Today in Supreme Court History: July 22, 1937

7/22/1937: The Senate voted down President Roosevelt's Court-Packing plan, 70-20.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

King v. Greene, 524 U.S. 965 (decided July 22, 1998): denying stay of execution and also certiorari; Stevens and Ginsburg would have granted stay (i.e., they didn’t want this guy ever to be executed); King had kicked, choked and stabbed a woman to death; the Fourth Circuit had rejected arguments that he wasn’t properly “Mirandized” (judges hate when lawyers use that term) and wasn’t provided with a lawyer when he asked

Socialist Workers Party v. Rockefeller, 400 U.S. 1201 (decided July 22, 1970): in this dispute over a party’s candidates getting onto the ballot, Harlan denies reconsideration of his July 11 order denying stay because served along with his carrot juice that morning was a letter from the Attorney General saying the candidates would be allowed on the ballot provided they comply with all the other (non-contested) requirements

Gregg v. Georgia, 429 U.S. 1301 (decided July 22, 1976): Powell, master of explaining the obvious, grants stay of numerous executions pending hearing of appeal because “if the executions in these cases were carried out before the Court hears the appeal, the harm to petitioners would be irreparable. (Well, yeah.) In addition, the cases would then be moot.” As it turned out, the convictions were upheld by the Court in Proffit v. Florida, decided October 4, 1976, and by the next day the mootness issue itself became moot.

[AmosArch]

I wonder if RGB voting for all those rapists and women slayers was in the deleted scenes of that movie about her that came out recently.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Did you vote for a rapist, more than once, AmosArch? Will you vote for a rapist again, with most of this blog’s deplorable conservative operators and followers?

[Dr. Ed 2]

And that, kirkland, is the case foe decriminalizing rape.

Or at least raising the bar a whole lot higher to prove it.

[Frank Drackman]

I did vote for William Juffuhsun Clinton in 1996 so yes.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Would that be Bill, the rapist, or Hillary, his accomplice-after-the-fact and enabler?

[Frank Drackman]

Pretty sure I said "William Juffuhsun" AKA Bill.

[Noscitur a sociis]

“Mirandized” (judges hate when lawyers us

What makes you say that?

[Dan Schiavetta]

Today’s movie review: Dead Poets Society, 1989

I saw this when it came out, mostly because I liked the earlier Robin Williams movies, The World According to Garp (where I had read the book first) and Moscow on the Hudson.

As one critic put it, “a conventional story, but written and acted with wit and conviction”. Robin Williams comes back to his old boarding school with an unconventional outlook and inspires his students (some of them) and gets into trouble with the higher-ups.

Standing on one’s desk is a simple way to change perspective. I liked that. Also I liked that at the end, when he’s fired, some of the students stand on their desks (risking discipline) and others don’t.

Yet another story set in a WASP-y boarding school in remotest New England, an utterly foreign culture to me (and to most of us here, I assume). In high school, during my brief stay in the “advanced” English class, we read “A Separate Peace” and “The Paragon”. I didn’t understand the point of either. “The Catcher in the Rye”, I certainly did, but that was set only partly there.

It’s easy to see why boarding school culture has produced so much literature, because it’s a place that encourages writers (as opposed to, say, the hardscrabble upbringings of Earl Hamner or George Clayton Johnson) and where graduates are already well placed to enter nonremunerative fields (like writing) where it’s not the end of the world if they don’t make it.

The boys get together with their girlfriends in a cave while the boys recite passionate poetry. (I suppose this is sublimated sex.) Apparently there are no girl poets, or girl poetry readers. That said, the movie convincingly shows that being passionate about poetry is a virtue. Poets put into words our “inarticulate groans” and it’s wonderful when one finds a passage that strikes a chord within you that had never found its voice before and maybe didn’t even realize was there.

When I saw the movie I was (as the audience is meant to be) thrilled by Robert Sean Leonard finding his voice as Puck and horrified by his father’s subsequent yanking him from the school. Later I realized his point — the family is not rich and his father did not want to spend his money to have his son get inspired into entering a nonremunerative profession (like acting). He was probably a Depression baby, like my own father, who opposed my changing my major from math-physics to music to psychology — “why don’t you get into something serious??” I was the bright child (though all six of us are pretty smart) and he had the highest hopes for me. And indeed I had the highest hopes for going to college — it was a way of escaping my (conservative, unimaginative) home town. Even in sixth grade I drew “Yale” and “Harvard” and “Dartmouth” banners on my plastic scotch tape holder. And I applied to all those schools when I got to be a high school senior. Then we found out how much they would cost. To my father, who was not sophisticated as to such things, it was no big deal. Simply become a business major, and a genius like me would surely make enough coming out to pay back all those loans. As a Depression baby he simply couldn’t understand why I wanted to get into liberal things. So I applied to SUNY and of course got in. SUNY did not have a good reputation in those days. In other states, the state university is the place to go. In New York, SUNY, founded in 1948, played second or third fiddle to Columbia, NYU, Cornell, etc.

