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Merged Scalia is dead

KwamiFabu said:
News flash! The US is still a republic, not a monarchy, and the GOP won the 2010 and 2014 midterms by wide margins. You'd never know it from reading this board, but Obama is very unpopular among the public at large, which is why his name is barely mentioned in the Dem debates and repeated all the time by the GOP.

As for whether Congress can stall Obama's nominee: they damn well can, and it would serve him right. Obama has been unbelievably contemptuous of Congress, especially his second term. As Obama himself said, "elections have consequences." Or put another way, what goes around comes around.
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**** the Republicans in Congress. Obama should have been way more contemptuous of them than he has been. They are worthless garbage whose stated objective was to make him a failed President.

If the worthless trash in the GOP want to leave a Supreme Court seat open for a year to stick it to Obama, I guess they can. They will only be further proving that they are low life scumbags by doing so. And I suspect it will bite them in the ass.
 
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Ladewig said:
Right. So why would people with that opinion suddenly do a 180 instead of saying, "Obama's nomination is grossly unacceptable. Obama is at fault; not the Republicans"?



I was not joking. I think it is absurd beyond words to think there are measurable numbers of people who will suddenly say "hey, the Republicans are being obstructionists." So ******* what if it is unprecedented? Who are these people who were completely ignorant of the previous obstructionism but will suddenly come over to your side once they Republicans cross this line?
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At lot of people don't pay that much attention to politics or only pay attention during Presidential elections.
 
Tony Stark said:
At lot of people don't pay that much attention to politics or only pay attention during Presidential elections.
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OK
I guess the only way to settle it will be to watch what happens when the Republicans continue with their absurd position of "we don't care who he nominates, we are rejecting all his nominations sight unseen."
 
I think that the SCOTUS issue may well be what energizes the Liberal leaning public to vote.
 
Tony Stark said:
Says who. There is nothing in the Constitution that says the opinion of dead bigots takes precedence. We can absolutely decide that their opinion is irrelevant and that equal protection actually means equal protection. Like all nine Supreme Court justices did in Loving v Virginia.
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The Constitution is not a plain English document. It is a historical work. You are doing the equivalent of using a 2016 English to understand Beowulf and producing explanations that were simply never there. In terms of law, they only carry the meaning of the time.

(We seem to both be discussing this as if the ratifiers gave a memo saying that it didn't cover interracial and gay marriage. If it is a misrepresentation of your argument that it would not matter please let me know.)
 
BobTheCoward said:
The Constitution is not a plain English document. It is a historical work. You are doing the equivalent of using a 2016 English to understand Beowulf and producing explanations that were simply never there. In terms of law, they only carry the meaning of the time.

(We seem to both be discussing this as if the ratifiers gave a memo saying that it didn't cover interracial and gay marriage. If it is a misrepresentation of your argument that it would not matter please let me know.)
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The 14th Amendment is in plain English and it clearly does not say anything that could be interpretated as "equal protection under the law except for people we don't like".
 
Rare Truth said:
Wow. Seriously?
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Seriously. If we agree that both the society that ratified the Constitution and the one that ratified the 14th unambiguously saw it as Constitutionally upholding exclusions on interracial marriage than it is absolutely a travesty to reject that.
 
There is one thing I don't get about justices like Scalia and Thomas - why the assumption that the interpretation of an 18th-century text must be done in accordance with the hermeneutics of 18th-century jurisprudence? It's silly - the law is the law, the method of interpretation of the law is separate from its being.
 
BobTheCoward said:
If it was plain English I would agree with you.
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What in the following is not in plain English:

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
 
Tony Stark said:
What in the following is not in plain English:

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
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Well, because in 18th century English, a person is defined as a white, christian man and only the "good" black folks.
 
BobTheCoward said:
Seriously. If we agree that both the society that ratified the Constitution and the one that ratified the 14th unambiguously saw it as Constitutionally upholding exclusions on interracial marriage than it is absolutely a travesty to reject that.
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That there is an amendment system at all proves that the founders understood that society changes over time and wanted to be sure that the changes in society could change the constitution.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
There is one thing I don't get about justices like Scalia and Thomas - why the assumption that the interpretation of an 18th-century text must be done in accordance with the hermeneutics of 18th-century jurisprudence? It's silly - the law is the law, the method of interpretation of the law is separate from its being.
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I think it is pretty clear. Because that way conservatives can continue to force their bigotry on the country.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
There is one thing I don't get about justices like Scalia and Thomas - why the assumption that the interpretation of an 18th-century text must be done in accordance with the hermeneutics of 18th-century jurisprudence? It's silly - the law is the law, the method of interpretation of the law is separate from its being.
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If you begin with the unalterable assumption that the Constitution should be changed only by the legislature, never by the courts, that is the inevitable, logical outcome. That was Scalia's basic premise, and he rarely wavered from it.
 
Tony Stark said:
What in the following is not in plain English:

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
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The whole thing?

Privileges and immunities... Life liberty property....due process... Deny....equal protection.

Those are all terms with very specific legal and historical contexts. To say we can just read it and apply it is asinine.
 
Sherman Bay said:
If you begin with the unalterable assumption that the Constitution should be changed only by the legislature, never by the courts, that is the inevitable, logical outcome. That was Scalia's basic premise, and he rarely wavered from it.
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The Constitution says nothing about the Supreme Court deciding Presidential elections and Scalia had no problem doing just that.
 
Sherman Bay said:
If you begin with the unalterable assumption that the Constitution should be changed only by the legislature, never by the courts, that is the inevitable, logical outcome. That was Scalia's basic premise, and he rarely wavered from it.
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Then it should be pointed out that he often voted to change the constitution, such as in the Citizen's United case, or Hobby Lobby.

I don't think that was his premise.
 
Sherman Bay said:
If you begin with the unalterable assumption that the Constitution should be changed only by the legislature, never by the courts, that is the inevitable, logical outcome. That was Scalia's basic premise, and he rarely wavered from it.
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Only if you have the 18th-century preconception that a legal text carries substantial meaning separate from its social context.
 
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