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Notes -
Supreme Court roundup thread? They dropped four opinions today that have some pretty wide ranging implications. Some more than others.
In Chatrie v. United States a 5-4 court (with Roberts and Barrett joining Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson) holds that geofence warrants constitute a "search" under the 4th amendment. This does not necessarily resolve the case in favor of Chatrie, though. The government did have a warrant in this case, although it's not clear whether the warrant was "reasonable." SCOTUS here is mostly pushing back on the holding by the Fourth Circuit panel that a search had not even occurred under the fourth amendment, due to the third party doctrine.
In Watson v. Republican National Committee a 5-4 court (with Roberts and Barrett joining Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson) the court holds that federal laws specifying an election day do not pre-empt state laws that permit counting ballots received after that day, so long as the ballots are sent by that day.
In Trump v. Slaughter a 6-3 court holds that the "for-cause" removal provision for FTC commissioners is unconstitutional, overruling Humphrey's Executor. This was pretty widely anticipated, since the Supreme Court has gradually been expanding the President's power to remove officials since Trump's re-election.
In Trump v. Cook a 5-4 court (Roberts and Kavanaugh joining Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson) holds that the President may not fire members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governor's at-will. The for-cause provision regarding firing members of the Feds BoG is constitutional and sets a "substantial threshold" for what constitutes cause.
Most online discussion I've seen has been focused on the latter two decisions and their apparent inconsistency. Apparently, Congress can only insulate executive branch employees from Presidential termination some of the time and those circumstances do not depend on the wording of the statute or anything else Congress has any control over. Roberts is the author of both opinions and he tries to square the circle by arguing that the United States has a long history of independent central banking but I don't think he's very convincing. The Federal Reserve itself is a mere 1 year older than the FTC (founded in 1913 vs 1914) so Roberts tries to reach back to the First and Second Bank of the United States and nevermind the fact there was an 80 year period where the United States had no central bank between the Second Bank of the United States and the Federal Reserve. Some of the syllabus even, in my view, departs from anything that could be called a legal argument to argue that this is good policy:
The court has also said tomorrow will be the last opinion day, in which we will presumably get the four remaining opinions (including birthright citizenship) so maybe I'll have to do another one tomorrow.
I want to place a bet on birthright. I care basically zero about the legal arguments and I don’t think Robert’s primary instinct is choosing the best legal argument.
Simplistically I don’t believe Robert’s will want to create the next Roe v Wade that lacks a legislative solution and ends up creating a voting block that only votes for repeal of Roe. I will consider voting only for candidates who will appoint judges who will repeal Birthright if Robert’s removes the ability of action on the issue outside of the SC. I think both legal arguments to go either way are intellectually coherent so you can just pick the legal theory you want.
My gut says he upholds most of birthright but finds a way to let congress make the rules in the future. This may be the weakest legal theory to just punt to congress but it feels like it fits with Robert decisions. And this includes deciding the Fed is special today. It’s usually better to punt controversial things to congress instead of locking change into multi-decade SC battles.
Everyone knows amending the constitution is impossible now so amending the Constitution just comes down to change the Court membership. Getting controversial things out of the court hands has value to maintain the Court legitimacy. You don’t want a different court in 20 years reversing tomorrows decision.
Your gut was wrong, and Kavanaugh was the one who was looking to let Congress handle it.
Yep wrong. But was like 95% of being upheld on prediction markets. Already being at 4 to strike it down I would have thought got Robert’s in play.
Barrett was a mistake.
Barrett was a mistake from day 0, she never should have been in line for the court. Alas, she got there because she's a woman, and because Roe v Wade.
Given her record since joining the Court I'm actually shocked that she was shortlisted.
But Thomas was put on the court to swap Thurgood Marshall for another black man, and he's based as all hell.
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