A dissent is an “opinion” inasmuch as it’s a written statement of how that particular justice interprets the law. However, a dissent is not binding precedent. Dissenting opinions may be cited in future legal briefs and such for persuasive purposes, but they are not “law,” and judges of lower courts are not obligated to comport with their reasoning.
That’s OK, but I did mean a written dissent. Now, since my comment has generated some comments, I’d like to get it straightened out (if possible). Again, I’m not well-versed in law, and am only operating on scant knowledge and guesswork.
At any rate, to put this in context, the original comments were:
Captain Amazing’s argument is pretty clear, I think: Most conservative Justice leads to lack of consensus, which results in fewest written opinions. It seems natural to me that if that line of reasoning holds, the converse would hold also – the most liberal Justice would have difficulty gaining consensus and would also have few written opinions.
I’d think that someone who follows the SC might be able to venture a guess as to whether that’s the case or not. And even if it’s not the case, of course there are multiple explanations for why; perhaps liberal views are more centrist and thus easier to build consenus around, or the most liberal Justice just happens to be more extroverted than other Justices, etc., etc. But I think it’s a faulty argument.
Honestly, I don’t know…since I’m not familiar with the range of the SC’s decisions, much less who has written what opinions, I’m not really in a position to argue at this depth. However, if Captain Amazing’s argument (that the small number of opinions is due to CT’s conservatism) is faulty, then there is some other explanation for the dearth of CT opinions, one of which may simply be that, yes, CT is/was unqualified.
Please, where is the evidence that Anita Hill made up lies about Thomas again?
Reasonable men could disagree as to the utility of concurring or dissenting opinions. Some may think they plant the seed for a future court to get right the point the dissenter/concurrer thinks they got wrong. And that’s not crazy – earlier non-majority opinions, even if not having any weight of authority, can provide a road map for a later court to apply a rationale that it considers persuasive.
Some may think that dissents/concurrences are just blather, as they don’t affect the ultimate outcome, or that concurrences are just tangential detours into issues that weren’t really squarely presented to the court. And that’s not crazy. If CT falls into this camp, and often finds himself an outlier in the vote, that might explain partially the low number of opinions.
I’m reminded of Salvator Rosa’s self-portrait, with the Latin inscription that translates: “Remain silent unless what you have to say is better than silence.”
Mostly here.
Regards,
Shodan
There’s also the book The Real Anita Hill, although, considering the author’s subsequent statements and follow-up book, it’s got to be a bit difficult to read without a hefty serving of salt.
Eh, I don’t think he’s going to be a first ballot hall-of-famer, but that’s not all that often been the point. SCOTUS appointments are a perk for the President and generally reflect his ideology (personally, I think it’s the place where the “Checks and Balances” aren’t).
However, Bush I had just been burned by Souter. He wanted a conservative, and he wanted to avoid having another Bork and have his first choice get voted down by the Democratic-controlled congress, so he (or his people) came up with a brilliant idea…a black conservative with not much of a paper trail. They knew the Democrats wouldn’t have the guts not to approve a black man.
So that’s why Clarence Thomas, and not Bozo the Clown, is a sitting Supreme Court Justice, and there’s bupkis anyone can do about it for the rest of his life. Them’s the breaks.
And it doesn’t look like any of the conservatives on the court are going anywhere for the next 8 years, so all progressives can do is tread water, unless somebody can get some Pelican Brief-type action going.
This is why I can’t really get why anyone’s griping over CT’s having turned out to be a fairly hard-core right winger. Souter, Kennedy, O’Connor, Stevens, all Republican appointees, “grew in office” to become something between fence-sitters and screaming lefties. I think at least three of those four were Catholics and could hypothetically have been counted on/feared to dismantle Roe. Didn’t happen. By contrast Dem appointees (or non-Catholic/liberal/Jewish appointees) have not in recent memory strayed off the reservation or defied expectations. So to the unfortunate extent that the nomination game has become a “get one of our guys in who’ll reliably enact our agenda,” CT was merely proof that (up through that point) the GOP was batting a pretty anemic .200 in effectuating this goal, whereas the libs were putting up Hall of Fame numbers in that regard.
I think some of this might have to do with how you define “rightie” and “lefty” in a judge/justice.
I’m sure many many people will disagree with me, but I think it may take a more extreme and rigid personality and philosophy for a justice with a lifetime appointment to retain what are commonly considered “conservative” judicial views. In my non-expert opinion, much of what is denoted “judicial activism” reflects judicial concerns with the hardships that “strict construction” would impose upon many people - most frequently the historically less fortunate.
