Eric Segall tells us what he really thinks about the Roberts court
Law professor Eric Segall is a leading critic of the Supreme Court. In a blog post today, he doesn’t pull any punches:
The disaster that was the Trump v. United States oral argument reminded me of how little the Roberts Court has actually cared about rule of law values and legal transparency during its 18-year run. Leaving aside the overturning or narrowing of numerous landmark cases from abortion to affirmative action to the free exercise of religion, the Roberts Court has consistently, in the Court’s most important and publicized opinions, engaged in subterfuge, sleight of hand, and even outright lying.
In this post, I discuss landmark cases involving affirmative action, health care, voting rights, separation of church and state, and the Second Amendment to show, not that I disagree with the results (I do), but instead to demonstrate that no matter what side of the issues you may favor in these country-defining cases, the Roberts Court has resolved these questions in a lawless manner because of reliance on demonstrably false facts and obviously misleading descriptions of prior rulings and other legal materials. In short, the Roberts Court has acted lawlessly from the beginning.
He concludes:
This type of misleading decision-making occurs all-too-often in the Roberts Court. This blog post, along with a few published law review articles, is the beginning of a book-length project that will show that, regardless of how one feels about the results reached by the Roberts Court, its method of deciding cases has been to reject rule of law values like consistency, transparency, and simple truth-telling. The Roberts Court will go down in history as one of the most, if not the most, lawless courts in American history.
When a written decision by a justice uses false information to justify itself, you know that jurist doesn’t care about justice, or the actual facts that might inform a decision.
When someone lies to the court they are charged with perjury. When their appeal includes lies and SCOTUS accepts them as true (even when they have already been disproven) what we have is a lawless court. A trial court would require evidence to back up the assertions. SCOTUS just requires they have the correct ideological basis or implication.
This is what activist judges really look like.
Jane:
Great story telling on their part and chicken or the egg Alito and which came first.
The argument that Brown is not a good reference for the Court’s approach to the Seattle and Louisville cases is really poor. Brown was not an affirmative action case, but a race discrimination one. As a result of Brown, there was a whole lot of litigation concerning illegally segregated schools which often resulted in court orders that took into account students’ race in devising remedies to the illegal segregation. What was brought to court in these cases were not districts found to be illegally segregating their schools, but districts engaged in specific and illegal racial discriminatory school assignments. The right not to experience racial discrimination is an individual one and it’s irrelevant just how well-coordinated plans were with the districts and parents. In the absence of illegal segregation in Louisville and Seattle, there is no particular reason that Brown and Marshall’s brief in the case should not be used in the reasoning as Brown was and remains the critical case for racial discrimination in schools.
Eric
I don’t know enough about the details of the cases you refer to in order to understand the basis of your argument..which seems not an argument but an assertion.
As to”the right not to experience racial discrimination is an individual one…” that seems to me to be contrary to the motivation that brought Brown v Board which was the danger to the country of treating a whole class of people as inferior. Frankly I don’t think anyone would have cared if “only” a few individuals were discriminated against. But it was a very long time ago when i briefly dipped my toe into law school before i got an honest job that i realized that ALL legal reasoning was specious. Is that an exaggeration? Probably. But at least in those days justices made an effort to at least be “colorable.” Taday’s Court makes no such effort.
For what it’s worth”
I personally think “affirmative action” was a bad idea. This was something that could have been handled off camera as it were. Simply by convincing the relevant deciders that it was necessary. Similarly, it is my opinion that “busing” killed the civil rights movement…a reach too far that the people felt threatened by.
Something similar might be said of Little Rock. Which is odd, because Ike of all people knew better, preferring subtlety to brute force. But mabybe his experience in Europe taught him a lesson about the need for brute force in some situations.
An ideologically stacked unelected lifetime panel of actively partisan Opus Dei ~ Catholic Illuminati ~ vigilantes handing down religious edicts, fatwas, in the dark, or legally delaying the speedy trial of a treasonous former president, may not necessarily be unconstitutional but in spirit is illegitimate and contrary to The Founders Intent
They lack all credibility; there is no “law”, nothing “compels” us to “obey”
what compels you to obey is, as always, the police.
otherwise, you’re quite right.
btw the constitution is not a sacred document, much less not one that doesn’t need a priest class to explain to us what it means. the constitution was the best they could do as a place to start…no one can think of everything at once, much less in advance.
all we have to go on is out own good faith and vigilance and ability to persuade others. had.
Do not confuse compulsion with informed choice. For many if not most fear of police is indeed compulsion and I suppose that works just fine as long as the police are to be feared. Doesn’t work well with Outsiders, those of us outside the circles of society, outside the “protection” of the “law” ~ outlaws
I choose what laws I obey, nothing compels me …
Ten
good for you. i have mixed feelings about that. i don’t like to be told what to do myself. but over my lifetime i have come to accept the need for some laws that i did not at first regard as legitimate. the laws of even bad rulers are sometimes “good” laws, which is either necessary to preserve the society that even bad rulers depend on, or just enacted to preserve the illusion of honest lawmaking.
but if you ever get stopped by the cops don’t try to make a case that you have a right to disobey…they will beat you up or kill you if you give them the least excuse.
what seems new here is that the SC does not even pretend to be honest or rational, taking their cue, no doubt, from Trump, whose followers delight in his “no goddam laws shall restrain me” rhetoric. they long for the freedom to be lawless themselves, though, not of course for others.