Activist? You clearly don't have the same definition of activist that I do. Half the problem with these sorts of conversations is there is no agreement on definitions.
Please don't interpret my comment to mean that Supreme Court decisions can't be criticized, I just don't find the "activist" accusation to be particularly insightful.
Citizen’s United was “yeah, leaning pretty hard here.”
Flipping the hours d’ouvres table over on Roe v. Wade, a tense but stable compromise, that’s verging on activist. You don’t go knocking over fragile, workable standoffs that have held longer than an Ulster cease-fire if you can help it as a senior jurist.
It’s a pretty neo-neocon consensus to put it charitably.
It’s still the highest court in the land and it’s still binding, but I hope any thinking person is hoping for more a more“spirited but healthy” tension between major worldviews.
Citizen's United seems like a pretty clear cut case of individual rights from my point of view. If your definition of "activist" is strengthening individual rights and refusing to give power to the federal government and its giant bureaucracy then I guess I'm OK with an "activist" Supreme Court.
Roe v. Wade had been criticized for 50 years as an example of an activist judiciary and was held in place by rigid adherence to stare decisis.
Would you be as confident with stare decisis if we were talking about Plessy v. Ferguson, which held sway for 58 years before being overturned? Where the judges in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka "activists"?
If "activism" is used to describe all sorts of political philosophy then it isn't really a useful term to bring to the discussion. I think it does have meaning though and that "activism" is not what conservative members of the court are doing.
Too much "Orwellian" language manipulation going on these days, IMHO.
Without citizens united, a newspaper couldn't run an advertisement or an editorial about an biography of an active politician without running afoul of campaign finance laws- promoting a book that describes someone in positive light is clearly a contribution in kind, when column space in the paper costs money.
There's way more nuance that went into the decision than the "corporations are people" meme.
They have been hunting for cases to pursue their political agenda. It's probably the most activist court we've ever had. What is your definition of activist?
Your comment illustrates the problem. Do you think that everyone agrees that "activist" means "hunting for cases"? What does "hunting for cases" actually mean?
The term "activist" is often interpreted as "legislating from the bench" where the judiciary usurps the role of the legislature. Some people actually want that. Other people don't want that.
Refusing to solve a problem and instead requiring Congress to clarify the law is another judicial philosophy. Is that being an activist?
Deciding that the federal government has no authority and that state authority or individual rights are more paramount is also a course of action that some people agree with and some people don't. Supporters probably don't call that "activism" but detractors might.
So I think the term is mainly used to slur your political opponent as opposed to being a succinct term for some particular judicial philosophy.
The Federalist Society, a political entity to alter the judicial branch, picked Neil Gorsuch while grooming many other federal judges who are then put in place by politicians. If you were put in place by activists, doesn’t that make you an activist judge?
Now you are just pushing "activist" towards meaning "having a legal philosophy". And in practice it means having the wrong legal philosophy with respect to the person who labels you an "activist" as opposed to having a particular philosophy.
It isn't a particularly useful term because no one agrees on what it means. This has been illustrated quite nicely by the comments to my original comment.
No. Particularly when one of the primary goals of that activism is to produce judges who aren't activists:
> [The Federalist Society] is founded on the principles that [...] it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.
the current court solidified itself as an activist court by taking on a litany of controversial, yet already decided cases one after another that were all lined up by the same organization that not only lobbied for their placement on the court, but even went so far as to line up a billionaire buddy system to make them more comfortable financially so they wouldn't retire from the court during a democratic administration.
I think it's pretty unlikely that the Chevron doctrine would be overturned completely. The specifics of the case before the Court involve a case where the NMFS has interpreted a fisheries act to require fishers to pay the salaries of government monitors, simply because the act does not specify who should pay the salaries. The more reasonable objection is whether "reasonable interpretation" under Chevron should be limited to prevent the creation of affirmative powers out of thin air. As Wikipedia puts it:
> Whether the Court should overrule Chevron or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency.
The initial "overrule Chevron" seems like a DITF [1] and the latter is probably what the plaintiffs are hoping to achieve. Granted, I find it hard to trust a Court that overruled PP v. Casey, but most of this Court's other rulings, at least, have not been as extreme.
Usually I challenge people when they call a court stacked or activist, because it’s just so rarely true: this is as close as you’ll (hopefully) see to a 1-bit high court.
It’s the masterpiece, the magnum opus of the Magnus of parliamentary politics. Nicollo Machiavelli doesn’t have shit on Mitch McConnell at that chess game.
I’m pretty indifferent to which color bumper-sticker late capitalism is sporting when it pushes the newest round of formerly “looking forward to better” working people below the waterline, it’s not a partisan thing.
The other team have plenty who match Mitch on evilness, but zero on skill.
Activist? You clearly don't have the same definition of activist that I do. Half the problem with these sorts of conversations is there is no agreement on definitions.
