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Notes -
Supreme Court strikes down Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan:
The amusing thing here to me is that we got two major SCOTUS rulings in two days that are, on the face of it, not directly related to each other in any obvious way (besides the fact that they both deal with the university system). One could conceivably support one ruling and oppose the other. The types of legal arguments used in both cases are certainly different. And yet we all know that the degree of correlation among the two issues is very high. If you support one of the rulings, you're very likely to support the other, and vice versa.
The question for the floor is: why the high degree of correlation? Is there an underlying principle at work here that explains both positions (opposition to AA plus opposition to debt relief) that doesn't just reduce to bare economic or racial interest? The group identity angle is obvious. AA tends to benefit blacks and Hispanics at the expense of whites and Asians. Student debt relief benefits the poorer half of the social ladder at the expense of the richer half of the social ladder. Whites and Asians tend to be richer than blacks and Hispanics. So, given a choice of "do you want a better chance of your kids getting into college, and do you also not want your tax dollars going to people who couldn't pay off their student loans", people would understandably answer "yes" to both - assuming you’re in the appropriate group and that is indeed the bargain that’s being offered to you. But perhaps that's uncharitable. Which is why I'm asking for alternative models.
See also: this unanimous decision vacating a different attack on the Plan. I was actually really confused at first because I thought this was the one everyone was talking about, but no. That would be Biden v. Nebraska.
Several commenters argue that conservative justices must be more principled, or perhaps more correct, than liberal ones. I’d like to introduce them to the various posters downthread railing at how the court was too soft on AA or abortion. From this, I conclude that law is nontrivial, that constitutional scholarship is not one-sided, and that even one’s enemies are putting actual effort into justifying their positions. As it should be.
With that out of the way—good decision. Logically correct. I am not particularly impressed with Barrett’s concurrence, which reads like apologetics. The dissent is also not particularly exciting, unlike the last case.
I hope it will be more broadly applied to executive-branch abuses of the separation of powers.
Some are! As I noted below, I find Kagan's dissent in Biden v. Nebraska compelling. This didn't surprise me much, because I generally enjoy listening to Kagan in oral arguments and find her writing clear and persuasive. I can see why she and Scalia were dear friends.
On the other hand, I really don't see KBJ as a good-faith actor. Her dissent in the SFFA case is genuinely bad and reads like something that I would expect from an avowed Kendi enthusiast. The tone even reads like a Twitter clapback. I'm not saying she's stupid, but she makes genuinely stupid arguments and displays an absurd level of epistemic helplessness regarding "experts" when it's convenient.
I need to read that dissent more carefully, then. I got the impression it was “we think y’all were just wrong” rather than a more subtle “this is a complicated balance, and you overvalued part.” See Sotomayor’s SFFA dissent, which had some real zingers, but was a pretty thorough argument on the premise of a “compelling interest.”
I also remember being pretty impressed by Kavanaugh on other cases. He has pleasantly surprised me for professionalism.
Edit: I’m seeing the part about MOHELA and Missouri’s standing now. I see what you mean.
Yeah the dissent… you should really read it. See attached
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