Me too. I was inching towards the optimism/ thought experiment where I like, you know , genuinely think there’s not going to be another gop president. But prepare for the worst hope for the best etc. This is a great opportunity to get a young progressive on the court to balance it.

I hate to say it but I would bet Stephen Breyer does not retire early or even late in Biden's term unless health issues force him. And even then, like Ruth Ginsburg I think he selfishly hangs on putting his personal wants over any thoughts of legacy or the nation as a whole.

Sad to say but as old people reach those ages they start to feel more and more isolated and less and less relevant. They see their social circles dying off. Routine becomes increasingly important to them.

Ginsburg loved her growing celebrity and her reason to get out and work and socialize with her 'peers' who had become her friends. I think the idea of retiring and being less relevant, but worse, losing her routine and access to her 'friends' terrified her.

People often say her legacy will be remembered as a leader for rights but I think it will actually be remember as a 'cautionary tale'. One about how you can build so much and then lose everything you built by being selfish.

Got to wonder if we're going to have a 7 - 9 conservative member court in my life time

Democrats love to complain about this with Democratic appointees, but I don't think the Republican appointees are any different than Democratic appointees in this regard. For example, I am skeptical that Clarence Thomas cares much about the composition of the Court after he is gone. And I'm 100% positive that he doesn't give a **** what Mitch McConnell thinks about when he (Thomas) should retire. If Clarence Thomas retired tomorrow, it wouldn't surprise me one bit.

Sitting justices think about the Court very differently than partisan politicos do. Generally speaking, they care about the Court much more from an institutional perspective than they do from a political perspective. If you polled the current justices on whether the Court should be expanded, I am 100% certain that the vote would be 9-0 against. And if you revived the liberal lions of the past (Brennan, Marshall, etc.) and put the question to them, they also would oppose expansion.

Good points and largely agree.

An exception to that however would be RBG imo.

I don't think Clarence Thomas sees himself as an avatar for anything on the SC. Certainly not an agent of change.

RBG however did. That was the part of her legacy she seems most pleased with and happiest to see touted.

And if that is the case, and you have any ability to protect that, I think you have an obligation to do so. It cannot simply be about 'a short term right blip whilst I live but then let the wolves circle immediate after and reverse everything I did, because I refused to protect it'.

RBG explicitly said she opposed court expansion on numerous occasions, including in 2019 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/...-court-1428426

And you're wrong about Thomas. He has left a huge trail of scholarship and opinions that very much paint him as a black conservative and I've read more than a few studies that say his views are not as fringe in African American circles as some liberals seem to assume. His judicial philosophy is based very much on a distrust of the political process to advance the interests of African Americans due to their minority status and the belief, very much derived from his own personal experience, that owning businesses (his grandfather) and studying hard (his own experience) despite all adversities are the way out. He's protected black interests by weakening state power to declare eminent domain.* He is also one of the few justices to have repeatedly made calls to review/qualify qualified police immunity.**

Start Googling and stop filling in the blanks by wishcasting.

*People seem to forget this... but the highway projects crushed black neighborhoods. Even city "beautification" projects that today are landmarks are pretty good bets to be built on razed black neighborhoods. For example, Central Park in NYC is built on what used to be a thriving African American community called Seneca Village.

**Police qualified immunity is an issue that traditionally didn't line up along ideological lines as cleanly as you might expect. Thomas and Sotomayor are by far the strongest critics but other justices, including even Ginsburg in the past, have voted essentially to uphold it in different contexts. Overall, I think it's fair to say the Court's consensus is some form of qualified immunity for the police is all but necessary but they haven't found a case or arrived at a test that they are ready to push forward yet.

While I agree that SC judges oppose court-packing the Supreme Court, federal judges do seem to favor expanding the number of lower court judges. And some SC judges have indicated support for SC term limits (eg Breyer in 2016 and Roberts in uh, 1983).

Entirely okay with expanding lower federal courts. It's a necessity frankly.

It's an entirely different question. Most favor expanding the judiciary out of necessity, not as a way to change the political composition of the federal bench.

I assume that you are talking to cuepee. I didn't say anything about Thomas's judicial philosophy.

Correct assumption.

Thx for all this. Good to always learn something new to challenge preconceived notions.

Gun control about to take a huge L.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/04/c...n-rights-case/

I can't foresee any result here outside of a massive expansion of 2A rights with regards to handguns: the right to own and carry without having to show cause.

Hope your analysis here is correct.

disclosure: I have never owned a gun, and do not plan on ever owning one.

I understand that it is not the job of the Supreme Court to set policy. And if I pressed you, I'm sure you would frame your answer in terms of the importance of protecting a right that you believe exists under the constitution.

But it's hard to understand how you can feel good about any development that will lead to more people carrying concealed firearms. Who looks at the United States and thinks to themselves, "what this country really needs is more guns and more people carrying concealed firearms."

On the flip side of that, what do you think it'll do the prison population if possession of a gun were not a crime?

I don't think that's related to this particular case because this doesn't make it illegal to own a gun per se.. it determines who can own a gun, which seems to be a type of law that is more effective. But that's not really accurate because this is about a conceal carry, and I don't think many people commit suicide or homicide are going to require one. These type of gun laws remind me of tlred state laws that try to limit abortions using cute legal tricks. At the heart, this law is designed to limit gun possession, enmasse.