Kids going away to college get asked about it all the time, by adults who are genuinely curious or maybe living vicariously. I had been telling teachers and other adults about the high-aiming places I had applied to. When they asked again and I said I was going to SUNY, they were mortified. “You should be going to Harvard!” Of course, I couldn’t tell them the truth, that we couldn’t afford it.

Meanwhile I wrote to all the Ivy League places and canceled my applications. It was probably the worst disappointment of my life, especially considering what a downer SUNY turned out to be. But one letter apparently didn’t get though. I got an acceptance from Columbia. For a long time I considered whether to keep it or not. Finally I decided I couldn’t live a life of “what might have been”. I threw it out. I was a SUNY child, for better or worse. I didn’t get to travel as widely, and I never had a professor who I could really say was inspiring, but I did get to meet lots of people, in college and later, I probably wouldn’t have met otherwise.

Anyway . . . in light of all this I understand the father’s point of view in Dead Poets Society (this is a review of that movie!).

[Dr. Ed 2]

" In New York, SUNY, founded in 1948, played second or third fiddle to Columbia, NYU, Cornell, etc."

If I'm not mistaken, Cornell is New York's Land Grant College.

Between the three Morrill Acts, each state (and DC) has one and in most cases, it is the state university. The first Morrill Act, circa 1863, excluded the states in the Confederacy and the subsequent ones had a "separate but equal" provision where if the state university wasn't going to accept Black students, the state had to create a Black land grant university. This is where many of the HBCUs came from, and why they have A&M in their names.

There are three exceptions. Massachusetts split the grant giving the "A" (Scientific Agriculture) to what is now UMass and the "M" (Mechanical Arts or engineering) to MIT, which is private. I believe that New York gave its grant to the private Cornell, and the University of Vermont is some funky public/private conglomerate

But in most states, the state university is the land grant institution, which means it got established in the 19th Century with a solid basis in both agriculture and engineering, with the reputation that followed.

My guess -- just a guess -- is that SUNY was formed in response to the GI Bill and the large number of WWII vets returning to their hometowns throughout the state and interested in going to college.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Dr

Thanks.

Most of the SUNY colleges were preexisting as normal schools” and were known in my day as “Teacher’s Colleges”. Their function was to produce teachers. The four university centers (Albany, Buffalo, Binghamton and Stony Brook) had slightly higher prestige, The rest were “State University Colleges”. Like all state universities, even the best, tuition was free, an idea that is considered borderline Communist now.

When I was in the state student association (1979 or so) I found that New York was one of seven states that gave aid to private colleges. Only 2 people in the state legislature were SUNY graduates. This was not the situation in most other states.

My own college was particularly pathetic. We would graduate kids who couldn’t pass a fourth grade spelling test. Some of the more lefty professors gave political rally speeches instead of lectures. The president of the alumni association told me it was moribund because “no one wants to admit they went here”.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I forgot to mention Horace Mann and the Normal Schools -- my bad.

"The president of the alumni association told me it was moribund because “no one wants to admit they went here”.

It's more than just that....

First, in the past, female teachers first couldn't be married, and then later could be married but not have any children -- "pregnancy is considered a job resignation" was a standard clause well into the 1960s. So at least in K-8 (which is what the Normal Schools mostly produced), you needed a *lot* more teachers because they were only going to teach 2-3 years until they found a husband and started a family of their own. (This is where the tradition of June weddings came from -- if she got married in June, after the end of the school year, she would get the bonus for completing her contract.)

Second, before Baker v. Carr, state senate seats were apportioned by county, not population, as the US Senate seats are today. What this did in Maine -- and I assume New York as well -- was the senators from rural counties being able to insist on Normal Schools in their counties as the price of their support for Normal Schools in the populated counties. That's how Northern Maine wound up with four Normal Schools and Southern Maine only one (Gorham, now part of USM).

Third, as the state couldn't get teachers to go out into the remote areas to teach, the thought was to train the girls already living out there to become teachers.