Is there any debate that, as fantastic as the Constitution is, it was drawn up by - in large part to favor the interests of - wealthy, white, male property owners. And I think a good argument can be made that in many respects moneyed interests have readier access to obatining favorable legislation, as well as enforcement of existing legislation.
So, stated imprecisely, I’d suggest that unless one is a zealot, being appointed to the Supremes has the effect of swaying justices more to the center/left than in the other direction.
Your take on it is one way of looking at it.
Another is that life tenure inculcates a hubris, a Philosopher King mentality, inducing judges to Solomonically parcel out (create?) rights – to become benevolent despots, if you will. O’Connor’s opinions in the two Michigan race-quota cases were self-indulgent exercises in angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin baby splitting: this quota – not acceptable. That other quota – acceptable; but, like, maybe for only 25 years. I read an interview with Stevens defending the pro-sodomy opinion; the arrogance with which he defended imposing what were obviously nothing other than his personal, Washington-cocktail-circuit, liberal views, claiming all the while that it was the Constitution which compelled this result, was breathtaking.
A final factor behind the “growing in office” phenomenon: as mentioned, Justices find themselves the legal equivalent of rock stars, law dorks who are suddenly celebs. Most of the attention paid to them and their prononcements comes from the mainstream media and especially, the law professoriat, both of which bodies are skewed way to the left. In which direction does the human-nature impulse to be liked and showered with praise, then, impel them? Isn’t it plausible that a weak-minded jurist (O’Connor) would take a tack that led to her drivel being pronounced as “incredibly nuanced” by the colossi of the law professor ranks, as opposed to being regarded as some swarthy reactionary troglodyte (as has been Scalia’s fate)?
Or, as the saying goes, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak up and remove all doubt.”
Yeah, that is another way of looking at it.
So, it has been unquestionably established that the mainstream media (however that is defined) skews way to the left?
And I guess a liberal law professoriat - while the conservative lawyers are out whoring themselves for lucre - would be consistent with my gut feeling that at base beneath much of what passes for “conservatism” lies something grasping and lacking compassion.
We’ve had this debate before. Those (me) who make that claim point to the stat that I guess it was 89% of surveyed journos who voted for Clinton. My other challenge, which I don’t think was ever met, was to find an editorial board of the leading paper in a major metropolitan area that opposed Roe.
Okay, this is GD, so it’s fine that you’re well down the road to tendentiousness with this. But I’m not sure it’s well-founded. Conservative conservative lawyers are probably going to be found working for peanuts at right-wing foundations (Cato, Heritage, Institute for Justice, CIR) trying to undo forty years of what they view as activism. And if you surveyed lawyers in high-paid corporate or law-firm positions (or just looked at the federal electoral contribution records online), I daresay you would find many, many heavy Dem/liberal backers among those millionaires. Bill C. and Edwards (himself a grasping filthy tort lawyer and self-proclaimed progressive) certainly never had trouble attracting filthy lucre from lawyers.
By the way, you do realize that professors at the “elite” law schools who critique/influence the judiciary are hardly self-sacrificing humanitarians, right? They’re generally pulling down comfortable six-figure salaries for eight months work, and are free to work, speak, etc. for profit on the side. I call that having your progressivism and eating it too. The real conservative thesis for why the professoriat skews liberal goes more like this: (1) academics are out of touch because they never have to actually make their jerk-off theories work in practice, or deal with the consequences thereof; (2) academics are often rewarded/praised precisely for “thinking out of the box” (which is often another way of saying, they are impelled to publish/lecture on theories that are deliberately counter-intuitive and go against centuries of common sense, precisely because there’s no glory or novelty or attention to be had by the dog-bites-man law review article on how apes probably don’t have constitutional rights); (3) academics are elitists who believe that “intellectuals” (themselves, and bien pensant judges) should have more influence than the dirty mob, and the “activist” judges have generally been known for overturning popularly-enacted laws, so that’s good, especially when the received wisdom in politically-correct campus life is almost always liberal; and (4) academics are drawn from demographic groups that historically skew liberal.
Cite?
Count me as unimpressed; anybody can write hundreds of lines of blather. How many SC justices would know which end of a hammer to use? These are people so disconnected from reality, that they think the world revolves around their decisions.
I doesn’t.
Wow - shifting the goalposts any? You said specifically:
That’s just wrong. Now you are claiming that you meant “None of them are/were especially handy around the house.” Which is probably true, but fundamentally irrelevant to basic principles of constitutional law.