I must be having a bad day because I can’t see how that ridiculous concept relates to the OP.
But that’s just it; slavery itself wasn’t in question in the Amistad decision. There’s no way they could have ruled about slavery itself, since it wasn’t what was in question there.
I am in general more comfortable with a court that focuses on questions of law and has more of a deference to stare decisis than (I think) most people are. Sometimes it’s better to have laws that are bad but consistent than to keep changing what the rules are in search of justice.
Sometimes laws are bad (in a social policy or morality way) but still Constitutional and I tend to think courts should not try to fix that badness unless the law is really egregiously bad.
A court that tries to accomplish moral good without deference to law becomes (even more) politicized than our court already is and ultimately is not a force for good.
I think the logic would be that in Amistad, the crux of the case was whether the people who had been on board were legally slaves or kidnapping victims. They hypothetically could have ruled that there was no such thing as a legal slave and therefore everyone who is currently enslaved is also being wrongfully imprisoned.
That’s kind of skirting the question at hand to make another point, and beyond that, is using the court to actively generate policy.
At the time, slavery was legal. That wasn’t even in question, and was out of bounds for the purposes of the case.
The problem is that slavery was fully legal at that point. That wasn’t in question at all, but rather the status of the people on the ship. The Supreme Court would not have been within their purview to declare slavery illegal, just because they may not have liked it.
And FWIW, I’m sure there was plenty of legal precedent that there were legally enslaved persons. They can’t just go against that without good legal reasons either; precedent and case law is part and parcel of how our legal system works in the US.
My point is - many liberals are objecting to the Supreme Court on the grounds that the conservative majority that got there, got there illegitimately - via McConnell unfairly blocking Garland, or breaking his own rules to (soon) get Barrett in there. But this isn’t really relevant - it isn’t what liberals are really objecting to.
If every conservative justice on SCOTUS had gotten there the honorable, decent, legal, ethical way - no shenanigans by McConnell - yet were still voting to overturn Roe, Obergefell, etc. - liberals would object every bit as strongly. They wouldn’t say, “Well, the conservative majority got their seats on the bench fairly, so they can screw us over now.”
In other words, the Garland fiasco, isn’t the real thing. It’s a non sequitur.
Except, without that, the Supreme Court wouldn’t be so right-leaning so they wouldn’t be screwing over minorities as much.
Yes, but ultimately, what liberals object to is the screwing over of minorities, regardless of which fashion it comes in.
Suppose conservatives got to a 7-2 majority through perfectly legal means - maybe Breyer has a stroke, Ginsburg dies of cancer (which she did,) Kagan or Sotomayor suddenly decide to retire unexpectedly for some reason - and this SCOTUS began screwing over minorities - liberals would be every bit as upset as if it were a rigged SCOTUS doing the same.
You’re conflating two different objections – legitimacy and morality. I object to the morality of the Dred Scott court, and the numerous white supremacists courts before and after. But they were legitimate, at least by the rules and norms of the time. This court is increasingly illegitimate, because norms were violated to make it as it is.
Expanding the court won’t fix this illegitimacy problem – that will require a Constitutional amendment (term limits or similar). But it could fix the morality problem.
OK, so what? Do you think conservatives wouldn’t be upset if there were suddenly a very liberal SCOTUS who legalized abortion and banned prayer from school? They still are upset over that.
What is your actual point here? Do people get upset when the Supreme Court rules against what they want for something important to them? Yes, they do. Would they get even more upset if the make up of SCOTUS got there through underhanded means? Yes.
When a sports team beats your favorite team, you get upset. You get even more upset if the opposing team is also accused of sign-stealing or video taping your sidelines.
If they had gotten their seats “legitamately”, meaning through following norms and traditions, then it would not be favorable to have a conservative leaning court, but it would simply be a matter of trying to continue to follow the norms and traditions in order to get a less partisan mix.
Since all traditions and norms were broken, then norms and traditions should not constrain us either. There was nothing unconstitutional about what McConnel did, and there’s nothing unconstitutional about “packing” the court either.
Your insistence that you know that liberals would act the way you imagine that they would act in different circumstances is not a reliable cite, and so your conclusion that the Garland fiasco is not a real thing rests on a very nonexistent foundation.
Put it this way. If not for the “Garland fiasco”, then in 2016, we would have put Garland on the bench, replacing Scalia with a pretty moderate justice, and then, now in 2020, the Republicans replacing a very progressive RBG with an extremely conservative Justice would be unfortunate, but unremarkable. It is due to the attempted power grab and dissolution of tradition and norms of McConnel that justifies ignoring traditions and norms and packing the court.
When the 14th amendment was proposed it was, according my American history instructor generally understood that corporations were “persons”, not “people”. I don’t think it was understood that persons, in contrast with people, had religious beliefs and rights.
On the other hand, I doubt that whoever wrote the first amendment had any thought that money = speech. That was a fantasy of the ultraright justices.
I think andy was saying that slavery should have been found unconstitutional by the court so that there would be no such thing as a legal slave based on their updated interpretation of the constitution.
I think the legal argument would be tricky because the constitution directly referenced slavery (although I don’t think it ever explicitly said slavery was legal), but hypothetically if the SC had to rule on whether someone was a slave, they could argue that they were not a slave because slavery is unconstitutional based on the 10th amendment or something, and the precedent would then be set that all slavery was abolished.
IANAL, but yes, this, pretty much.