And then once you get the college in your district, you're going to fight tooth & nail to keep it. Particularly as your local economy declines and population declines along with it.

Hence the University of Maine for Morons -- aka UMaine Machias -- wh\ich the state had to finally make an adjunct campus to UMaine Orono. It should have been shut down forty years ago, or combined with what is now Washington County Community College, and when I was there 35 years ago, it was graduating kids with fourth grade abilities. (I sometimes say that the Moose that wandered the campus were brighter than most of the students....)

Yes, Moose did wander the campus -- I realized they can swim when I saw one go over the waterfall and swim out to sea. Pretty campus, ugly politics, and STUPID students...

As to free tuition being considered communist -- the National Defense Student Loans were initially intended to be grants and memory is that the US Senate objected and insisted they instead be loans. That was circa 1958 and is where all of the student loans of today came from.

[Frank Drackman]

You gotta do "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" or "Dazed & Confused" allriteallriteallrite

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

The first time I saw it, I thought that "Dazed & Confused" was a documentary film....

[David Nieporent]

It was a biopic about Dr. Ed.

[Frank Drackman]

Yeah, right, Dr. Ed would be "Einstein" gettting punched out by "Clint"
Me OTOH, I'm total Wooderson, allriteallriteallrite, man you got dose Aerosmith tickets? letme showya wat Melba Toast be packin, 396, solid lifters high compression, we're talking some (redacted) mus-cle...
Frank "I do love those red heads"

[Magister]

I think that his son acting was an embarrassment that went beyond its possible remuneration. Unlike writing, acting is necessarily a public thing, even if only pursued to the side of a lucrative profession. (Clearly the father has substantial means if he can send his son to a private school.)

It's a very good movie, but it's also kind of lazy to set living life on your own terms against an especially repressive segment of 1950s society. We cheer for the brave non-conformists but at least some of them are, as their teacher laments, choking on the bones.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Not necessarily.

Back in the 1950s, a lot of towns didn't have a high school so what they would do is give each student (who wanted to go to high school) a stipend which the parents could take wherever they wanted, adding to with their own money to pay the tuition of the chosen school. My mother's parents did this, it was common back then.

School consolidation, where upwards of a dozen towns would share one high school, arrived in the 1960s and hence it isn't as common as it once was, but it's still somewhat common in Maine. That was the underlying basis of the 2022 SCOTUS decision about tuition to religious schools -- see https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supreme-court-maine-bar-religious-schools-state-tuition/story?id=85531884

But back in the 1950s? My grandfather was a lobsterman and subsistence farmer, he didn't have a whole lot of money and she was the only one of their three children they sent to high school. And to college. And while it was different for women, who were expected to marry, I can see this level of practicability. After all, her two older brothers got lobster licenses.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Something messed up -- I wanted to add one more thing:

A high school student circa 1950 would have been born circa 1930 -- the high school students of the 1950s were the "children of the Depression", not their parents. Their parents had been adults during the "Roaring Twenties" and while rural areas didn't share in that prosperity, they definitely did in the losses of the 1930s, particularly the bank failures and the pennies on the dollars people got on their bank deposits.

The true "Children of the Depression were born between 1928 and 1938 -- and very few of them were born.

[Frank Drackman]

and none would become POTUS (unless there's some 85yo "Dark Horse" out there) big draught from Jimmuh Cartuh/GHWB in 1924 to the trio of "W" William Juffuhson, and "45" in 1946 and another one until Barry Hussein in 1961, amazing to me that our "Youngest" POTUS is 62...

Frank

[Magister]

The film is set in 1959, so you're off by 10 years; those high school students would be born after the Depression.
The school appears to be an elite prep school, so it would be unlikely to accept students on a public stipend, although I don't know if it might have offered scholarships.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Many did -- it often was a combination of stipend, scholarship, and parent's money.

[Magister]

Given Dr. Ed 2's track record, it's most prudent to believe the exact opposite.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Notwithstanding the undisputed facts in a SCOTUS case....

Whatever...

[Magister]

What Supreme Court case covers the frequent admission and financial aid of poor students in elite prep schools? Your poor track record in comments here is apparent under any number of posts.

[David Nieporent]

Serious question: did you explore financial aid from those schools? I think you're older than I am, and even 35 years ago financial aid wasn't the big industry it is now — but the schools weren't so insanely expensive back then, either. Obviously much more than public schools, which were often nearly free for in-state applicants, but manageable with grants and loans.

