Sometimes it’s not hard to spot when #SCOTUS is being political. The rate this court moved in favor of republicans, Nixon would have finished his 2nd term before they decided on the Watergate tapes case. #USElection https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/opinion/supreme-court-trump-immunity.html
@Guinnessy well, it's really that the SCOTUS is NOT being political here, as much as people are trying to use them for political means.
Courts, and appeals courts in particular, are SUPPOSED to move at an unhurried pace. This is how it's supposed to work. They'll release an opinion when they want to.
Yeah, Nixon might have finished his 2nd term before the decision on the Watergate tapes. What of it? That's how courts work, and if folks wanted a fast, political outcome, that's what the political branches are for.
Congress is free to impeach in a day if it wants to. That's where one goes if in a rush.
@volkris As the article points out, decisions that help Trump are being made quickly in 30 days. Decisions that it helps to drag out as long as possible, that will have implications for the election are now 115+ days and counting. Nixon’s watergate tapes took something like 54 days and led to his resignation. So how long it takes SCOTUS to tackle these cases is political. They have no excuse dragging it out this long. It is unprecedented.
@Guinnessy again, the framing is wrong from the get go since the Court is supposed to act on its own schedule. The timing doesn't actually matter since timing is not part of the Court's mandate.
And heck, if the administration thought this was important it could move ahead regardless of the Court by dropping the contested parts of their case.
The executive branch is to care about timing. Apparently it doesn't mind the delay.
It's just silly for these press outfits to try to make an issue of the Supreme Court not abiding by a standard it's not supposed to abide by in the first place.
Wrong branch of government.
@Guinnessy that's not what I'm saying at all.
I'm not saying the court should do anything.
In the US system, part of judicial independence is recognizing judges' and justices' authority to decide for themselves what they should do.
If you need quick action, there are two other branches of government that are set up to be responsive--and accountable!--like that.
But complaining about the Court not doing something that it shouldn't be doing in the first place is grabbing the wrong tool for the job.
@volkris I’m not disagreeing that they can’t decide the timing of cases. I’m saying, based on past SCOTUS cases of a similar nature, delaying this immunity case so long is a political act in its own right. It is the most partisan court in recent history after all, and a reputation for coming up with some very convoluted explanations for bizarre decisions. See bump stocks for example.. https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/24/politics/supreme-court-immunity-trump-delay/index.html
@Guinnessy you're just looking for meaning in a metric that has no meaning in their context, though.
It doesn't matter what the meaningless issue of timing was previously compared to this meaningless case of timing, timing just doesn't enter into it.
It's like complaining that this wrench is really slow a driving a nail, because you had a different wrench that was faster at driving a nail, when in reality wrenches aren't the right tool to drive nails in the first place, so it's not relevant.
As for bizarre decisions, I thought the bump stock decision was very straightforward...
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-976_e29g.pdf
@volkris I think we have to agree to disagree. A passerby who sees a crime but does nothing is making a choice to enable the criminal. That’s SCOTUS in a nutshell. And to use your analogy, if the house needs to be built in a specific timeframe, then yes, slowing down using a wrench by taking long breaks leading to the house being delayed is a choice. But unlike politicians you can’t kick this lot out.
@Guinnessy but that's why you don't go to the SCOTUS in the first place if you need speed. Go to the two other branches.
If the house needs to be built in a specific timeframe, don't hire a baker since he's not even the right one to build a house in the first place!
I'm also reminded of people upset that the Court didn't talk about Trump enough when hearing this case. Except... the Supreme Court's role sitting as a court of appeals here has pretty much nothing to do with Trump. Those people who were upset don't understand the Court's role in the US government.
It's just not what the Court is for, and people are seeing malice due to their misunderstandings of this stuff.
(and as an aside, people forget that Bush v Gore was a case about a lower court interfering in an election, with the Supreme Court ordering the lower court to knock it off. It was a much different, and far simpler, case than this one)
@volkris so what you’re saying is that because #SCOTUS had a bunch of cases on its docket, Gore vs Bush the decision regarding counting votes in Florida, should have been handled in June 2001, not in December 2000 like it was? 🤔 Talk to any lawyer who deals with the court and will tell you it was extremely unusual for Trump’s immunity case to drag on as it has. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s generally a duck.