. 

(18) KBJ repeatedly acknowledges that she is making an argument from outcomes, which I find just so funny because I cannot possibly imagine her agreeing with this concept if it was advocated for by @Vermeullarmine. 

(19) Universal injunctions have no basis in law, but let's pretend for a moment that KBJ's argument from outcomes is valid here for a moment. KBJ's position requires that every single individual must be coverable by every single piece of litigation against the Executive because if they are not, their rights are forfeited. She also believes the fundamental role of the Separation of Powers is to (somehow) empower the individual.

But, the empowered individual, invested with free will and all the rights of law that she holds so precious, is incompetent, in her mind, to bring a lawsuit asserting their rights. She also forgoes the possibility that some citizens actually will and do regularly waive their rights for numerous reasons. She would have none of that. 

The poor, stupid, helpless, incompetent, miserable peasant is just oh so incapable that our special class of attorneys are the only class that can be trusted to shepherd them through this scary, dark, and confusing world. Ironically, she seems to agree with Noblesse Oblige and Common Good Interpretation, but only if it explicitly furthers the goals of "minorities."

She would have lawyers and judges become the new manor lords and plantation masters because the populace is just too fucking dumb and helpless without us.

(20) The idea that someone might actually waive their rights is alien to her. I'm curious, did she reject every plea agreement ever offered while she was a trial judge? 

(21) You didn't, though. You waived your arms a bunch and insisted that your position must be true, but you didn't actually cite anything that supported the conclusion. You cited a bunch of homiletics and carried them to your made up finish line. 

No, Ketanji. This is literally ConLaw I material. There are a ton of exceptions to every individual right. They are not "unequivocal protections."

(23) She would actually be right about this IF (a) the Executive is in fact violating rights, and (b) the injunctions are not being issued erroneously.

There is an open question percolating in the courts through extensive litigation whether A is actually happening, and a lot of evidence (which undoubtedly fed this decision) that B is in fact happening.

(24) No, all this requires is that each individual assert their rights in Court when it comes up. This is not a very high burden. Self-represented people in prison can do this.

I suspect KBJ's overestimation of her own intelligence underpins how she views the normal person. 

(25) This... has always been the rule. I'm actually baffled that she is surprised by this. Yes, people have to actually have standing and assert their rights when they are challenged. Does she not understand what the "process" part of "due process" means??? 

(26) This isn't news by any means, but KBJ views herself as a soldier fighting against a tyrannical empire, and is throwing a hissy fit that her peers would not allow her to aggrandize herself with whatever weapon she can invent. 

(27) The Founders did not write the 14th Amendment, you stupid twat. 