[Mr. Bumble]

FWIW, I’ve posted this before. In New Jersey the tuition at the state colleges (formerly normal schools and now universities) was $75.00/semester for up to 18 credits. Circa 1967.

No need for financial aid for most people.

[Michael P]

But did you have climbing walls in the gymnasium and waffle stations in the cafeteria? Where are your priorities?!

[Dr. Ed 2]

But circa 1980, I suspect it was a whole lot higher.
Circa 1980, I would have been *very* happy with a $75 per credit hour charge, as it was a whole lot more....

Jack Welch stated in his autobiography that he went to UMass because it was only $50/year (that was the 1950s).

[Frank Drackman]

$75 was a shitload of money in 1967, with inflation would be $685/Semester OK, not overbearing but not something D'andr'e or J'ama'al', would have in pocket (spent that much at a restaurant the other night, hey, gotta reward the "normies") what was gas back then? 32 cents/gallon? Everyone forgets to factor in inflation!

Frank

[Mr. Bumble]

Not a shitload, but good money for working class people.
Minimum wage was a $1.40/hour so a 40 hour week @min. would be $56.00 before taxes.
Median wage for families was around $7500.00 so with a little budgeting $75 was doable. There were also scholarships from various sources which would help with the extras (room and board, books etc.)
Try to find a college today with tuition of $685.00.
FYI, gas was in the mid to high 20 cent range/gallon depending on brand, season and location in NJ at the time. We would find enough change in the seat cushions to cruise for the weekend.

[Mr. Bumble]

For a larger perspective:
The median price of a home was $21,000.00.
Mortgage rates were approximately 6.5%.
Interest on savings (banks and S&Ls) 5%.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Minimum wage was a $1.40/hour so a 40 hour week @min. would be $56.00 before taxes."

Two weeks would be $112 before taxes, and as you weren't working the rest of the year, you'd be in an ultra-low tax bracket even if you had to pay taxes. But let's say three weeks....

You could pay your next year's tuition by only working half of the summer. You can't do that now!

[Magister]

Financial aid offers when I applied in the late 1970s seemed based on the idea that all of a family's resources would be applied to sending that one child to college. My parents could only have paid for me at an Ivy League school by not sending my siblings to college.

[Frank Drackman]

My parents were “Rich” (AF Officer and Civilian RN) but I still made a point of getting an ROTC Scholarship, what was the big deal?? march some, run some, I was an Ath-uh-lete, wear the Uniform one day a week (by 1981, in Alabama, it wasn’t a bad thang) and I didn’t have to put up with that “We’re paying for your College so you’ll (insert unpleasant family event)" (redacted)

Frank

[Dan Schiavetta]

That was my impression too.

[Dan Schiavetta]

D Nieporent,

We were a little too high income for the EOP program, and I was not a minority. The only "scholarship" I got was a measly $250/year "Regents Scholarship" for having good grades. Of the other kids, one didn't go to college, two went on sports scholarships, one went on an ROTC scholarship, and the last stayed home and went to the local community college.

In retrospect, I should have stayed off the books and concentrated on baseball and basketball. Going for the grades was one of the three big mistakes I made in high school. The others were saving up for college (I saved up almost $4000, but it counted against my financial aid and was spent by the end of freshman year) and staying away from drugs (I realized later that to say "no" to drugs was also to say "no" to sex, at least where I was). I should have spent the $ (which I earned in the family deli) and had a good time instead of saving up for a fantasy world which never came. But I was always the responsible one!

As for financial aid, when it came to Ivy League schools my father had no interest in making it possible for me to study useless things like psychology and music (or get indoctrinated by radical sociology professors). He thought I should just go for the business degree and that was that. Though he did end up saying that I should go to SUNY just for the first two years. He worked out the loans I would need and said they would be do-able. (I stayed in SUNY until the end, and the loans were indeed do-able even though I was into my human services career.)

As I say, he was not sophisticated in such matters. Few people were, in those days. I come from big families, and most of my aunts and uncles didn't even finish high school. That was in the 1940's and 1950's, when one didn't need a high school diploma to get a secure, steady job.

Thanks for asking!

[Dilan Esper]

I agree with Roger Ebert on Dead Poets Society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGstXzKev5w

More generally, I think Robin Williams (and I know the Academy disagrees with me, as they gave him an Oscar) far overestimated his dramatic talents. In every dramatic role he came off to me as artificial, as like no person I ever met in life. (That's totally fine when you playing Mork from Ork, Popeye, or the DJ in Good Morning Vietnam of course.) And he was always full of cloying sentimentality- I always wanted one of the other characters in the movie to just murder his character. And that includes the character he played in Dead Poets Society (the same character he played in Patch Adams, which was also a bad performance).

