I’m speaking about the SCOTUS specifically, with their repeal of constitutional (medical) privacy (and thus abortion, if I understand the details correctly) and rumors (announced plans?) to look at other rights such as miranda, other due process rights maybe, with a plan to overturn those decisions and thereby repeal rights that have been in place for at least my lifetime effectively.
Do we call this a rogue court? I know we can, but what makes a court or other government organisation (excluding military probably) a “rogue organisation”?
ISTM that this is part of a trend. I thought the whole “balance of powers” thing would kick in when impeachment came up, twice. So if they have the job for life, unless you can show there was bribery or something, then what? I was listening to NPR yesterday and a woman called in and said that this court isn’t legit, because they perjured themselves to get their jobs.
Yeah, I heard that bit on npr too.
I’d have to go back and look at the confirmation hearings now to decide if I agree and if so how much.
I know there is a definate way, this group broke those rules and are now rogue.
It seems to me that SCOTUS is awfully close if they haven’t done that, the perjury claim above not included, but a part of the problem is that they are (mostly)the ones that interpret the rules, and a sizeable enough minority in this country agrees with them to keep them safe from impeachment even if some charge(including the aforementioned perjury which I don’t really think has any chance or probably merit either) could be levied against them. Yet they wage war against the very freedoms and liberties that, I at least, always interpreted the founding documents of our country as being meant to protect and err on the side of.
Does that make them a rogue court? I dunno, maybe there isn’t a good general answer for this court right now.
From John Marshall’s time on, the law has always been what a majority of the Court said it was. There is a tale (almost certainly apocryphal) that Marshall used to turn to his colleague, the learned legal historian Justice Story, and say, “Here’s the law. Now find me the precedents.” Scholars can go back and marvel at what seems to be ridiculous readings of clear words, let alone the infinite numbers of cases that were never conceived of by the founders.
Liberal courts have been an anomaly, existing for maybe 10% of the country’s history. By that standard, the Warren Court was the only rogue court we’ve ever seen. Probably the only one I’ll ever see in my lifetime.
Rogue organizations break the law. By definition, no ruling of the Supreme Court does.
That’s what I’m getting at, the court makes the rules but at some point those rules have to make sense in light of morals and ethics of the society they’re embedded in. What this court is doing does not. Some of those morals and ethics are recent, yes, but Row v Wade is an entire life, a full generation or two past(depends on how you’re counting generations) and thus they are trying to impose rules that don’t match society.
I know that Supreme Court cannot be rogue by definition, but that is, it seems to me, a false thing. They are deliberately harming society, they are doing it and wording it in such a way that seems to me shows they know what they are doing is not whats generally wanted or needed and is harmful. How can they not be rogue?
I still say that the fact that Garland isn’t on the court makes them rogue. The President was advised by the Senate to nominate Garland, he did so, and not one Senator voted against confirming him. That, by the rules, makes Garland a Supreme Court justice.
How do you put this hypocrisy into a thread about going rogue? Garland got no votes, because there never was a vote. McConnell used to rules to block him. Use any adjective against him and that would be an understatement, but he went strictly by the Senate rulebook.
By their lights, Roe was the Court going rogue producing an evil decision out of nowhere.
Being evil is not synonymous with going rogue. We need to keep the two separate. The right-wing already conflates the two and you see where that gets the country to.
As laid out in the Constitution, the President gets to choose judicial nominees, including Supreme Court justices. Under the expectations of both the Constitution and two centuries of history, the default is that the President’s nominees get in. The Senate can change that, by denying their consent… but how do they do that? By a vote, of course. If, then, the Senate decides not to hold a vote, that should be taken as a sign that they wish the default result, namely, the nominee to be seated.
The Senate had a chance to decide against Garland. They did not take that chance. Therefore, Garland should have gotten in.
I don’t see it. I’m aware of centuries of nominees who hadn’t yet gotten in before they got a ‘yes, we consent’ vote, and who then got in thanks to a ‘yes, we consent’ vote — and of nominees who hadn’t yet gotten in before they got a ‘yes, we consent’ vote, and who then didn’t get a ‘yes, we consent’ vote, and so didn’t get in.
Garland doesn’t seem to be one of the former; Garland does seem to be one of the latter.
(I’d describe bills that the House sent to the Senate in pretty much the same way; wouldn’t you? Not that the Senate has to vote to deny them, but that the Senate sometimes votes ‘yes’ and sometimes — doesn’t, at which point nothing much happens…)
This is obviously nonsense. It’s not only part of the Senate rules, it’s been well-established through centuries of practice. A nominee whose nomination expires without action (usually at the end of Congress) is an lapsed nominee.
That’s equally true for all presidential nominations.
That’s the job of the Legislative branch, not the Judicial branch. The court is supposed to interpret the Constitution (and some other lesser-used duties, like mediate disputes between states).
yeah, that was poorly worded, what I should have said and what I was thinking was that the court interprets the rules, but at some point those rule interpretations have to make sense in the light of the morals and ethics of the society they’re embedded in.
Getting back to the OP, a “rogue” organization is one that is not following its charter or its lawful orders. A horse with the bit in its teeth not answering to the proper reins.
With the Supreme Court, we have the definitional issue that it’s 99% above the law and the Constitution since it decides what is the law and what (practically speaking) is the Constitution.
But let’s set aside that legitimate definitional issue and drive forwards.
There are a great many countries on Earth today that have a highest court totally in the pocket of the ruler, the ruling party, or the ruling class. Which lets them run a de facto dictatorship that is, at least on paper, a de jure democracy. It appears we are about to join that club of disgraced nations.
By that practical working definition of the word, they are, or are about to be, rogue. Evidence of them transparently working to ensure the R side always wins elections would be the unequivocal sign of rogueness (rogueosity? ) and would also be the final nail in the coffin of the USA as a true democracy, not a one-party state in the e.g., Russian or Hungarian mold.
True, but what a law says, how the words are interpreted, that changes over time. For example, the Supreme Court didn’t always have the power of judicial review. At one time, it was a fairly weak, toothless part of the government. What changed was (in part) how the words that govern how the court operates, what power it has changed in how they were interpreted.
Don’t forget that when John Marshall gave the Court the power of judicial review in Madison v. Marbury, he was a Federalist who was a staunch enemy of the ruling Republican-Democrats. He protected actions by John Adams, who was essentially defying the moral standard of timing of appointments like Mitch McConnell would, in order to infuriate the incoming president Thomas Jefferson. He would continue to stymie his political enemies for the rest of his term, on a court he so dominated that he was hardly ever outvoted.
Marshall is a fascinating character, but I’m not sure he’s really the example you want to pull out here.
) and would also be the final nail in the coffin of the USA as a true democracy, not a one-party state in the e.g., Russian or Hungarian mold.