[HN Gopher] Covering the Supreme Court and the Judiciary in (Mos...
___________________________________________________________________
Covering the Supreme Court and the Judiciary in (Mostly) Plain
English
Author : everybodyknows
Score : 69 points
Date : 2024-11-13 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (amylhowe.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (amylhowe.com)
| f1shy wrote:
| There are some projects around the world to force lawyers to
| write in "normal" language. (Which BTW, is how it should be, as
| we should be able to fully understand the laws that can cost
| money or send us to jail).
|
| Off topic: does somebody have some update on any such a project?
| Would be great news to see some important country taking action
| into it.
| macintux wrote:
| I'll freely admit to complete ignorance, but this seems like a
| bad idea.
|
| Much like we use well-defined but somewhat arcane terminology
| to talk about computers, because precision is important, I'm
| skeptical about the implications of "plain" language in laws.
|
| Precision and comprehensibility to an uneducated person seem
| like they would always be at odds.
| cowpig wrote:
| To add to this, language models are now quite good at
| explaining legalese, so that limits the positive impact of
| pushing for plainer language.
| jandrese wrote:
| The laws are basically jargon. There is a good reason behind
| the wording, it rests on centuries of case law of people
| hammering out exactly what each work or phrase means exactly,
| but it does add a layer of obfuscation for the layman. The
| law is a huge machine, and the laws are the code. Could it be
| better? Definitely. Lots of decisions were made that were a
| good idea at the time but are now pain points, but the system
| is too big to make systematic changes. You have to work
| within the framework.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > the system is too big to make systematic changes
|
| This seems like a flawed argument to me that if applied
| would see technology stagnating. The reason it's flawed is
| the assumption that the system is at a fixed max size.
| However, if it's growing quickly, you can always come up
| with new systemic ways of doing things that are divorced
| from the past and over time most of the things are done the
| new way. You can even refactor/replace the old stuff over
| time. Law isn't quite like code which is where this analogy
| breaks down a bit but something to think about.
| nradov wrote:
| In a common law system, like what we use in the USA and
| most of the Anglosphere, it is impossible to divorce from
| the past.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I would rather laws continue to be written with precision and
| for the government to have an information portal describing the
| relevant legal obligations in plain language. Forcing laws
| themselves to be written in plain language is a recipe for
| disaster. Imagine the tax code was subject to that constraint,
| for example. Corporations would have a field day finding
| loopholes.
|
| Software can also have a huge impact on our lives and I don't
| think anyone would insist that software must be written so as
| to be easily understood by people who are not software
| developers.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| As someone who works with legal language regularly, the
| notion that it's designed for clarity is hilarious. It's
| often constructed deliberately to obsfucate its purpose.
| Plain clear language with defined terms is legally binding
| and difficult to circumvent.
| graypegg wrote:
| I can understand that, but I don't know if legal texts
| would be more explicit given simpler language. You can bake
| ambiguity into any text you want. "Simple english" will
| naturally just have less words than legalese, since that's
| the thing people find so daunting about it. Doesn't that
| mean that either A) words will have multiple overlapping
| meanings or B) entire phrases will have to be used to
| explain what is normally 1 word? Either case leaves a lot
| of room for "offensive lawyering".
|
| Defined legal terms is just what we have now, but starting
| over.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I specifically said precision and not clarity, which is not
| the same. The thing is, though, that legal language is not
| "designed" for anything, in fact it is not "designed" at
| all.
|
| As for being constructed deliberately to obfuscate its
| purpose, all I can say is that that's not my experience and
| it seems like a pretty self-defeating aim to me. For legal
| language to have any value at all, you have to be
| reasonably certain that a court would give effect to your
| intended meaning, and the more you obfuscate your
| intentions, the bigger the risk that it will be construed
| in an unintended way by a court.
|
| > Plain clear language with defined terms is legally
| binding and difficult to circumvent.
|
| As soon as you introduce defined terms, it is instantly
| less plain and less clear.
| graypegg wrote:
| I think legalize is the way it is because it requires
| precision. A lot of the words and phrases that show up in legal
| documents don't have an easy definition because they're
| litigated terms. "fair use" isn't just "a justified use of some
| media", it's a specific pointer that points at a corpus of laws
| and decisions over decades and decades.