He should have stuck to comedies. He was very funny and he died too young.

[Dr. Ed 2]

He died (committed suicide) because he wasn't funny anymore.

I forget exactly what the autopsy found, but it was something *real* (i.e. not psychological) and memory is degenerative. Memory is that it would itself have become fatal in a few years.

Maybe one of the MDs here would care to fill in the details, all I remember is that it *wasn't* just depression, but that there was something really wrong with him.

As to his humor, it was textbook ADHD -- all the way back to his problems in K-12 and if his father hadn't been an auto executive, he'd probably have wound up in prison. ADHD can be a gift if one is able to use it, otherwise a curse.

But his life ended, indirectly, because something biologically went bad.

[Frank Drackman]

It's called ""Autoerotic Asphyxiation" (Not "Drowning" there's a difference) Like the way David Carradine went out (I love "Kung Fu")
OK, a diplomatic Medical Examiner (most aren't diplomatic, weird)
will call it "Suicidal Hanging" or "Suicide by Asphyxiation ((Not "Drowning" there's a difference)
Hey, if I have to go, I hope it's "Autoerotically" (Not drowning next to Ted Kennedy (There's a difference)

Frank

[Dilan Esper]

I think Michael Hutchence of INXS may have committed suicide the same way.

And that one hit me hard. I loved INXS and Hutchence.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Lewy body dementia.
Not quite sure what it is, but Robin Williams had it.

[David Nieporent]

He should have stuck to comedies. He was very funny and he died too young.

Eh. I hated pretty much all his comedies. Even if I weren't Jewish, I wouldn't want all that ham. DPS is about the only thing I liked him in. I guess he was good in Good Will Hunting, also.

[Frank Drackman]

Hate to say this, but Adam Sandler is way funnier.

[Dilan Esper]

Comedy is obviously a matter of taste, but for instance, I found the radio monologues in Good Morning Vietnam funny as hell. And they sold the story- you understood exactly why the troops would love the guy and the brass wouldn't.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Those were all extemp as well -- none of that was in the script.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Yes, the Ebert review opened my eyes to some problems with the movie I hadn’t noticed when I was in the target audience.

The movie is best appreciated by teenagers who are too full of themselves.

[Magister]

Siskel and Ebert! Blast from the past. I generally agreed with Ebert more often than Siskel, but not for this one. (And the criticism of the scene where he comes "uncomfortably close to his night club persona"? You might as well complain that an actor is too much more attractive than the character they portray would believably be.)

Williams had some outstanding dramatic performances.

[Dan Schiavetta]

He was good in Good Will Hunting. But he was never “himself”. He was always “on”. You can see this in his interviews. He was not good at scenes where his character is being quiet, introspective, playing second fiddle, the focus on someone else.

I don’t have it listed in my future “reviews” but he was good in Moscow on the Hudson, a movie derided at the time but showing a lot of heart and a good sense of how grateful immigrants are to be here. And how to many of them young people here are pissing it all away.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I’m thinking of this scene

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL-Up0ej8Vo

[Syd Henderson]

Moscow on the Hudson is very good. I liked María Conchita Alonso a lot, too.

Interesting that Williams was really good in "One Hour Photo" and "Insomnia" playing creepy characters.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Captcrisis, he was textbook ADHD....

[Sarcastr0]

You diagnose people you've never met, while whining about being misdiagnosed yourself.

[F.D. Wolf]

On this day in legal history, July 22, 1939, Jane Matilda Bolin became the first black female judge in the United States when New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia appointed her to a seat on the city’s Domestic Relations Court (renamed Family Court in 1962). Bolin was re-appointed three times, serving on the bench for 40 years before reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70. For twenty years, she was the only black female judge in the country. She had also been the first black woman to graduate from Yale Law School and the first to join the New York City Bar Association. She passed away in 2007 at the age of 98.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Bolin

[Mr. Bumble]

Thanks. Maybe you should add this as a daily feature.

[JoeSaysStuff]

Can the conservative justices start to retire now so expansion won't be necessary? Ha ha.

[Mr. Bumble]

Nope. Following the RBG precedent.

[JoeSaysStuff]

So they will die and a liberal president will pick their replacements? Guess it is a matter of waiting.

[Dr. Ed 2]

A (small "l") liberal President would be a Godsend.

Dementia Joe is not such a man....

