SCOTUS case: A non-partisan example from today.

Even though I’m not American, I have definitely shared in the funk brought to the globe by Trump. I get particularly depressed when I think about SCOTUS - so much power held by so few over so many (and in a nation with so much power affecting so many).

And yet, there are cases like this one***** where the bedfellows seem strange indeed. Ginsburg and Gorsuch, Thomas and Kagan.

I know which side I’d be on, and it’s not the one I would have predicted. Reading the decision - the opinion and dissents - gives me a wee bit of happiness. Maybe ‘happiness’ is the wrong word. It’s just something positive for a change, or what I consider to be positive: that there can be genuinely non-partisan issues and deliberation. I doubt I am alone here in feeling at times as if I am drowning in an uninterrupted wave of depressing political news. This case seems removed from the flood and I find it soothing.

(*the case itself has to do with ‘substantial evidence’ in government & administrative law and the rules governing its content, credibility, and application.)

Funny, because this case involved an issue that is extremely relevant to just about every day of my job.

There is a GREAT DEAL of back story that contributed to the outcome. While the majority’s decision will definitely make my job easier in some ways, I thought their reasoning somewhat odd. Of course, it is not uncommon for the Supremes to seek an easy “technical” way out without resolving the related realities. Of course, the oral arguments and briefs had little to do with the practicalities involved.

Gee, Gorsuch really wants to suck Easterbrook’s dick, doesn’t he? And let me say again, Posner sure was an asshole!