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No. I want conservatives to be the same as liberals. They turn the SC into a fantasy world or a Senate when they want to. I want the same benefits that liberals have. When they want gay marriage they make up law. When they want Roe they make up law.
Nothing you say is going to convince me that they’re not all liberal hacks with no respect for the law. I don’t care if they’re 160 IQ and write eloquent opinions or 85 IQ and just say they did something because they wanted to. To quote The Office, “It’s the same Picture”. A prostitute is still a prostitute whether she’s giving $10 hand jobs or getting $500k a night. A partisan hack is well Ruth Ginsburg because she wrote law which is NOT her job.
And Yes making up law when you control the SC is beneficial to your side. I’m down with that since we own the court now.
At this point, you should drop the language about judicial restraint, judicial bias, and respect for the law. Your position from my understanding is: “Blues used the Court as a political weapon, so I want Reds to use it as a political weapon too.” That may be honest, but it is not a rule-of-law position, it's just power politics.
The important distinction is between “this is bad legal theory” vs “legal theory does not matter.” You can think Roe or Obergefell were badly reasoned, yet that doesn't have to lead right away to "judges should openly act like partisan legislators when our side controls the Court". Once you say “we own the Court now,” you have basically accepted the premise that the Court is just another legislature. And if that is true, then you have no principled objection when blue judges do the same thing next time, or when blues try to pack the Court.
Roe is actually a useful example here. Even if it helped liberals for decades, that was, as it turns out, temporary. Roe made the conflict more bitter, less settled, and more legitimacy-destroying. Your version of judicial nihilism would create the same problem in reverse.
So I understand the impulse for revenge, but that is what it is: revenge. It is not really about the Constitution or the rule of law anymore. It is about using the Court as a weapon because you believe the other side did it first. But there will always be people to your left and to your right, and no faction gets to bludgeon everyone else forever because that is not a stable or decent way to run a constitutional system.
It’s game theory. I prefer both sides follow the letter of the law. Once one side has defected the optimal strategy is also to defect.
Sub-optimal outcome but I do not believe the left has acted in good faith.
I disagree with your world view and perspective. I regret that I don't have the words to persuade you otherwise. Best of luck to us both.
Think you need to do some soul searching because I believe my reasoning is solid that your love of West Wing debate society was really just the loss of the rule of law in America.
Not sure what you meant to say here. That "in the matter of law, there is no room for debate" ?
Yes. 100%. Granted the law can be messy so translating the law won’t be a perfect science, but for Courts to NOT be legislatures they really did need to limit how far they take interpretations and keep to the text. They really did need to behave as close as possible to being mathematics. Few want to constrain their own power.
Now though is an interesting time. It does appear that the court will be conservative for my lifetime. Dems can win the POTUS but I have significant doubts they can also hold the Senate. So conservatives have a choice now of either limiting themselves to textualism or adopting their version of a living constitution. Living Constitution is much more powerful than textualism. For now they have limited themselves to undoing things down over the last 80 years. I do think Democrats have given them the blueprint to just do things because they think they are good for society and not limiting themselves to the text that was passed in congress.
Ok, so I think we can agree on at least some things:
I think we might disagree on (not sure yet because we didn't delve into any specific cases):
I would commend conservative judges if they actually be the constraining force in the judicial system. But as you've demonstrated, the desire to just get the results you want is really overwhelming.
The conservatives haven’t crossed that rubicon. They mostly did things like uphold ObamaCare though they likely had strong legal arguments to axe it if they wanted to. They’ve ditched horizontal precedence which I think is fine for something like Roe where I think most people felt it was a bad ruling. They haven’t gotten rid of Obgerfell which doesn’t appear to have textual support. Largely because it’s popular and the politics bad.
I’m proposing they should consider adopting theories to make the Court a Senate because that’s what the left has done, but they are no where close to doing that. Robert’s has largely acting as a politician and not an interpreter and he’s acted as a politician in favor of the left.
A fundamental problem with your “debating” court is even if you say it’s fine provided they remain internal consistency they still get selected thru a political process. Which means they can be selected for the ones that will do policy for what the left wants. Not a big concern now because the left probably won’t get to pick judges for 30 years, but it is a long term problem. Venice had a weird political system where leaders were picked thru multiple rounds of voting that was indirect Democracy of elites. The SC has essentially become that where they get to make policy thru some very indirect Democracy.
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