[The Margrave of Azilia]

The waiting is the hardest part.

[Mark Regan]

"Voted down President Roosevelt's Court-Packing plan, 70-20," is not quite right. Court-packing supporters had essentially given up after Majority Leader Robinson's death and discussions on the train going back from Little Rock to D.C. after the funeral. The vote was on sending the plan, and other things, back to committee. If it had been a straight up-or-down vote on the plan, Senator Hiram Johnson would not have sought and received the assurance that "the Supreme Court is out of the way," and he would not have responded by throwing his arms up in the air and exclaiming, "Glory Be to God!"

[Dr. Ed 2]

I don't understand -- but then, I never knew that Court Packing had actually ever made it to a vote...

[Frank Drackman]

I know this would take a Constitutional amendment, (or 2) and won't happen anytime soon...
but Originally, POTUS/VPOTUS were to be chosen by Electors chosen mostly by the State Legislatures, didn't take long to become chosen by popular vote in the "Several" states,
US Senators chosen by the State Legislatures, eventually chosen by popular vote (have you seen your local State Legislature? I trust the popular vote)
So why not Surpreme Court Judges?? Yes, my first time voting in 1980 I was confused why there were no Surpreme Judges to vote on, Yes, would take an Amendment, end of lifetime terms (or maybe just an erection for a new Surpreme?)
Would love to see Big Brain Brett on the Campaign trail "I like Beer!", Gore-Sucks, even be nice to see Amy C-B let her hair down.
I know, Checks/Balances, probably be better to have "45" or Vivek-Swami in their to nominate Kagan/Sotomayor/Thomas/Roberts/Alito replacements.

Frank

[JoeSaysStuff]

If you want, you can check out how state judges run for office, including their campaign ads.

The Constitution gave the states discretion on how to pick electors. State legislatures weren't the only way to go.

A few people want federal judges chosen by popular vote. I'm not a fan. I rather have some sort of commission process.

The current process is somewhat imperfect though it does provide some room for the popular will. We just pick the people who choose and vote for them.

Kavanaugh basically "campaigned" by his votes on the court of appeals and later his testimony (including the "own the libs" ranting).

[Frank Drackman]

"Popular Vote" erected Ted Kennedy (Who......) in 1962, 1964, 1970, 1976, 1982, 1988, 1984, 2000, 2006,
and would have been re-erected in 2012 if he wasn't dead (seen our current POTUS??

Frank "I like Beer!" (who doesn't?)

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

What will be generally acknowledged in 2050 as the most direct precipitate of the Supreme Court enlargement of the 2020s?

__ abortion
__ guns
__ bigotry in general
__ religious privilege
__ ethics scandal
__ polarization/Democratic electoral victories
__ other

[David Nieporent]

Troll better.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I'll celebrate victory in the culture war as I wish, just as this blog's fans get to deal with being on the wrong side of history and the losing end of the culture war as they wish.

Do you figure Court enlargement is so unlikely as to be unworthy of discussion? You might be spending too much time with disaffected culture war casualties and doomed Federalist Society members. This was the Washington Post's lead story a few weeks ago.

See you down the road apiece, clingers.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

If your side, the gay side, was winning the Culture Wars, how do you explain the woes of the likes of Disney and Bud Light, and the shrinking tax bases of Blue States?

[Dr. Ed 2]

It's not even that -- we now are seeing the rainbow shred -- starting with Gays Against Grooming.

[David Nieporent]

Do you figure Court enlargement is so unlikely as to be unworthy of discussion?

Yes.

That a handful of left wing cranks who aren't smart enough to figure out that there's no endgame to court enlargement want it doesn't mean it would happen. And that's setting aside that the votes aren't there; the GOP is likely to take the senate in 2024 (while the Dems retake the House).

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

If better Americans must wait until 2028 to address issues such as ethics and expansion with respect to the Supreme Court, that will not be an enormous problem.

The culture war's losers -- the discredited, obsolete, overmatched, unattractive minority -- are unlikely to hold on to outsized relevance at the national level much longer. They likely will continue to lord over the shambling backwaters -- Wyoming, West Virginia, Alabama, some west Texas counties, and the like -- for some time, but that will not matter much except to the depleted human residue remaining in those desolate southern and rural stretches.

The tide of modern American progress -- reason, education, science, modernity, inclusiveness, diminution of unearned privilege, fairness -- has been improving our nation for more than a half-century. America just keeps getting better, mostly against the wishes and efforts of conservatives.

