ApplesauceIrishCream
No bio...
User ID: 882
ApplesauceIrishCream
2d ago
"Proportionality" is in fact an important concept in international law contexts, but it's nearly always misrepresented by the legacy media, either due to ignorance or malice or both. Properly used, it refers to the scope of collateral damage that is permissible when seeking to eliminate a legitimate military target--the excess damage must be proportional to the military value of the intended target. It has literally nothing whatsoever to do with being "proportional" to the damage caused by the other side.
ApplesauceIrishCream
2d ago
Your argument would be more sound if you didn't misrepresent one of the most famous lines in the English language.
The line is "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal," etc. What Jefferson is doing here is declaring his axioms. He does make several arguments later in the Declaration, but they follow from those axioms; they aren't meant to prove them. Jefferson is speaking to multiple audiences, some of whom reject his axioms--the Declaration is a bold statement that the American colonies intend to chart a path entirely separated from the monarchical institutions of Europe, from the bedrock assumptions of society up.
You can't rephrase "we hold these truths to be self evident" as "obviously." Your conclusion, that handing down traditions takes effort, is sound, but Jefferson would likely agree. Ben Franklin certainly would; when asked what kind of government the Constitution created, he responded, "A republic, if you can keep it." The conditional displays your point, that traditions and institutions require maintenance, and are not immune to decay if neglected.
ApplesauceIrishCream
6d ago
No, there is a hard limit of 10 years, which is two and a half terms. If you as Vice President got the promotion in the first half of your predecessor's term, you are only eligible for one more full term. If you got the promotion in the second half, you're eligible for two more. Lapses do not reset the clock.
This is the rule for the President specifically--the governorships of various states have a variety of different rules, some of which do include a limit on consecutive terms, where a lapse can reset the clock.
ApplesauceIrishCream
6d ago
It might be, but not necessarily. In my example, it's impossible to tell, because I didn't assign rationales to any of the positions, so the two-Justice opinion might be broader or narrower than the four-Justice opinion. "Narrowest grounds" means in context 'the opinion that would control in the fewest potential future cases.' Via your link, Memoires, the earlier case referenced in Marks, was an example of a two-Justice expansive opinion added to a three-Justice narrower opinion to form a five-Justice majority (plus Stewart writing for himself to make six), and Marks indicates through your quoted language that the narrower three-Justice opinion is controlling.
You're correct that my "but with no reasoning" was in error, though, and thanks for the correction.
ApplesauceIrishCream
6d ago
Both dissents and (except in unusual cases[1]) concurrences have zero legal weight as precedent, though this needs a little further unpacking.
Formally, the Opinion of the Court is binding on lower courts, and is precedent to be followed or rejected by future Supreme Courts. The wiggle room is that a lower court may argue that an existing Supreme Court decision is distinguishable from the current case because of [reasons]; that explanation may vary wildly in ingenuousness. The Supreme Court has a fancy legal doctrine called stare decisis, which means that it's more important to be consistent than correct, though some Justices (Roberts) are bigger fans of the doctrine than others (Thomas).
Every opinion of any type can affect future legal development to the extent that the arguments therein are persuasive to future Courts. If a Court decides that a prior decision was in error, it may overturn the precedent by a simple majority, just like every other decision. Often, the dissents in the original case may provide the rationale for a later reversal, though the Court tends to change its institutional mind by individual retirement and replacement, rather than a particular Justice reversing his earlier opinion (though that too has happened).
Also, there is no formal difference between a 9-0 decision and a 5-4 decision. Both carry the full authority of the Court, so a 5-4 decision may overturn a 9-0, hypothetically. Informally, though, every judge can do the most basic of math and realize that a 9-0 decision is less likely to be overturned in a future case than a 5-4.
[1] You can have a situation where the Court splits 4-2-3 or the like on a given case, where the 4 and the 2 may agree on the outcome of a case (and the 3 disagrees), but they do not agree on a reasoning. The case would be resolved as a 6-3 decision as to the outcome, but with no reasoning, as no opinion carried a majority. That said, the lower courts would treat the 4 opinion as a strong hint, since it's the closest to a majority, even though the logic is not formally binding. The Justices try to avoid this outcome, if possible.