|
| We generally want to be able to assume that the legal system
| makes similar decisions given similar situations, but the world
| doesn't hand it precise duplicates. Words that point at
| specific facts of a situation from the past are always going to
| be complex. It's not just for describing the situation
| narratively, it's also got to communicate specific categories
| of facts. How would we simply communicate that we (western
| legal tradition for example) care about the fact a murder was
| planned. What is planning? Is planning a murder a crime, and if
| not, why does it make the crime of murder worse? "Mens Rea"
| gives us a pointer to refer to the non-criminal act of having
| the intention to commit a crime. That's pretty useful,
| especially when you can CMD+F for that over centuries of people
| hashing out each case where the mental state of the accused
| mattered.
|
| I do think there's a case for simplified explanations of legal
| text, but the source document should probably remain the "real"
| document.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| You absolutely _can_ get precision and plain language at the
| same time. See, for example, the English text of the GDPR.
|
| The ideal situation is that we only need about half an hour
| of instruction (saying things much like your second
| paragraph) before a literate amateur can interpret most laws
| correctly. That instruction can then be given in schools: it
| could be lumped in along with all the other miscellanea
| ("here's how to vote", basic financial literacy, sex-ed,
| etc).
| lelandfe wrote:
| Ooh, this is something boring few people know about! There have
| been _many_ efforts across the US government to simplify the
| language used in documents. Nixon, Clinton, and Obama all
| worked on this. Obama actually got a group organized around
| this, and there are now progress reports available on how the
| US is doing: https://www.doi.gov/plainlanguage
|
| And a dedicated website for it, with examples useful for many:
| https://www.plainlanguage.gov/
|
| Check out this Clinton era "No Gobbledygook Award" recipient:
| https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/awards/award-11/
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| In a common law system, the benefit of the arcane language is
| that it's been tested in court before, so it has a definite
| meaning. In that sense, it's actually "clear", even if it's
| pretty obscure to the layman. By contrast, novel wording has
| not been tested in previous cases, so no matter how clearly it
| might be written, there's a degree of uncertainty. A term
| doesn't have a definite legal meaning until a judge has made a
| ruling on it. That's why contracts and wills, particularly,
| often use weird phrasing.
| i_k_k wrote:
| It's worth mentioning that while some parts of law can be really
| arcane (parents, terms of service, etc.), Supreme Court decisions
| are generally pretty readable.
| tiahura wrote:
| Mostly agree about Constitutional cases. Some of the less sexy
| statutory construction cases are written for a smaller
| audience, and even as a lawyer, if you don't practice in that
| field, they can be pretty opaque.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| Ugh, and the range of clarity from judge to judge is another
| big factor.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| Interesting! How do you rate the different SCOTUS justices
| in terms of clarity?
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| I only read the big cases since law school, so take this
| with a grain of salt -- I've only read one or two KBJ
| decisions and a handful from Kavanaugh and ACB.
|
| In terms of legal clarity alone, Gorsuch and then Kagan
| are ahead of the pack by some margin, followed at some
| distance by Roberts and ACB. Sotomayor is great _as a
| writer_ , but not in terms of legal clarity. I think
| Thomas is middle-of-the-pack, and I think he gets
| underrated in this regard because people dislike his
| opinions. Again, experience of Kavanaugh and KBJ's
| writing is limited, but they're at least not far behind
| the pack here.
|
| Alito stands alone as the only one I'd say is bad for a
| Supreme Court justice. And that's relative, so it doesn't
| mean he's awful, but I do actively avoid his writing.
|
| The variance gets way higher the further from SCOTUS you
| go. At the state level it's basically roulette.
| dogmayor wrote:
| I'd agree with this. Kagan is the best overall, Roberts
| is up there when he wants to be and isn't forcing it, and
| yes Thomas writes fairly well but what he writes is
| abysmal.