[Brett Bellmore]

People keep saying that. Of course there's an end game, and it's obvious: You pack the Court, and then you fortify the elections in a way an unpacked Court wouldn't have upheld, and the other guys never get their turn to repack it, or retaliate in any other (legal) way.

Court packing, however unlikely it seems, is no laughing matter. If it happens, it will indicate that the party doing it has decided to disembark from Erdogan's trolly, NOT that they're seeking some momentary advantage.

Granted, the votes aren't presently there, unless they pull some really hinky parliamentarian maneuvers there'd be no going back from, so I don't expect it to happen until Democrats have a non-trivial majority in both chambers, and the White house. Which doesn't seem hugely likely in the very near future, but it's not totally off the table, either.

I really think an amendment taking it off the table has to be a high priority. But there's enough support for Court packing, (And it's inevitable follow up.) among Democrats that you're not going to get them agreeing to such an amendment. Too many of them want it kept on the table.

My advice to Republicans, should they get a majority in both chambers: Pass a Congressional resolution declaring that, because language purporting to limit a constitutional convention is nugatory, it's proper to add up ALL the current calls for a convention regardless of language, and that the threshold has thus been met.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Republicans have one hope: Make bigotry, backwardness, ignorance, and superstition more popular in modern America. Otherwise, conservatives are doomed, and they know it, and they deserve it.

[bernard11]

More paranoid fantasies from Brett about the evil, monolithic left plotting to destroy democracy in the US.

Meanwhile he ignores the fact that it is Republicans who are, in actual fact, working hard to entrench themselves in power, by fair means or foul (with more than a little help from SCOTUS).

[David Nieporent]

Of course there’s an end game, and it’s obvious: You pack the Court, and then you fortify the elections in a way an unpacked Court wouldn’t have upheld, and the other guys never get their turn to repack it, or retaliate in any other (legal) way.

I meant one that a sane person believes.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

That a handful of left wing cranks who aren’t smart enough to figure out that there’s no endgame to court enlargement

The Court has been enlarged more than once. Was there similar "there's no end to this" handwringing then, too?

[Dr. Ed 2]

It was enlarged because (a) justices rode circuit back then and (b) the number of circuits were increased.

That was a long time ago in a very different country -- it's 500 miles to Puerto Rico and 3000 to Hawaii -- horses can swim, but not that far...

[David Nieporent]

The Court's size has not changed in 160 years. That it changed several times in the earlier days of the republic is irrelevant to modern norms. And while everyone was cognizant of how changes in the composition of the Supreme Court would give to or take away from opportunities for the president to make appointments, none of them were as nakedly partisan as "Let's create some more seats to reverse specific decisions we don't like."

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I have not researched this exhaustively but there are indications some of the changes in Court size were motivated by partisanship.

[Frank Drackman]

WTF you to be asking about the future?? You haven't coached a game since. umm
1999, OK all ready to bust your balls, but the Nittily Lions (HT Barry Hussein) beat Ohio State and finished with a win over Texas A&M (in the SEC we hate the Aggies, they get in after years of that low rent SWC and think they're gonna win Titles, if it wasn't for Johhny Manziel, they'd be the Vanderbilt of the SEC West, actually, they are the Vanderbilt of the SEC West, even that cheater Jim-Blow-Fish-er can't save them.

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

Washington, DC, June 1, 2050

In a 66,000-33,000 decision, the US Supreme Court ruled today that burning a woman at the stake for the crime of aborting her baby is not a violation of the 8th Amendment.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You overestimate the prospects of backwardness, bigotry, superstition, backwardness, dogma, ignorance, and insularity in America's predictable future. There are fewer clingers in America every day. That trend is going to continue, just as the tide of liberal-libertarian progress is destined to continue to shape America's future.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Dream on....

[hoppy025]

Turning America from a white Christian nation into a cesspool of low IQ third worlders and white transgender groomers is not "progress."

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Ditching religion is an important element of progress. Reason is superior to superstition,

[hoppy025]

Except that the third worlders have religion, just worse ones.

[hoppy025]

https://nypost.com/2023/07/22/shark-tanks-daymond-john-granted-restraining-order-against-former-contestants

Why are judges allowed to get away with making clearly unconstitutional rulings, time and time again?

[AmosArch]

I wish progs respected the rights of full term innocent babies as much as they do for actual brutal murderers of women, you know the ones that actually kill women and rape them rather than the class of 'killers' that take the lion's share of feminist rage who figuratively 'kill' women by being mildly skeptical of free tampons and taxpayer funded abortion clinics every five feet..

