Today in Supreme Court History: August 2, 1923

8/2/1923: President Calvin Coolidge's Inauguration. He would appoint Justice Harlan Fiske Stone to the Supreme Court.

President Calvin Coolidge

 

Comments

[Krayt]

Will there be a real thread today, or is it Open Thread Tuesday?

[Krayt]

I'm amazed at the conservative strongmen lickspittles who want to turn over Eastern Europe to Russia, and the South China Sea to China, as spoils of military conquest where we just sit there.

You know. As in the only thing necessary for evil to win is for good men to do nothing.

Aren't you supposed to be war hawks? You're dicks. They're assholes. But as they said in Team America, one of your favorite movies, pussies hate dicks because they fuck 'em. But pussies also hate assholes. They need dicks because they also fuck assholes.

[Krayt]

Biden may need Viagra, but apparently he's the only man with a functioning dick in the room. If he were to walk into CPAC, that is. In a room in a strong man's near-dictatorship nation, that is.

Don't like Nancy much, but this is ballsy for her. She has a bigger dick than you, too. Or wait, what's the female equivalent, you know, like, humerously, the Ferenghi talk about having big lobes?

[Mr. Bumble]

Krayat will be filling in for DavidBahar today to supply a series of senseless rants.

Enjoy!

[Frank Drackman]

If she had a really big dick she'd stop by Jew-rusalem on the way home.

[John F. Carr]

I remember when the communists killed a Congressman and the United States did nothing. https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1951-2000/The-Soviet-shoot-down-of-flight-KAL007-%C2%A0resulting-in-the-death-of-Representative-Larry-McDonald-of-Georgia/

[Frank Drackman]

Wow, really going back, when 1: there were still White DemoKKKrat Congressemen from the South, and 2: a DemoKKKrat Congressman who was a member of the John Birch Society, McDonald was a cool dude, Urologist, Former Navy Flight Surgeon, no way that 747 just "wandered" over USSR territory....

Frank

[Frank Drackman]

Fuck you, you're so eager to fight, join up!

[Krayt]

Bah. I'd be much more useful as an engineer building weapons of war.

You know, the guys who build things so you don't have to fight with rocks and sharp sticks?

[Frank Drackman]

Like I said, fuck you. Or alternatively, use one of your weapons and kill yourself.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Levy v. Parker, 396 U.S. 1204 (decided August 2, 1969): Douglas grants bail to Levy, an army doctor, convicted of Military Code provision ("disorder and neglect to the prejudice of the discipline of the armed forces") which the Court had just observed, without deciding, might be unconstitutionally vague (O'Callahan v. Parker,) (Douglas notes that Brennan had already denied bail -- so why did Douglas have jurisdiction?); Levy had publicly urged black soldiers to refuse to fight in Vietnam; suit dragged on into 1974, with the Court finally holding that the provision was not vague and superseded Levy's First Amendment rights, 417 U.S. 733.

Barnes v. E-Systems, Inc. Group Hospital Medical & Surgical Ins. Plan, 501 U.S. 1301 (decided August 2, 1991): Scalia grants stay of Circuit Court's striking down Texas statute as being preempted by ERISA; Scalia notes that requirement that ERISA-related suits be brought in federal courts might be in conflict with Eleventh Amendment; I don't know what happened to this suit, but related suit resulted in denial of cert, 502 U.S. 981

Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists v. Marshall, 434 U.S. 1305 (decided August 2, 1977): Rehnquist denies stay of discovery order based on lack of jurisdiction (it's not an appealable order); suit was by lay church employees alleging sex discrimination in pay in violation of Fair Labor Standards Act and church objected on First Amendment grounds to producing payroll records (case was settled before trial in October 1977)

[John F. Carr]

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts recently decided a case involving a church's claim of immunity from suit (entitling it to review of interlocutory orders). The court said such immunity, if it exists at all, would be available only if "a civil court has ruled, or is about to rule, on an issue that obviously implicates religious doctrine." Otherwise the church has to appeal after trial like a normal litigant.

[Frank Drackman]

Coolidge, as Will Rogers said, "Didn't do much, but there wasn't much we wanted doing"
or something like that, on second thought, might have been Yogi Berra...

