The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
Today in Supreme Court History: December 27, 1771
12/27/1771: Justice William Johnson's birthday.
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Elitist: “How many Trump campaign-Federalist Society-Republican Party lawyers does it take to win an election law case?”
Other elitist: “It appears we will never know.”
If anyone needs suggestions concerning good beer selections for inaugural celebrations, let me know.
Happy holidays, everyone!
Near beer is appropriate for Biden.
The tears of vanquished bigots are enough for me.
Cheaters: Let’s take down the greatest President since George Washington, to hurt all Democrat constituencies. These are too stupid to know their own self interest, since they all busted records of success under Trump’s policies. Let’s destroy the economy to enrich the Tech Billionaire owners of the media and of the Democrat party by $trillion.
These tech billionaires want access to the market of the Chinese Communist Party. So they are the agents of its interests in the US. They need to suppress wages. The labor shortage caused by the Trump economy caused a surge in the salaries of the bottom 20%, cutting into their profits.
Artie says, he attended law school. He has never made a lawyer utterance. Say something lawyer, Artie.
Attention clinger. How do you like winning? Your betters are going to replace you. Something about backward hicks and yahoos then disparage religious people. That is your standard AK comment.
“Say something lawyer”
Last night I watched the news from Washington, the Capitol
The Russians escaped while we weren’t watching them
Like Russians do
Now we’ve got all this bloom, we needn’t got the room
And I hear the U.S.S.R will be open soon
(The Volokh Conspiracy Board of Censors banned Artie for making fun of conservatives. I am Arthur.)
Forgot about his lame 10 year old complaint about some random internet commenter getting censored….
I used the word, utterance. Only lawyers say that. I am not a lawyer.
Artie, I love how Trump makes you Democrats feel. If that were his only achievement, he would be among the best Presidents.
I feel like a guy who has been fortunate; has been successful; and has enjoyed winning the culture war against conservatives, mostly because I look down at obsolete bigots clinging in vain to guns and superstition.
No, Artie. You support thugs who hate America, because they bring in lawyer rent. You are winning, and crime and social pathology are surging. Only Chinese fentanyl is ridding us of 70000 criminals a year, and slowing the neo-Marxist, lawyer rampage against our country.
Kirkland, you conveniently left off the last line:
“As vacation land for lawyers in love…”
I never realized just how anti-lawyer this song truly was — and the Music Video is priceless, the ending dance in Red Square is right out of “Springtime for Hitler.”
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxyjA-CaPYY&pbjreload=102
“Lawyers In Love”
I can’t keep up with what’s been going on
I think my heart must just be slowing down
Among the human beings in their designer jeans
Am I the only one who hears the screams
And the strangled cries of lawyers in love
God sends his spaceships to America, the beautiful
They land at six o’clock and there we are, the dutiful
Eating from TV trays, tuned into to Happy Days
Waiting for World War III while Jesus slaves
To the mating calls of lawyers in love
Last night I watched the news from Washington, the capitol
The Russians escaped while we weren’t watching them, like Russians will
Now we’ve got all this room, we’ve even got the moon
And I hear the U.S.S.R. will be open soon
As vacation land for lawyers in love
The song is not about lawyers or love.
OK, I know I will regret this, but what *IS* it about?
World affairs in general and the U.S.-Soviet relationship in particular.
Nothing to do with lawyers. At least, that is what he told me.
Well. Norman Lear never expected America to identify with Archie Bunker, either.
On this day in history: Who in the world believed the “it was 5G conspiracy line” about the Nashville bomb?
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
That is the “official” line coming out of fake news media…
I have concerns about 5G but it’s more planes falling out of the sky — or more being flown into the ground because of interference with radio altimeters. Along with how much radiation is too much.
I am starting to wonder about the national defense airspace bit, though.
The bomber may have been mentally ill and suicidal. Yet, his beliefs about the Surveillance state are true, only 10 times worse than he thought. This would be thanks to the lawyer profession.
Comments have become a cesspool. Please, Eugene, take this blog out of Reason and go independent again.
You might be whom, to look down on people?
President John Adams nominated his secretary of state John Marshall to the Supreme Court on January 10, 1801, more than a month after Adams had lost his re-election bid. (Whether he had lost to Thomas Jefferson or Aaron Burr would not be finally determined by the House until February 17, with the new president assuming office March 4.) Marshall was confirmed by a lame-duck Federalist Senate (which had likewise lost its majority in the elections) on January 17. No one raised much of a fuss over this because no one considered the Supreme Court particularly important or influential. (Ironically, of course, it would be John Marshall who would change that.) Also, perhaps the Democrat-Republicans would have raised more of a protest if not otherwise preoccupied with the Jefferson-Burr election drama.
Jefferson would make up for it by bitterly complaining about Marshall the rest of his life. William Johnson was Jefferson’s first appointment to the Supreme Court in 1804, where he would remain until his death in 1834. If events had transpired a little differently, John Marshall never would have sat on the Supreme Court, which might have been led by a Chief Justice William Johnson, which might have resulted in a very different history of the Supreme Court (and of America).
For example, in this interesting 1823 letter from former president Jefferson (who would die three years later) to Justice Johnson, Jefferson commends Johnson for keeping the practice of seriatim opinions alive, preferring them over Marshall’s “opinion of the court” innovation. Jefferson is still upset about Marbury v. Madison, twenty years later. But Jefferson’s immediate complaint is over the Court’s more recent (1821) decision in Cohens v. Virginia. In sum, the defendants had been convicted of selling District of Columbia lottery tickets in Virginia, contrary to state law. The defendants claimed since a Congressional statute created the lottery, a state statute could not forbid their sale per the Supremacy Clause. Chief Justice Marshall, writing for a unanimous court, upheld the convictions, holding that nothing in the statute required permitting ticket sales outside the district. Jefferson’s complaint was not about the ultimate result, of course, but over the Court’s temerity to claim jurisdiction over the case in the first place, Jefferson thought the Eleventh Amendment made clear that a state could not be hauled into federal court against its will, and that included criminal cases.
Letter from Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson 12 June 1823