Very nice. Also…
You Can’t Hurry Law
Where Did Our Law Go
but perhaps most apt:
Stoned Law
That is the claim, and it’s wrong.
~Max
Re: CA v TX – the suit (by a TX person with standing) would/should happen BEFORE the election
Brian
Yes, let’s do, sue every other trump voting voter suppression state. Voter suppression- once upon a time- was illegal.
Others have said it but, if TX had filed suit before the election because they felt the rules in PA or wherever disenfranchised the voters of TX then maybe, MAYBE, they would have an argument. Personally I doubt it but hey, IANAL.
What Paxton is actually saying is “We don’t like the fact these other states had a majority of voters vote against our guy so that must mean there is fraud and we shouldn’t have to prove it since it is SO OBVIOUS and want the votes tossed because we are a bunch of cry babies who don’t care about the Constitution or rule of law and besides I want a pardon for getting caught being a crook.”
Or something like that.
Looking through the Texas filing, I couldn’t help but think of the ‘Sovereign Citizen’ thread topic:
If I take all these arguments that have been debunked time and time again, and wrap them in quasi-legal verbiage that contains the magic words, the Court will have to agree with me and award me the requested remedy! Never mind that said remedy is both completely unwarranted and disproportionate to the alleged offense.
I also detect hints of the Gambler’s Fallacy (“00 hasn’t hit in the four hours I’ve been betting on it — it’s gotta hit now!”).
It reeks a bit of the hard core Trumpists who’ve been repeating over and over to be patient, because there’s a plan. The Supreme Court hasn’t been taking the cases, but, ha ha, now a case is filed directly in the Supreme Court! Now is the time that they will deliver the win!
Anyone else noticed that Don Trump sounds an awful lot like John Frum? 
I’m stealing that. Especially shuddering incompetence.
And now the count is eighteen – Arizona has sent an amicus curiae. 
Funny our esteemed law makers – Republicans all – didn’t question the results here.
As much as they dislike Trump and cringe at some of the right wing’s tactics of late - and I have no doubt that they genuinely do cringe - they nevertheless refuse to take a stand against it because they still view themselves as beneficiaries of anti-democratic behavior. It’s kinda analogous to a meat lover turning his head at the sight of a slaughter: he doesn’t like the slaughter, but you damn well better believe he’ll savor the meat.
“Well I mean, it’s dead anyway, right? May as well eat it up.”
In your hypo, the neighbor is causing you a nuisance which causes you a direct harm which confers standing. There really is no good hypo that I can come up with due to the unique nature of our electoral college system.
The best I can do is say that we live in a neighborhood on a cul de sac. There are nine houses. We form a committee of nine people (one per house) who then decide things like the paving, the speed limits, are bicycles allowed, appropriate yard displays, etc. on the cul de sac. Everything else is left to the individual homeowners to do as they please.
Further we have certain rules about how each house selects its one representative. We say each house can make up its own rules about how it chooses the representative, but that the rules must be in place before the decision is made, and everyone in the house gets a say on how the representative is selected.
So, the “election” happens and your house chooses your representative and follows all of the rules. In my house, we choose a representative, but disregard the input of my alcoholic brother in law who is sleeping on the couch. You want to argue that my representative is invalid because I didn’t follow the rules.
I argue no standing, and I should win because:
You are not harmed. Your house got its one representative. That is all you were entitled to. You may say that, yes that is true, but you want your one representative voting with eight others who were also elected by properly following the rules. The respondent states in this case have cited oodles of case law saying that what you are asking for is just a general idea that laws should be followed. That is not enough for standing nor is it a legal harm. You have to point to a specific and concrete way that you are harmed.
But you say that you are harmed because my representative was the “swing vote” that made the difference. You allege that your representative is in a 5-4 minority on the committee and that if I had followed the rules, I would have chosen a different representative placing you in a 5-4 majority. As it now stands your favorite proposal, say repaving the cul de sac, will be voted down 5-4 and your injury is that you have to live on a poorly paved street.
The states have cited oodles of case law that says that is too attenuated. Although we can point to a path starting with me telling my drunk brother in law to shut the fuck up all the way through you sitting on your front porch frowning at the unpaved street, everything in life is connected by a series of events. You would have standing for anything and anyone. Why, indeed, couldn’t you sue my mother for raising someone who didn’t respect the wishes of his alcoholic brother in law?
There’s more, but I have to run.
what the hell is “new califonia” and “new nevada” ?
That lawyer deserves to be sanctioned. That’s insane.
I like how he repeatedly got the Governor of California’s name spelled wrong. Solid work, crazy person.
One of the things you’re required to do when asking permission to appear as Amici is identify who your client is and why they have an interest in the case. He never identifies “New California” or “New Nevada.” I predict they strike his pleading.
Make no mistake: this is a secessionist movement. It may or may not be one in the “breakaway republic” sense, but it’s a secession from liberal democracy and a secession from the standard interpretation of the constitution and the rule of law.
The movement is farcical on its face - but once you realize the implications, it’s not a farce at all; it’s a potentially fatal assault to democracy and the constitutional republicanism as we know it.
The real point behind all of these lawsuits to nowhere is not that they think they won an election; it’s that the election doesn’t matter. It’s not that they believe they believe for a moment that thee law is on their side; it’s that the law doesn’t matter.
If you wonder why justices with a reputation for being solidly conservative, even to the point of being accused of being conservative partisans, are not keen to go along with these lawsuits, it’s probably because even they can see what the conservatives are doing, and they understand that they would only be signing a death warrant for judicial independence and co-equal powers under the Constitution.
When do courts stop entertaining lawsuits from obviously incompetent, or mentally ill, or those seeking to get a pardon for their own past criminal behavior?
I mean, these lawsuits are simply idiotic on their face.
They pretty much have stopped entertaining them, but they can’t stop people from filing lawsuits.
The people filing the lawsuits know that they’re insane in terms of the law, but as I said above, they know that. The purpose of the lawsuit is to build a movement - a movement of millions of people who ultimately say “the law does not matter.”
That is what you are seeing here.
If the 23 states which voted for Trump seceded, I wonder what kind of national governmental structure they would choose? Would they make any changes that would enhance the representative democratic process or would they simply retain federalism, the EC, two senators per state, etc.?
Conservatives never participate in these kinds of “how do we change things for the better” threads on either of my boards so I honestly don’t know how fervently they actually support the US constitution structurally.