Frank

[PeteRR]

Coolidge should be the gold standard for GOP politicians. Even more than Reagan.

[F.D. Wolf]

Coolidge also elevated cousins Learned Hand and Augustus Noble hand from the Southern District of New York to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Both, particularly the former, are generally considered among the most distinguished judges not to serve on the Supreme Court.

Coolidge also appointed John J. Parker to the Fourth Circuit in 1925. President Herbert Hoover would nominate Parker to the Supreme Court in 1930, but the Senate would reject the nomination by a vote of 39-41. Parker was the only Supreme Court nominee rejected by the Senate between 1895 and 1968.

Two main factors led to the rejection. The first, and probably most significant, was Parker's ruling in International Organization, United Mine Workers of America v. Red Jacket Consolidated Coal & Coke Co., 18 F.2d 839 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 275 U.S. 536 (1927). The UMWA was vigorously attempting to unionize the nation's coal miners. One tactic mining companies employed against this was to have their employees sign "yellow-dog" contracts, in which they agreed not to join a union or to advocate for unionization. When union organizers would come around, the companies would sue them for restraint of trade under those contracts. The court, in an opinion by Parker, ruled for the companies and against the UMWA. (Perhaps ironically, one of the defenses interposed by the UMWA was one usually used by companies in those days, that coal mining was not "commerce", so the federal anti-trust laws could not be used against it). The decision lifted Parker from obscurity and made him a hated anti-labor icon.

The second factor was a statement that Parker had made during his unsuccessful campaign as the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina in 1920. In those benighted days in the South, the Democrats held a near-monopoly on power, and a frequent tactic against Republicans was the charge that they wanted to elevate blacks to equal (if not superior) status in society in respect to whites. In response to these charges, Parker had stated, "The participation of the Negro in politics is a source of evil and danger to both races and is not desired by the wise men in either race or by the Republican Party of North Carolina." This unfortunate comment, which would re-emerge during the confirmation battle, would cause the NAACP to weigh in against Parker.

After his failed nomination, Parker would continue to serve on the Fourth Circuit until his death in 1958. Parker would serve, along with Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson and former Attorney General Francis Biddle, as one of the American judges during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Historians have on the whole given his career relatively high marks and have generally acquitted him of any charges of racism.

[F.D. Wolf]

After the Senate's rejection of Parker, it confirmed Hoover's next nominee, Owen Roberts. Some legal historians, analyzing the opinions of Parker versus those of Roberts, believe that, ultimately, the liberals would have been better off with Parker on the Court instead of Roberts.

[Mr. Bumble]

So says the Queen of the Non Sequitur.

[Frank Drackman]

If you know anything about the candidates in Missouri, pretty clear which "Eric" he was endorsing, (I'd tell you but then I'd have to kill you) and I might not know my Grammar, but at least I don't go around sniffing little girls hair like that Dirty Old Man Somnolent Joe, and you can't blame it on the Dementia, he's been doing it for 30 years!

Frank

[Frank Drackman]

Well, people are always calling me a "Mother Effer" so maybe it was one of those Freudian thangs. Don't get the "Orange" insults, nobody ever said Obama had a pleasant "Melenic" skin tone, and has a POTUS ever said "Uhh" more than Barry Hussein?

Frank "W" doesn't count, I said "Uhh" not "Duhh"

[Frank Drackman]

Your side's worship of Barry O'Hussein Amurica?? yeah, pretty sad, pathetic, how's the "Slowing of the Rising Ocean's and Healing Planet" workin out for ya?? And to date, BHO's the last POTUS who was against SSM(until 2012!) (pretty bad when you have to get dragged Kicking and Scheming(get it?) by that Social Warrior, Sleepy Joe
Frank

[Brett Bellmore]

Actually, what he said was, " I trust the Great People of Missouri, on this one, to make up their own minds, [My italics] much as they did when they gave me landslide victories in the 2016 and 2020 Elections, and I am therefore proud to announce that ERIC has my Complete and Total Endorsement!"

I thought it was a fairly witty way of making a non-endorsement.

[Mr. Bumble]

In a world where wit is forbidden (Progressive World) it passed them by.

[Frank Drackman]

Trump was elected 6 years ago, still occupies a rather large part of your small Cranium.