Understanding the Ideology Behind the Supreme Court
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- Опубліковано 7 жов 2024
- Adam Feldman of Empirical SCOTUS and Optimized Legal Consulting joins Sarah and David to discuss the concept of a 3-3-3 Supreme Court and the challenges of measuring ideology.
The Agenda:
-The role of Chief Justice John Roberts
-Similarities and differences between political and judicial conservatism
-The jurisprudence of Justice Amy Comey Barrett
-The prevalence of unanimous decisions
Show notes:
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#supremecourt #law #politics #conservative
I also would like the Supreme Court to be a neutral body. However, in the real world it is and will always be a political branch.
Why on earth would you take them at their word, when they’re acting so boldly political? You shouldn’t leave your common sense at the door lol
Labelling judicial conservatives (broadly) as classical liberals is, I think, being very loose with terms to say the least.
Just as an example, no classical liberal worth his or her salt would condone Citizens United - a ruling which essentially granted commercial entities personhood.
No classical liberal would seek to challenge a right to privacy either - as Thomas has repeatedly mused.
You're going to have to explain your logic on that Citizens United opinion. What's not "classically liberal" about allowing a commercial assembly (protected under the 1st amendment) the same legal rights as individuals?
@@tchoupitoulos a classical liberal’s fundamental concern is individual liberty. Not collective liberty for enterprise.
Arguing that the citizens united decision is correct due to the first amendment is a different discussion entirely. Classical liberalism and the US constitution aren’t synonymous so just because an idea sits well within one doesn’t mean it sits well within the other.
If the conservative justices jurisprudence is solely governed by the text of the constitution, then they should be labeled textualist or originalist (depending on flavour). I took exception to the label of “classical liberal”.
A classical liberals fundamental concern in a case like citizens united would be how does this case impinge on individual rights. The concern would be a) commercial entities aren’t people and therefore aren’t entitled to the rights and freedoms of people and b) would giving this right to commercial entities dilute the speech, power, influence of the individual? Any classical liberal would conclude that it does.
If a justice was truly a classical liberal, you would see a lot more variability in where they came down on hot button issues/cases. You’d see a lot of pro 2nd amendment, anti gerrymandering, anti tariff, pro choice and pro lgbt opinions.
A bit like Gorsuch’s opinion in Bostock - where everyone on the right freaks out because this conservative seemed to side with the liberals on a case about individual rights in the workplace.
Again, a good example of classical liberal thought - the individual has the rights, not the business. The individuals who own the business have rights, but theirs don’t supersede their employees.
That’s why citizens united doesn’t track.
@@goldboy150 "A classical liberals fundamental concern in a case like citizens united would be how does this case impinge on individual rights. The concern would be a) commercial entities aren’t people and therefore aren’t entitled to the rights and freedoms of people and b) would giving this right to commercial entities dilute the speech, power, influence of the individual? Any classical liberal would conclude that it does. "
This is pure bull. Allowing an assemblage of individuals to exercise their individual rights together in assembly in no way threatens any other individual from exercising their own individual rights. And "power and influence" has absolutely no place in the discussion. The Bill of Rights doesn't grant either to anybody in any way, shape, or form, beyond what power and influence we wield in our right to vote. Beyond that, they are orthogonal concepts in relation to constitutional rights.
We have the right to free speech. We have the right to assemble. The idea that we don't have the right to assemble and speak together as one voice if we choose freely to do so is anathema to the 1st amendment.
@@tchoupitoulos you’re speaking of collective rights. That is statism at its finest - why this group of collective right holders and not that one? Who decides whose collective rights hold primacy? The state?
The fact that you would assert that any sort of collectivisation is congruent with a classical liberal view of society and the body politic shows you have zero understanding of the ideology.
Why on earth would a classical liberal be skeptical of trade unionism if collectivisation was was congruent with liberal thought?
@@goldboy150 You're misdefining things here in order to try and steal bases. Statism is prioritizing the power and prerogative of the state over the rights of the individual, not the right of individuals to exercise their rights together. Citizens United does not regard any kind of state power or prerogative over individuals AT ALL. It upholds the right of individuals to exercise their rights together.
"Why this group of collective right holders and not that one?" What are you even talking about? Where do you get this from anything we've been discussing, or the Citizen's United decision? Nowhere has it been posited, by me or any justices in this decision, that anyone's rights nullify or take precedence over anyone else's. No one has primacy, and Citizens United in no way grants any primacy to anyone. You're chasing shadows here.
"The fact that you would assert that any sort of collectivisation (sic) is congruent with a classical liberal view of society..." Again, you are confusing assembly with collectivism. There is no prioritizing the collective over the individual going on here, and Citizens Untied has absolutely nothing to do with collectivism.
Since when are classical liberals skeptical of trade unionism qua trade unionism? The only problem anyone should have with trade unionism is when a union gets to be so universal that it can exercise monopoly power over an industry's workforce. But that's an economic problem, not a constitutional one.