Please don't interpret my comment to mean that Supreme Court decisions can't be criticized, I just don't find the "activist" accusation to be particularly insightful.
Citizen’s United was “yeah, leaning pretty hard here.”
Flipping the hours d’ouvres table over on Roe v. Wade, a tense but stable compromise, that’s verging on activist. You don’t go knocking over fragile, workable standoffs that have held longer than an Ulster cease-fire if you can help it as a senior jurist.
It’s a pretty neo-neocon consensus to put it charitably.
It’s still the highest court in the land and it’s still binding, but I hope any thinking person is hoping for more a more“spirited but healthy” tension between major worldviews.
Citizen's United seems like a pretty clear cut case of individual rights from my point of view. If your definition of "activist" is strengthening individual rights and refusing to give power to the federal government and its giant bureaucracy then I guess I'm OK with an "activist" Supreme Court.
Roe v. Wade had been criticized for 50 years as an example of an activist judiciary and was held in place by rigid adherence to stare decisis.
Would you be as confident with stare decisis if we were talking about Plessy v. Ferguson, which held sway for 58 years before being overturned? Where the judges in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka "activists"?
If "activism" is used to describe all sorts of political philosophy then it isn't really a useful term to bring to the discussion. I think it does have meaning though and that "activism" is not what conservative members of the court are doing.
Too much "Orwellian" language manipulation going on these days, IMHO.
5 replies →
Without citizens united, a newspaper couldn't run an advertisement or an editorial about an biography of an active politician without running afoul of campaign finance laws- promoting a book that describes someone in positive light is clearly a contribution in kind, when column space in the paper costs money.
There's way more nuance that went into the decision than the "corporations are people" meme.
was brown vs board of education "activist?"
possibly. I don't think I know anyone who regrets it though.
SCOTUS is just one big game of political football. for centuries.
They have been hunting for cases to pursue their political agenda. It's probably the most activist court we've ever had. What is your definition of activist?
Your comment illustrates the problem. Do you think that everyone agrees that "activist" means "hunting for cases"? What does "hunting for cases" actually mean?
The term "activist" is often interpreted as "legislating from the bench" where the judiciary usurps the role of the legislature. Some people actually want that. Other people don't want that.
Refusing to solve a problem and instead requiring Congress to clarify the law is another judicial philosophy. Is that being an activist?
Deciding that the federal government has no authority and that state authority or individual rights are more paramount is also a course of action that some people agree with and some people don't. Supporters probably don't call that "activism" but detractors might.
So I think the term is mainly used to slur your political opponent as opposed to being a succinct term for some particular judicial philosophy.
4 replies →
Usually "activist" just means "not in agreement with my political views".
The Federalist Society, a political entity to alter the judicial branch, picked Neil Gorsuch while grooming many other federal judges who are then put in place by politicians. If you were put in place by activists, doesn’t that make you an activist judge?
Now you are just pushing "activist" towards meaning "having a legal philosophy". And in practice it means having the wrong legal philosophy with respect to the person who labels you an "activist" as opposed to having a particular philosophy.
It isn't a particularly useful term because no one agrees on what it means. This has been illustrated quite nicely by the comments to my original comment.
No. Particularly when one of the primary goals of that activism is to produce judges who aren't activists:
> [The Federalist Society] is founded on the principles that [...] it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.
https://fedsoc.org/about-us
8 replies →
the current court solidified itself as an activist court by taking on a litany of controversial, yet already decided cases one after another that were all lined up by the same organization that not only lobbied for their placement on the court, but even went so far as to line up a billionaire buddy system to make them more comfortable financially so they wouldn't retire from the court during a democratic administration.
I think it's pretty unlikely that the Chevron doctrine would be overturned completely. The specifics of the case before the Court involve a case where the NMFS has interpreted a fisheries act to require fishers to pay the salaries of government monitors, simply because the act does not specify who should pay the salaries. The more reasonable objection is whether "reasonable interpretation" under Chevron should be limited to prevent the creation of affirmative powers out of thin air. As Wikipedia puts it:
> Whether the Court should overrule Chevron or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency.
The initial "overrule Chevron" seems like a DITF [1] and the latter is probably what the plaintiffs are hoping to achieve. Granted, I find it hard to trust a Court that overruled PP v. Casey, but most of this Court's other rulings, at least, have not been as extreme.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique
Usually I challenge people when they call a court stacked or activist, because it’s just so rarely true: this is as close as you’ll (hopefully) see to a 1-bit high court.
It’s the masterpiece, the magnum opus of the Magnus of parliamentary politics. Nicollo Machiavelli doesn’t have shit on Mitch McConnell at that chess game.
I’m pretty indifferent to which color bumper-sticker late capitalism is sporting when it pushes the newest round of formerly “looking forward to better” working people below the waterline, it’s not a partisan thing.
The other team have plenty who match Mitch on evilness, but zero on skill.