[Dan Schiavetta]

thanks

[Mr. Bumble]

The things that you'll learn on Conspiracy Street.

[Krayt]

"Wow! We're free, and from the death penalty at that! All that careful work and planning. What should we do now?"

"Act like loudmouth idiots calling attention to ourselves?"

[Dr. Ed 2]

Leads me to conclude that they should have been executed earlier.

[Drewski]

Little early in the morning to be drinking, isn't it?

[Mr. Bumble]

Karma?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Yes, decriminalizing rape.

Our current concept of rape comes from an earlier era where it was presumed that every unmarried woman was a chaste virgin and that any sexual intercourse outside of marriage was inherently rape unless she said otherwise.

That's still the legal standard today, notwithstanding the fact that the presumption of chaste virginity is long gone, and that sexually liberated women routinely initiate sexual encounters.

The fact that Donald Trump can be guilty of having raped someone who can't even specify the day he did it shows how much of a glaring lack of due process we now have. Where seventy years ago you would defame a man by calling him a Communist, now you merely need to call him a rapist.

And that is bullshyte!

[David Nieporent]

Lol, this guy!

Look, it makes perfect sense: rape isn't something bad, like coming into the United States to wash dishes, pick crops, clean houses, or work construction without a passport.

Prostitutes deserve to be murdered. Rape? Eh, no big deal.

[Magister]

These Dr. Ed 2 comments are worse than his frequent fantasies of violent death for his enemies.

The Uniform Crime Report definition of rape, for statistical purposes, is "Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim." States vary in their definitions of rape, of course; in the E. Jean Carroll case, "rape" would have required a finding of penetration by Trump's penis, but the finding of "sexual abuse" matches the Uniform Crime Report definition.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Actually, I'd like to bring the "show resistance" requirement back too.

And as to E. Jean Carroll, let's bring back Dunking Ponds.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"without the consent of the victim."

THEN, not thirty years later....

Facts notwithstanding, and 30 years ago, Trump could have had more willing women than he could ever have handled, but I'd have loved Trump to say something like this:

"She said "fuck me, fuck me, I want you in my ass and as it was clear to me that she was irrational and possibly mentally ill, I got the hell out of there."

It would be so priceless for someone to say something like this -- perjury, it's the same burden of 30-years-later proof that Trump had.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Some slut having second thoughts about her most recent tryst the next morning versus you losing *your* job washing dishes, picking crops, cleaning houses, or working construction because some illegal alien has stolen it?

Which affects you personally?

And prostitutes, like drunk drivers, often get what they deserve.

Some of us live in the real world, where things often aren't pretty.

[Nige]

Give it time, there's room for a third defamation case.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

These are your fans, Volokh Conspirators.

Your disaffected, incel, grievance-consumed, bigoted, right-wing, faux libertarian fans.

And the reason you are stuck at the disrespected fringe of modern legal academia, huddling with the other obsolete misfits at Federalist Society events.

[Nige]

Do you ever say these things out loud? Where other people can hear them?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

He says them at a white, male, right-wing, on-the-spectrum blog, where his comments are welcomed by plenty of similarly situated clingers!

[Frank Drackman]

Nige bot trying to comprehend the concept of beings who don't agree with him (it? she?)

[Nige]

edgebot really straining for something to say

[Dr. Ed 2]

Bilgebot never having lost a menial - but - needed job to a woman or a minority doesn't quite understand.

How about we give bar cards to all the illegal aliens?

That'd change some opinions quite quickly...

[Dr. Ed 2]

The concept of denying having committed a heinous crime being defamation is why a lot of people think that Shakespeare was right.

[Nige]

The concept of denying something without committing defamation is a bit much to expect Trump to grasp. Or you.

[bernard11]

Actually, I’d like to bring the “show resistance” requirement back too.

What an odious psychopath you are.

Let's say you are walking down the street and a great big guy making threatening gestures demands your wallet. Do you give it to him, or do you resist? Suppose you don't resist. Do you think the mugger should get off on the grounds that you didn't resist, and just gave him your wallet out of friendship?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Am I waving fistfulls of cash in his face?

[bernard11]

What difference would that make?

Frankly, it disgusts me that you worked at UMass, and a fraction of a penny of my taxes found its way into your pocket.

[Dr. Ed 2]

There was a time when we expected parents to provide for their children, :that would include paying for their own post natal care.

Of course we could enact "sin taxes" on things like bikinis and miniskirts and use that to fund post natal care -- we already do that on alcohol and tobacco.