Comments

1
People should get promotions based on merit.
2
Hi,

I think your treatment of the Title VII issues in the Ricci case is so fucking ignorant it can only have been tailored for an audience you simply assumed with gobble them up without demurrer. No, seriously.

It's. Just. Ignorant.

The Supreme Court didn't "change the law"; this question was one of first impression, that question being: can the city directly discriminate against a guy like Frank Ricci in order to avoid a disparate impact suit? The court gave an answer.

Although I agree that it was simply a silly gimmick to have Ricci appear at the hearings anyway, I also think it is a mistake, Oprah, to focus as you do on the fact that Mr. Ricci was insufficiently manipulative to conjure tears; a person like you, after all, would have thrown about the "poor, dyslexic quiz whiz" shtick if Mr. Ricci had entered the committee room with his face burned off.

You also need to stop making Ms. Lithwick your go-to authority on matters of law. She, like you, spends an inordinate amount of time in the company of people who agree with her. It's unhealthy.
3
@2 is has it right: your legal analysis is appalling to anyone that has studied the law. I found your earlier argument that the existence of common law proves that judges are invited to make up the law as they go along especially demonstrative of your ignorance on the subject.

I am surprised that as a reporter you did not do some research, or talk to a legal scholar or a lawyer before espousing what powers justices possess. Your comments sound like wrongheaded conclusions based on misreadings of Wikipedia entries.
4
Good Morning Annie,
Sotomayor will be approved by a full senate. I figure something like 75-25 vote. She'll have some dissenters like Roberts' confirmation vote. I didn't think it necessary to have the plantiff Ricci present at the hearing. The Supreme Court's vote in favor of him (vs. New Haven) was a far more important indication showing Sotomayor's judicial capability. I do agree that people should get promotions based on merit. I forsee an ending of affirmative action soon.

As for Sotomayor, she may end up dissappointing liberals and judicial activists. Democratic presidents have had fewer SC appointments the past fifty years or so. One of their appointments is bound to dissappoint like Souter dissappointed the conservatives.
5
It's fun watching all this because SLOG and the rest see this as some sort of triumph of Liberalism, whereas my interpretation has been that it's the last desperate gasp of a dying ideology.

6
I wouldn't call her conservative though, just a moderate, like Obama. She'll piss off the far left and far right which is fine by me.
7
"One of those times when the Supreme Court changes the law because, hey, why not? It can."

Oof.
8
I don't see it as cyincal, just a reaffirmation that the courts have always done nothing but apply the law. Sotomayor isn't just saying that she only applies the laws. She's implying that this is what justices have always done, and that claims to the contrary misconstrue the role the court has played in the past. Judicial activism to the extent that it exists has always been form of legal hermeneutics, not a matter of judges creating legislation from the bench. That only happens in the minds of conservative windbags who have zero understanding of the anglo-american legal tradition.
9
The whole Obama Democratic strategy is to appropriate and/or neutralize Republican wedge issues. In the end she and him are both moderate liberals.
10
@2: I go to the University of Chicago Law School. All of my time is spent around people who disagree with me. And I cited Lithwick for a political proposition, not a legal one.

@3: I never said that judges make up law as they go along. But yes, I am pushing hard against the idea that the law as it exists compels a certain result in every case. That is almost never true at the Supreme Court level.
11
these hearings are a farce. hold the fucking vote already.

Please wait...

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