|
| Alito is hands down the worst writer and one of the worst
| to ever sit on the court. He's not the brightest but
| thinks he's a savant and writes with a smugness and
| conceit that drips off the page on top of being as
| disingenuous as they come. Reading anything he writes is
| torture.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Agreed! And the typography is perfect. I've enjoyed bypassing
| all the angles and bias of coverage and just reading the
| majority decision PDFs in full. As a layperson the
| _implications_ of phrases do escape me, though. SCOTUS can get
| awfully terse.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| Late in law school, I ended up writing a study guide for a
| multi-day Constitutional Law seminar for non-lawyers, and
| found that unpacking all of the legal turns of phrase and
| items that would carry huge implications when read by lawyers
| took between 3x and 15x the space of whatever segment I was
| unpacking, with an average around 7.5x-8x. And according to
| feedback that still ended up being a bit dense for most
| readers. Worst volunteer gig I've ever agreed to!
| kashunstva wrote:
| > just reading the majority decision PDFs in full
|
| The dissenting opinions are also quite enlightening because
| they point out weaknesses in the majority and concurring
| opinions that might not be apparent to those of us outside
| the field.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Justices deliberately write their dissents in the hope that
| people will read them, be persuaded, and then those will
| eventually become established law. Ginsburg and Scalia were
| masters of this.
| vundercind wrote:
| Just be sure to double-check any "facts" they cite before
| taking them as true. Because they, uh, kinda don't. Check them,
| that is.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| By the time you see a published SCOTUS decision clerks have
| definitely checked all citations. The problem is that
| occasionally the source or interpretation is
| questionable/contentious.
| vundercind wrote:
| Clerks have much more limited time than one might think,
| and research is basically an added-on function that they
| never staffed for once courts started engaging in it.
|
| "Facts" from amicus briefs make it in all the time without
| an apparent attempt at verification.
|
| Perhaps they do check and then ignore their findings, but
| why bother with that?
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Except when they haven't:
| https://newrepublic.com/article/183285/supreme-court-
| chevron...
|
| There's something very funny and simultaneously chilling
| about a majority opinion authored by Gorsuch[1] who has
| said "[o]nly the written word is the law" [1] totally
| mixing up laughing gas and a toxic pollutant emitted by
| cars.
|
| [1] I know the clerks actually write them, HN pedants.
|
| [2] https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/06/symposium-the-
| triumph-of-...
| throwup238 wrote:
| Double check _everything_ : https://www.forbes.com/sites/alis
| ondurkee/2024/06/28/supreme...
|
| The Justices have made some bone headed mistakes, especially
| this last crop.
| cvoss wrote:
| You may be referring to the court's (and other appellate
| courts') long-standing practice of not second guessing a
| trial court's finding of what did or didn't happen, unless a
| "clear error" is demonstrated to have been committed by the
| trial court.
|
| SCOTUS decisions and opinions, therefore, should not be
| construed as to concur with the trial court about what
| actually happened. They take it as granted that those things
| occurred, and provide the best legal resolution they can
| under those assumptions. The cases they hear aren't about
| determining "who did what". That's done and settled usually.
| They are about "what now?"
| vundercind wrote:
| I mean that they make errors in statement of fact
| supporting their rulings and, worse, incorporate those
| facts into their ruling in material ways.
|
| Say the Supreme Court majority writes, as guidance to lower
| courts, that interpretation of a certain amendment should
| feature consideration of laws enacted early in the
| country's history, and before its founding. They further
| write that for the specific question before them, the total
| absence of similar laws in that history means they must
| rule a certain law unconstitutional.
|
| Further suppose _they were simply factually incorrect_ to
| the point that such laws were in fact _common_ and are very
| easy to find, if you look like _at all_.
|
| Now what? If you apply _their_ guidance on how to analyze
| these questions, you'd have to reverse their ruling on laws
| similar to the one they struck down, should they come
| before you. But they ruled that specific one
| unconstitutional... but their ruling was _contrary_ to the
| guidance they gave.
|
| So we end up tied in a bit of a knot. Had these facts been
| argued rather than pulled out of some damn amicus brief
| without examination, perhaps the government would have
| presented a large pile of examples to rebut the simply-
| false claim that no similar laws existed in the country's
| early history. But the court injected these "facts" as a
| key part of their reasoning when writing their decision,
| instead. Would it have changed the outcome? No. Would it,
| perhaps, have made it too embarrassing even for these
| clowns, to include that particular bit in their ruling?
| Maybe! And future lower court cases might take a different
| course, as a result.
