Reflections From a Murky Pond

I’m not going to sugarcoat anything. I’m glad Justice Ginsburg is gone. While I don’t rejoice in her death – She was never that bad of a person – I’m very glad she’s no longer poisoning the SCOTUS with her well-written but piss-poor, agenda-driven opinions.

Frankly, Justice Ginsburg was, proper jurisprudence-wise, the worst judge in the current SCOTUS. Only her counterpart, the late Justice Scalia came close to matching her failings to place the law above personal opinion. Hence, her passing is a boon to America in my opinion.

And no, none of this detracts from Ginsburg’s historical significance. She was the 2nd woman appointed to the Court and the first Jewish woman – and only the 2nd Jew – to be so appointed. Yet, that significance is solely identity-based and, thus suspect.

So no; I don’t in any way lament Ginsburg passing since it was the only way she’d leave the Court.

NOTE: To those sorts who would attack me over this post: I have a solid background the law, some of which was in a professional capacity, and actually regularly read SCOTUS and Appellate Court opinions. If you can’t argue in that arena, best you just shut up and move along.

If you can do so, however, bring it on! A robust, even vitriolic, debate upon the specifics, nature, purpose, and fundamental basis of law in America is part and parcel to this “Grand Experiment” which is our nation.

Tags: America | Death | Ginsburg | Law | Politics | SCOTUS | US Supreme Court

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2020 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

With the US Supreme Court both overturning most parts of the 9th Circuit Court’s injunction against President Trumps’ travel from six predominately Muslim countries and granting a a writ of certiorari for the case as a whole, many people, including 58 Republican lawmakers, are requesting that Justice Ruth Ginsburg recuse herself from the upcoming case due to her overt and obvious bias against the President.

Given her comments throughout the 2016 elections, it’s easy to understand why so many people think that Ginsburg should recuse herself.

I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president.

~*~

He is a faker. He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. … How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns?

~*~

I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president. For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.

Ginsburg has shown a strong bias against- and a a nigh on hysterical antipathy towards President Trump. As such, the ethical thing for her to do is to recuse herself from this upcoming case and any and every case involving President Trump’s administration that reaches the SCOTUS in the future. That being rightfully said, the claim that she is legally bound to do so is effectively meaningless and nothing but another iteration of the political kabuki we’re too used to.

While the relevant statute, 28 U.S.C. § 455(a), does technically apply to SCOTUS Justices, so does the longstanding long accepted tradition of “Duty to Sit.” Additionally, there is really no tested means of enforcing 28 U.S.C. § 455 upon the SCOTUS. Essentially, the SCOTUS being the nation’s highest court, there’s no authority to appeal to in the case of the SCOTUS Justice not recusing themselves.

A different but related note. Our concerns about Ginsburg’s lack of partiality are being heavily played by those with something to gain. One, Ginburg is part of the minority in the SCOTUS. Two and much more importantly, the SCOTUS lifting of most of the injunction against the “Travel Ban” was delivered per curiam, meaning it came from a unanimous decision by the Court – including Justice Ginsburg.

So be neither too shocked nor too concerned if Ginsburg doesn’t recuse herself. It is likely that, at worst, she would be one of the minority dissenting opinions on the case and even that is actually in doubt.

Tags: America | Ginsburg | Immigration | Law | Politics | Recusal | Refugees | SCOTUS | The Courts | Trump | US Supreme Court

This entry was posted on Friday, June 30th, 2017 at 8:20 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

US Supreme Court Justice is rarely right about things, hence why her opinions are based upon perceived or hoped for outcomes rather than the law. She can, however, be right about the fact from time to time. A case in point being her tirade during an interview with the The National Law Journal. She was and is right about this.

“What’s amazing is how things have changed,” Ginsburg said, recalling the landmark 1971 decision of Griggs v. Duke Power Co., in which the Supreme Court unanimously held that employer policies that look neutral on paper can still constitute discrimination if they disproportionately harm minorities in practice. “It was a very influential decision and it was picked up in England. That’s where the court was heading in the ’70s.”

— Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

And, to our nation’s shame, that was exactly where the court was heading in the ’70s. It was heading at a headlong pace towards enabling special race-based privileges for non-Whites and forcing everyone to make race as the overriding factor in all decisions due to “disparate impact.”

NOTE: The singular exception to this is the progressive income tax which has a very disparate impact upon Whites but is never considered be discriminatory or a violation of their civil rights.

What most aside from Blacktivists don’t know is that the employer policy being lambasted in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. was Duke Power’s requirement that employees in more demanding positions had to either have a high school diploma or scores on standardized IQ tests equal to those of the average high school graduate. As Blacks have a long-standing history, which hasn’t changed to this day, of graduating from high school far less often than Whites, this was considered by the Burger Court to be both discriminatory and a violation of Blacks’ civil rights.

And following along with that High Court ruling and creation of the “disparate impact” framework is exactly the path to Hell that America was taking until the Roberts Court finally started to make inroads against this race-based legal framework.

So, as she so often is, Ginsburg has her facts in order but draws the wrong conclusion. Hardly shocking since she’s SCOTUS justice in the first place only due to Affirmative Action.

Tags: Affirmative Action | America | Blacks | Civil Rights | Ginsburg | History | Law | Politics | Prejudice | Racial Activism | Racial Politics | US Supreme Court

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2014 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

The US Supreme Court finally rendered its ruling upon Burwell v. Hobby Lobby yesterday, June 30, 2014. It was a 5-4 decision in favor of Hobby Lobby’s owners’ religious freedom.

Justice Ruth Ginsburg, one of the extreme Leftist judges in the SCOTUS penned the dissenting opinion which her three fellow leftist judges concurred with.

As this case dealt with the intersection of for-profit corporations, religious freedom, and management-labor power dynamics, it is neither surprising nor of material interest that the Liberal minority within the SCOTUS dissented from the majority opinion. That is to be expected as those four judges are antipathetic to corporations and religious freedom, at least when the religion in question is Christianity.

What is of interest is the nature and content of Ginsburg’s dissension. Ginsburg’s 35-page scathing screed contained little or no basis in law except in the singular part where she agreed with the Court, was more emotive, irrational fear-mongering than a logical exercise, and utterly ignored almost every salient point of the Court’s decision.

This is, and long has been, Ginsburg’s modus operandi and is why I loath her more than any other SCOTUS judge since Justice Warren. Whenever she pens the majority opinion she makes sure to cover it in the law and by legal precedence, but her dissenting opinions rarely stem from interpretative differences in America’s law. Instead they are emotive pleas and and angry hand-wringing over what the effects of the law might be.

Tags: America | Corporations | Emotions | Freedom | Ginsburg | Law | Leftists | Logic | Personhood | Politics | Religion | RFRA | US Supreme Court

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2014 at 9:22 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.