Bad SCOTUS justices in history, not including the current ones or Roger B. Taney
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  Bad SCOTUS justices in history, not including the current ones or Roger B. Taney
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Author Topic: Bad SCOTUS justices in history, not including the current ones or Roger B. Taney  (Read 663 times)
I知 not Stu
ERM64man
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« on: March 15, 2023, 07:10:28 PM »

Can you list justices from the past (excluding Roger Brooke Taney) that you believe were crappy?
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Mr. Reactionary
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« Reply #1 on: March 15, 2023, 08:24:57 PM »

Earl Warren.
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I知 not Stu
ERM64man
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« Reply #2 on: March 15, 2023, 08:40:08 PM »

Melville Fuller
James McReynolds
Rufus Peckham
Nathan Clifford
Pierce Butler
Willis Vandevanter
Stephen Johnson Field
Mahlon Pitney
George Sutherland
William Rehnquist
Antonin Scalia
Sandra Day O'Connor
Anthony Kennedy
James Byrnes
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MarkD
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« Reply #3 on: March 16, 2023, 05:53:32 AM »

IMO, the two worst of all time were William O. Douglas and Anthony Kennedy.

But most of the Justices that ever served on the Court were just plain mediocre -- did not deserve to be on a court that ought to consist of the most highly objective interpreters of law that can be found anywhere in the country.
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Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers
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« Reply #4 on: March 16, 2023, 08:28:46 AM »

IMO, the two worst of all time were William O. Douglas and Anthony Kennedy.

But most of the Justices that ever served on the Court were just plain mediocre -- did not deserve to be on a court that ought to consist of the most highly objective interpreters of law that can be found anywhere in the country.
[/quote

LoL O Douglas did have Brown v Board of Ed , Miranda and Public Defender laws there were no Public Defenders in the S that's why Dixiecrats judges sentenced Blk men to Chain gangs from 1865/1955
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CrabCake
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« Reply #5 on: March 16, 2023, 01:24:12 PM »

James Clark McReynolds, one of the conservative bere noires of FDR, was an infamously rude and cartoonishly petty man, to the extent even conservative justices like Taft found him intolerable and outright damaging to the court. He is one of those people whose Wikipedia page has a "personality" section that is filled with endless accounts of  bigotry and dickishness. For example, he refused to talk to the Jewish judges Louis Brandeis and Cardozzo, complaining that he did not want to be seen with a Hebrew, refusing to make eye contact with them and so on. He was so misogynistic he would walk out of the room saying "a female has arrived" like a ferengi if a woman had to appear before SCOTUS, and he turned his chair around so he would not see a black lawyer. At least one Justice retired early directly due to McReynolds' bullying, which also included his domestic staff (apparently he went AWOL from court to go duck hunting, and would make his black messenger wade through freezing water to retrieve his catches). No justices went to his funeral - although many did go the funeral of the aforementioned long suffering black servant.
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I知 not Stu
ERM64man
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« Reply #6 on: March 16, 2023, 04:26:23 PM »
« Edited: March 16, 2023, 04:33:26 PM by Feel the rhythm in my blood »

Fuller, Field, and Peckham (in Plessy and Lochner majority)
McReynolds (one of the Four Horsemen and extreme bigot)
Butler, Vandevanter, and Sutherland (the other members of the Four Horsemen)
Byrnes (Dixiecrat)
Pitney (anti-labor and upheld Leo Frank's wrongful conviction)
Clifford (neutered the Reconstruction amendments)
Rehnquist and Scalia (Rehnquist and Scalia had an abysmal civil rights record, both in Bush v. Gore majority; Scalia tried to strike down the Affordable Care Act, and was in the majority for Shelby County and Citizens United)
O'Connor (co-wrote Bush v. Gore and quit at the wrong time)
Kennedy (co-wrote Bush v. Gore, wrote Citizens United, anti-labor, in Shelby County majority, tried to strike down the Affordable Care Act quit at the wrong time and personally chose Kavanaugh for Trump to appoint)
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Mr. Smith
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« Reply #7 on: March 16, 2023, 07:19:10 PM »

Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy.
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Orser67
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« Reply #8 on: March 18, 2023, 11:00:38 AM »

I'm not a fan of most of the justices who served between Plessy and Harlan Stone's appointment, with a few big exceptions (such as John Marshall Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Evans Hughes, Louis Brandeis etc.). Also not a fan of the Dred Scott majority (including, but not limited to, Taney), and the conservative justices that have been appointed since the Nixon administration. Clarence Thomas is definitely up there for me as someone with whom I disagree on a large number of rulings and who has strong ties to the conservative movement via his wife.
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John Dule
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« Reply #9 on: March 19, 2023, 03:46:31 AM »

Fuller, Field, and Peckham (in Plessy and Lochner majority)
McReynolds (one of the Four Horsemen and extreme bigot)
Butler, Vandevanter, and Sutherland (the other members of the Four Horsemen)
Byrnes (Dixiecrat)
Pitney (anti-labor and upheld Leo Frank's wrongful conviction)
Clifford (neutered the Reconstruction amendments)
Rehnquist and Scalia (Rehnquist and Scalia had an abysmal civil rights record, both in Bush v. Gore majority; Scalia tried to strike down the Affordable Care Act, and was in the majority for Shelby County and Citizens United)
O'Connor (co-wrote Bush v. Gore and quit at the wrong time)
Kennedy (co-wrote Bush v. Gore, wrote Citizens United, anti-labor, in Shelby County majority, tried to strike down the Affordable Care Act quit at the wrong time and personally chose Kavanaugh for Trump to appoint)

If you wanted to say this, you should've put it in the OP.
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President Punxsutawney Phil
TimTurner
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« Reply #10 on: March 19, 2023, 04:06:11 AM »

Can anything positive be said about McReynolds? What would a devils advocate defense for him even look like?
He strikes me as one of the very worst justices in the Court's history, period.
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John Dule
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« Reply #11 on: March 19, 2023, 04:26:23 AM »

Can anything positive be said about McReynolds? What would a devils advocate defense for him even look like?
He strikes me as one of the very worst justices in the Court's history, period.

He resisted the New Deal and pushed for indoor smoking bans.
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I知 not Stu
ERM64man
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« Reply #12 on: March 19, 2023, 11:10:21 AM »

Can anything positive be said about McReynolds? What would a devils advocate defense for him even look like?
He strikes me as one of the very worst justices in the Court's history, period.
Nothing positive can be said about McReynolds. McReynolds dissented in the case that overturned the conviction of the Scottsboro Boys, which was written by Four Horsemen member George Sutherland.
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