|
| [EDIT] The take-away for the casual reader of Supreme Court
| opinions, then, is that if they write something like "no
| examples of such laws exist until [YEAR]" don't be
| surprised if that turns out to be hilariously wrong. A
| "fact" making it into a Supreme Court opinion is not a
| strong indication the fact is... an actual fact. Their
| opinions are far less well-researched than one might
| suppose, emphasis on _far_ , it's not that they're just
| imperfect like any people, their fact checking is outright
| poor by any standards.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Won't someone think of the bump stock manufacturers?!
| vundercind wrote:
| I was making a barely-veiled reference to Bruen,
| actually. "Can cities require demonstration of need, to
| carry firearms?"
|
| The bump stock ruling's stupidity had more to do with
| resting entirely on silly, plainly-motivated reasoning
| than its relying on objectively wrong "facts".
|
| Incidentally, I was wrong about it mattering whether it
| was argued: the historical evidence was argued, and the
| majority simply went "uhhhh those many examples don't
| count, because I don't want them to". What's been turned
| up since the case is examples that fit the much narrower
| criteria they said would have been needed (neatly carved
| out to evade the provided examples) but positively
| asserted don't exist (to any notable degree), in such
| volume that it's beyond clear that restricting carry of
| firearms in towns on a need-basis was common throughout
| the country's history, and not just in the West (their
| reasoning for rejecting those examples, I shit you not,
| was "um, those don't count because they're from one area,
| never mind it's a giant area"--if it's starting to look
| like they were playing Calvinball with that ruling, it's
| because that's exactly what they were doing)
| hnfong wrote:
| I think you're using too many suppositions.
|
| Do you have an actual example? Or two since you're using
| plurals?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate is a great example of a case
| where the majority says "we don't see examples of X"
| while the dissent cites a big list of X.
|
| Heller is also a famous case where basically every
| historian (as well as the defense) points out clearly
| that Scalia's interpretation just isn't the original
| understanding of the text.
| vundercind wrote:
| My specific example is just Bruen with the serial numbers
| filed off.
|
| Factual errors are downright common (a Google will turn
| up many efforts at fact-checking the "facts" in Supreme
| Court opinions) and aren't a new problem, dating back
| basically forever.
|
| One key problem is that they simply don't have the
| resources to check all their facts. Their sources of
| facts are often amicus briefs from interest groups and
| specialized court-lobbyists, drawn from large piles and
| quickly skimmed for relevance by overworked early-20s law
| clerks. It would be surprising if they _didn 't_ get
| things wrong all the time. They do--luckily, a lot of
| times, it barely matters, but sometimes they get facts
| wrong that were central to their opinion.
|
| The point is, don't believe a "fact" you read in a court
| opinion without double-checking. Even if it's about legal
| history.
|
| [EDIT] As my sibling commenter points out, it's also the
| case that sometimes they just lie on purpose. But even
| absent that, the circumstances under which opinions are
| written would generate factual errors by accident, with
| some frequency.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| There's more to it than that.
|
| Gorsuch mixing up nitrous oxide and nitrogen oxide over and
| over is a recent fun example. The court also _has_ engaged
| in fact finding despite the rules. Kennedy v Bremerton is
| one example. Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference
| of the NAACP is another.
|
| You also see absolute garbage lies. FEC v. Ted Cruz for
| Senate has the majority saying "we can't find examples of X
| happening" while the dissent has a big list of examples of
| X happening. Or just straight up falsehoods about original
| understanding. DC v. Heller is a great example of this.
| senkora wrote:
| I suppose that they are free to focus on readability when they
| don't have to structure their writing in order to defend their
| decision-making from anyone, being the highest court of the
| land.
| cvoss wrote:
| A few points to the contrary: The primary purpose for their
| writing of opinions is not to defend the decisions, but to
| instruct lower courts on how they should reason on similar
| cases. So it very much matters on a practical level that
| their reasoning is sound. Second, if the goal is a cogent,
| defensible argument, readability is in support of that
| objective, whereas you suggest that readability is somehow
| (?) at odds with cogency and defensibility. Thirdly, the
| justices are keenly aware that the interested public consumes
| their opinions too, and that they are, in fact, ethically and
| morally bound to defend their decisions to the public.
| senkora wrote:
| > you suggest that readability is somehow (?) at odds with
| cogency and defensibility
|
| All I am saying is that writing can be clearer and more
| concise when you don't have to include asides and
| digressions to preemptively defend it from criticism.
