Monday, March 12, 2012

NY Times Makes A Grand Admission

What other way is there to interpret this, except to say that the Supreme Court's liberals are ideologues while the conservatives are open-minded?
For the first time since at least 1953, when Chief Justice Earl Warren joined the court, the justices are divided along not only ideological but also partisan lines: its five more conservative members were all appointed by Republican presidents and its four more liberal members by Democrats.

Add to that the conventional wisdom about which votes in the health care case are fixed in concrete: the four justices appointed by Democrats are thought certain to vote to uphold the law, and Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by the elder George Bush, is believed to be a sure vote to strike it down.
According to the not-quite-conservative New York Times, the only votes up for grabs are conservative. Justice Kagan, who worked on Obamacare before becoming a justice, won't even recuse herself for a conflict of interest.

You know what I'm telling you.
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5 comments:

  1. maxutils6:26 PM

    Right! If they didn't have open minds, they would never see that it made perfect Constitutional sense to allow governments to use eminent domain to seize low tax-valued property so that it could be replaced with higher valued, privately owned property. That was awesome! And, if Clarence Thomas didn't have an open mind, he would never vote exactly the same as Antonin Scalia in every case. Nope, no idealogues there . . .

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  2. Darren6:31 PM

    Kelo will someday join the heap with Dred Scott, Plessy, and Wickard.

    But that doesn't change *anything* I quoted from the NYT above.

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  3. maxutils8:35 PM

    Clearly, you missed my intent -- I was *totally* agreeing with you.

    In all seriousness -- give me any supreme court case, and I can tell you with frightening precision how each justice will vote. Except Kennedy. And, I usually get him, too . . . the only justice on the court with an open mind is Anthony Kennedy, and on occaasion, David Souter.

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  4. PeggyU10:11 AM

    We attended a Federalist Society presentation on the judicial philosophy of Clarence Thomas. Interestingly, the speaker made a comment that while Kagan is reliably liberal, Sotomayor has a more independent streak. So there's that.

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  5. maxutils4:12 PM

    Thomas doesn't have a judicial philosophy . . . he serves solely to let Scalia have two votes. I'm willing to believe that Sotomayor might be a wild card, but only after she makes her first anti-liberal vote. We shall see.

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