ApplesauceIrishCream
6d ago
The other responses you've got are mostly correct, but I'll elaborate on a few points. I've written a bit about the process before here.
@VoxelVexillologist is correct to point out Roberts' automatic seniority as Chief and its consequences, but the case is complicated by the fact that the right-ish portion of the Court has six Justices, not five. Roberts is certainly inclined to write more moderately than Alito, but if he writes too moderately, Thomas/Alito/Gorsuch/Kavanaugh/Barrett can form a majority without him. Dobbs is an exceptionally high-profile example of exactly that.
Recusal is more of an issue for a new Justice, but still pretty rare unless the new Justice was a very recent Solicitor General (or other high-ranking member of the Justice Department, including the AG). The Solicitor General is the number two guy at Justice and has the special responsibility of representing the US in court--he usually does so personally before the Supreme Court, and delegates to staff in lesser cases--so he'll often be involved in litigation strategy of multiple cases that later appear before the Supreme Court.
Each Justice has exactly one vote. The way any given Justice may punch above or below his weight is based entirely on his personal relationships with the other Justices (this is much more likely to be a negative factor; you don't get to the Supreme Court with a weak ego) and the persuasiveness of his arguments, most often in writing. My personal guess is that Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett are very slightly more advantageously placed than average, and Roberts and Jackson are slightly less than average.
@pigeonburger is right about how the majority opinion of the Court is initially assigned, but not the dissents. All dissents and concurrences are not assigned; they are written by any Justice who chooses to do extra writing. There was a recent case where Kagan registered her dissenting vote on the outcome, but neither wrote a dissent herself nor joined another opinion, so her exact reasoning is unknown. This is perfectly valid; it's just much more common that Justices are inclined to explain themselves, both to their colleagues and to posterity.
One point often missed is that in a given Term--and indeed, in each month--every Justice writes as close as possible to exactly the same number of majority opinions. This may seem unintuitive, but remember that the most common voting outcome in any given case has always been 9-0, and still is. Naturally, the more conservative Justices will be more likely to write for the majority in controversial decisions today, but that just means that Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson are more likely to be assigned the 8-1 or 9-0 cases. This practise is intended to make sure that each chambers is carrying its weight in terms of the essential work of the Court. As I said above, though, dissents and concurrences do not factor into load-balancing--those opinions are entirely discretionary on a Justice-by-Justice basis, and are purely extra work.
ApplesauceIrishCream
21d ago
The central thesis of HBD is that differing selection pressures produce divergent results between populations, and intelligence is one of the features that vary in this way. It's a pretty straightforward example of evolution, broadly understood.
The very word evolution means "change." Why would anyone consider a process of evolution to be static, immutable, unchangeable?
HBD does not claim there is no path out of the conundrum you observe. I'm not saying there are easy fixes--though I believe there are a great number of small policy changes that might produce results on the margin--but I'm baffled by the take that "HBD = nothing can change."
The way for average black IQ to rise is for black women to choose intelligent black men to father their children. This is not impossible.
An axiom is a premise to an argument. You don't set out to prove axioms within the scope of an argument not because they are obviously true, but because they are outside the scope of the argument by definition. You use axioms to prove conclusions. Yes, you may use "self-evident" more or less interchangeably with "obvious," but I never said otherwise. I said that "we hold these truths to be self-evident" is not the same as "self-evidently." "We hold" is doing crucial work here, and may not be discarded without changing the meaning of the statement.
Jefferson's use of "self-evident" in the quoted letter to Madison is consistent with the above. Again, Jefferson is declaring an axiom, or at least offering one for discussion--"I suppose to be" is a somewhat less emphatic phrasing than "we hold," but it serves the same basic purpose.
Jefferson's twenty-year sunset idea is famously nutty[1], but there's a distinction to be drawn between his private writings to Madison, and the public documents he drafted, like the Declaration. In the Declaration, Jefferson isn't just speaking for himself--after all, there's a long list of signatories, and Jefferson's early drafts got cut down a fair bit in editing-by-committee.
[1] Well, they are famously nutty now, with the posthumous publication of a great many letters and documents that were private at the time they were written. As I recall, Madison's response was more or less, "what a fascinating idea; you should definitely not mention it to anyone else." Madison was considerably more sensible than Jefferson, admittedly not the highest of bars.
More options
Context Copy link