|
| This is a technical point on power dynamics and writing
| style. When the authors are in a position of power, then
| they can focus more on readability (and cogency) and less
| on playing defense, because their court seats are secure
| for life.
|
| By contrast, justices in lower courts are influenced by
| organizational politics and must focus more on
| defensibility, which may come at the expense of clarity.
|
| So I do not find it surprising that the supreme court is
| able to produce more readable decisions than lower courts,
| because they have unique incentives.
|
| > The primary purpose for their writing of opinions is not
| to defend the decisions, but to instruct lower courts on
| how they should reason on similar cases.
|
| Correct. This is different from lower courts, which also
| explains why they are able to focus on readability.
| hnfong wrote:
| They actually do have to, in a sense.
|
| Being the only non-democratically elected branch of
| government in a democracy, the courts don't enjoy direct
| approval from the people. So while the structure of the
| institutions seem to give them power, their authority
| ultimately hinges on whether people perceive their decisions
| fair and just.
|
| When courts make unpopular decisions and can't explain why,
| there's always a risk of some constitutional crisis. If
| courts keep making decisions that they can't rationally
| defend, at some point their authority will begin to erode.
| (And if you followed the USSC rulings in recent years you
| might start to understand why. Maybe the resentment not yet
| directly targeted towards the courts, but those decisions did
| add fuel to the already divisive politics in the US.)
| tiahura wrote:
| Honestly, ChatGPT and Claude can tldr more than good enough for
| government work. Plus you can ask follow-up questions.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Check out the podcast Strict Scrutiny for good coverage of what
| SCOTUS is up to on a weekly basis: https://crooked.com/podcast-
| series/strict-scrutiny/
|
| It's hosted by three con law professors, but they're all
| extremely adept at avoiding jargon and explaining how the cases
| tie back to everyday life.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Hard to take a law podcast seriously when it openly broadcasts
| a political agenda. The image with Trump with a partisan
| caption, all the partisan logo T's in the merch shop ("abortion
| is healthcare", "leave trans kids alone you absolute freaks",
| etc.). The one linked here and SCOTUSBlog seem much better.
| monocularvision wrote:
| I highly recommend Advisory Opinions
| (https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/) for legal
| podcasts.
|
| The two hosts are center-right, but I think their takes are
| largely pretty fair. Note: Sarah Isgur worked in the Trump
| Justice Department but is hardly a fan of Trump... again, I
| find her pretty fair minded).
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| Just sounds pro-democracy and pro-ethics, of that's an
| "agenda" then it's a good one. What you've described
| increases my desire to watch it, not decrease.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Openly calling people "freaks" is not exactly indicative
| that you can expect that person to be impartial and
| accurate in their reporting of the facts. Moreover, calling
| abortion "healthcare" is disingenuous at best. Everyone
| knows damn well why people oppose abortion, and trying to
| euphemistically refer to it as healthcare is willfully
| ignoring the dispute.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I don't know how you can read a story like this one and
| _not_ conclude that abortion is healthcare.
| https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2023/04/25/1171851...
| stvltvs wrote:
| Having a viewpoint isn't a sin. The SCOTUS justices are
| allowed to rule on cases from a political viewpoint - even if
| it's euphemistically called a judicial philosophy - so why
| hold podcasters to a higher standard? At least they're
| upfront about it and you know what you're in for. That's what
| people say they like about the president elect.
| lemonberry wrote:
| I like knowing someone's bias. It makes it easier to
| understand their viewpoint whether I agree with it or not.
| It's the people that claim to be unbiased that worry me the
| most. While not always true, I suspect them of lying or
| lacking self-awareness.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| Thanks for this
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Out of curiosity, are all courts in the US required to publish
| transcripts or videos? It would be interesting to have bots
| processing those feeds to keep tabs on what is going on.
| semiquaver wrote:
| https://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/federal-court-report...
|
| Federal courts transcribe everything and the transcripts are
| generally possible to obtain although in some cases the
| transcripts are not free. State courts vary.
|
| Availability of videos or audio recordings varies even more by
| jurisdiction.