I think this law is going to fail because it puts the burden on the citizen to prove their need, rather than the state proving the citizens shouldn't have this right, which isn't an expansion of gun rights.

This is a nettlesome problem. I readily concede that banning certain types of guns, and then making possession of those guns a crime, has the potential to create some of the same problems as our drug laws. And reducing the levels of incarceration in this country is a higher priority for me than gun control. Even if the Second Amendment were eliminated (which obviously is unrealistic), and thus the question about whether gun ownership is a "right" were eliminated, there is no quick way to reduce the number of guns in the United States.

Guns and ammo can last a long time. I don't see any practical solution other than placing whatever constitutional limits we can place on new sales of certain types of guns and certain types of ammo and waiting for the most dangerous guns and ammo that are already on the street to become unuseable. That feels like a fifty year plan. The U.S. has never excelled at fifty year plans.

And if you are correct, which I think you are, does this provide fodder for Biden reforming the Supreme Court via adding 4 more Justices, which I see as an over all good even aside the current makeup and issues?

With the current constitution of the Senate, it makes absolutely no difference whether Biden supports adding justices or not. Even if Biden used all of his political capital, there are several Democrats who would not vote to expand.

And spending all his capital on a losing effort to expand the Court is not going to be an attractive proposition for Biden.

Agreed.
I am thinking more 'post midterms' which will likely coincide when Biden's commission studying Supreme Court reform will pass on its findings.

i know some think the GOP is likely to take back the House or Senate at midterms but i am not so sure. If not for the Trump factor I would bet they would take at least one. But I think this midterm is really going to highlight the GOP civil war with Trump.

Moreso than ever he is going to use the Midterms to try and break any and every Republican who does not capitulate to even his most extreme of positions. There is not placating Trump by going part way. He takes every concession as in indication you will break and then pushes to more extreme and illegal positions.

I think he is going to make the Midterms pure hell by supporting the most extreme things and demanding every GOPer bend the knee and be unambiguous in their support or he and his base will target them. And I think this will cost them a lot of seats.

Ultimately Trump does not care about seats. I mean, he loves that power, but ultimately he wants a stranglehold over the party so he can trap and keep their fund raising efforts to himself. Seats and actual rule is a distant second to being able to comb the base Even if only 25% of the country) for hundreds of millions per year for the next X years.

Politics is more local than most people assume. I know that Trump would like to believe that he can break any Republican he targets over his knee. But for a multitude of reasons, I don't think he can.

First, when he was the president and when he had an active Twitter account, Trump had more power to punish Republicans who failed to toe the line than he has now.

Second, in the overwhelming majority of races where a Republican currently holds the seat, there won't a viable candidate to challenge the incumbent in the primary. And I can't see Trump actively campaigning against a Republican in a general election. At most, he will make comments from the balcony about how this seat or that seat is at risk because the Republican candidate is very weak.

Third, in many races, the incumbent will have been in office for quite a long time and will have more sway with his or her constituency than Trump does.

Fourth, Trump can't be everywhere at the same time. He doesn't have the same bullhorn he had as president. His best chance to influence a result is to train his fire on a handful of Republicans and hold multiple events in support of his preferred candidate. Anything short of that sort of concentrated effort is unlikely to be effective imo.

For all these reasons, I don't think Trump has the ability to affect more than a handful of races. And even if he is successful in replacing a few disloyal Republicans with Trump loyalists, those efforts probably won't have much impact on the balance of power. In most cases, the result in the general election would be the same regardless of whether the GOP candidate was a Liz Cheney type or a Trump loyalist.

I guess we will see.

I don't disagree with your points. I just think 'moderate republicans' are increasingly rare and Trumpers now dominate the base in a crushing way.

I think Trump has already shows he has dominated the local street level politics as most of those 'local' GOP orgs now bend the knee and are committed to routing out 'voter fraud' with a host of specious changes.

these local guys have shown they will not stand down to even the State AG's or Governors, even if Republican if they defy the Trump edicts. They are extraordinarily active and i think make up the base that will threaten and primary any GOPer who dares not to tow the line.

They will have already seated members happy to step up to challenge for the bigger office if the incumbent does not bend the knee if they know they have the grass roots support.

When the financial motivation is this big, to the tune of hundreds of millions per year, Trump is not going quietly into that good night, IMO.

But we shall see.

I going to draw a distinction that may not have been clear from my last post.

I don't think Republicans are bending the knee to Trump the person. And I don't think most of them fear the wrath of Trump the person. Jordan Klepper can run around and find people who talk about Trump like he is Xerxes. But I don't actually think Trump succeeded in creating a durable cult of personality, much as he might wish to have done so.

It is more accurate to say that Trump taught other Republicans two lessons about this moment in history. He taught them that the group of Republicans who are authoritarian, angry, reactionary, xenophobic, populist, and conspiracy-oriented is much larger and much easier to mobilize than most realized. He also taught them that moderate Republicans won't defect in large numbers because of wild lies, outre behavior, and general ridiculousness.

Other Republicans might seem like they are bending the knee to Trump. But what they really are doing is bending the knee to the electorate.