But are they partisan hacks? Absolutely not in my opinion. I think they take their oath of office seriously, and do their best, as they see it. It is not dishonorable to have different interpretative methodologies. And they do care about their legal reputations and legacy. And at the SCOTUS level most certainly, they are very talented. They even impress me, on both sides, and I am hard to impress, trust me. I try to be polite and kind, but that does not mean I impress easily.
They lied to Congress. They're hacks.
Technically they didn’t lie, they just carefully choose their words. Most of them basically said Row v Wade is precedent and they value precedent. That doesn’t mean Roe v Wade can’t be struck down. Precedent is only a factor to take into account, not an end all be all.
What makes this so challenging though is none of us truly know what is going on inside the justices head as they make their rulings. Are they doing them with the intent to favour their own benefit? Are they really trying heir best to be impartial? How open minded are they to the side they are predisposed to be less favourable to in a given case? This is the stuff that’s impossible to know and hence “hackishness” is only speculative.
The only justice I would truly say can be called a “hack” would be Thomas given he’s said a lot of crazy things that aren’t even based on reality to justify his positions. Also the fact he never asks questions suggests he is not very open minded or curious to understand both sides. However, all the other justices tend to base their reasoning on judicial logic even if we sometimes disagree with it. Some of that logic may be associated with a liberal or conservative view of thinking but that doenst necessarily make them hacks.
If anything, society is the one that makes the court legitimate or not. The court may seem illigimate to you because they do rulings you disagree with. It doesn’t mean to those justices that wasn’t truly the right ruling.
Overall for this reason the SCOTUS is a weird institution but one we must learn to live with nonetheless
You guys keep saying this, but what is it based on? That there is allot of legalese and purple prose in Supreme Court decisions?
I especially hate the ‘well you may disagree with them’ logic because that’s just functioning as a get out of reality free card for you. If we can’t judge them by their opinions, what are we supposed to base the alleged legitimacy of the court on? Because as far as I can see, all you guys have is wishes and vibes.
Their opinions by and large follow no consistent legal logic on any case which has salience for either the operation of government or national politics. We now live in a world where any operation of the federal government, from legislation to executive actions to banal regulatory department functions, is subject to endless frivolous lawsuits designed to see whether six Fox News commentators decide to invent a new doctrine to nullify anything that doesn’t align with their political preferences.
But even if we do accept your premise that these are very serious men going wherever their serious lawyer logic take them, so what? A Supreme Court lead by a legal philosophy in which new doctrines are created in the fly and the rules as understood by congress, lower courts, and the legal profession writ large are turned in their head entirely because the justices in question think the last century of case law don’t count in their new world isn’t a legitimate court anyway. Because, you know Stare Decisis is actually really important to the whole operation.