| semiquaver wrote:
| This site is the personal blog of a well-regarded reporter that
| is a primary contributor to SCOTUSBlog:
| https://www.scotusblog.com/
|
| All these posts are cross-posted there. If I recall correctly the
| reason for the cross-post setup has to do with conflict-of-
| interest avoidance since she is married to the owner of
| SCOTUSBlog. So you're probably better off reading that site
| directly than this one.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| At cursory glance, this and SCOTUSBlog seem pretty reasonable and
| not captured by the usual unhinged "the court is corrupt"
| narrative.
| TylerE wrote:
| Is it really unhinged when more and more corrupt, undocumented,
| gifts keep getting revealed?
| nonethewiser wrote:
| It's partisan. It's no coincidence that the side disagreeing
| with all the EFFECTS of the decisions (not necessarily even
| the legal interpretations - those tend not to get addressed)
| is the one calling it corrupt.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| You said it was unhinged but now you're pleading it down to
| merely partisan?
| Centigonal wrote:
| I think there are three components here:
|
| - There is a partisan component when democrats criticize
| the effect of cases like Dobbs, Janus, and Trump v. USA.
| This definitely exists.
|
| - There is definitely a legal interpretation component. I
| heard some good analysis on legal interpretation on NPR
| around the Chevron deference when Loper v. Raimondo
| happened. They had on law professors, federal lawyers, and
| even one of the lawyers who argued the original Chevron
| case. There was a lot of content educating people on the
| history of Chevron deference, what it means, and what the
| new ruling might mean for regulators in the future. I've
| also seen a lot of discussion poking holes in the unitary
| executive theory (on the left) and justifying it (on the
| right). You sometimes have to dig to find this - long
| discussions on legal theory don't exactly make for
| compelling media.
|
| - Finally, there is a "corruption on the SCOTUS" component.
| I would argue that the timing here is partisan, but the
| material is not. The conflicts of interest documented are
| factual, and the calls to adopt a code of ethics should
| have been a nonpartisan issue. Personally, I believe that
| the GOP learned the wrong lesson from the Nixon impeachment
| and Bork nomination and has adopted a more doveish stance
| on balancing political power versus corruption within their
| party, and the partisan lean of the SCOTUS scandals is a
| consequence of this.
| vundercind wrote:
| I'll be upset with liberal justices, too, if evidence turns
| up that any of them are being bribed on a grand scale by
| billionaires.
|
| That this is regarded as partisan by _anyone_ is why we 're
| screwed. The revelations about Thomas should have had all
| of Washington after his head. Nope, it's "partisan" so zero
| action taken and normal people are even confused enough
| about it that here we are, having this exchange. If that
| doesn't scare you, it should.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| Yeah SCOTUSBlog is great. NYT reporting on lower profile cases
| is often really great too. For higher profile cases I agree
| coverage is dominated by partisan concerns and discussing the
| outcomes rather than the law.
| kweingar wrote:
| It's good to get an uneditorialized view so you can know what's
| going on without wasting your breath making the same complaints
| over and over.
|
| But that doesn't mean the complaints are wrong. SCOTUS is an
| insane, dysfunctional institution.
|
| The premise of judicial review is that if you have
| ideologically-aligned justices, then any petitioner who
| disagrees with Congress or the executive can file a lawsuit,
| hit the appeal button twice, and get SCOTUS to undo the law.
| The amount of law that is supposedly derived from the
| (tangentially related) terse sentences of the constitution is
| immense and, imo, completely unjustifiable.
|
| The court's ability to strike down 100-year-old laws (whether
| acts of Congress or their own previous decisions), and their
| ability to effect these changes at times when the legislature
| is in a more or less favorable position to react, is
| destabilizing.
|
| Even if this isn't convincing, just look at the farce that is
| lifetime appointments. Large swaths of our ways of living are
| dependent on the health, age, and egos of these people. We have
| had manifestly unfit justices cling on to the bench in hopes
| that they can retire under a friendly president. We can do
| better.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| I was going to recommend SCOTUSBlog and then I noticed it's the
| same person...
|
| https://www.scotusblog.com/
|
| Volokh Conspiracy is also great
|
| https://reason.com/volokh/
| cvoss wrote:
| See also the Advisory Opinions podcast if you like to consume
| your analysis of court arguments and opinions by listening.
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