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The Courts under Trump - Mega Thread


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A thread to discuss all things related to Federal Courts under Trump.

 

Regardless of what success Trump may or may not have on the legislative side, he has an opportunity to impact the court system for decades to come. We often have our eyes on the SC when most of the

action occurs in the lower federal courts - beginning wt the District Courts and then moving to the various Court of Appeals.

 

This article does a good job in laying out 1. The opportunity with current vacancies at each federal court level 2. The influence he will have to shape not just the SC but all federal courts.

While judges appointed by Democratic presidents make up a much higher % than judges appointed by Republican Presidents, the # of current vacancies alone could almost balance out the mix of Dem/Rep appointed judges.

This does not include vacancies which will occur during the next 4 or 8 years.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-07-10/trump-begins-the-rightward-shift-of-america-s-courts

 

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This topic has me so depressed and scared I prefer to put my head in the sand about it.

 

I about ready to send Ruth, and Breyer vitamins each month and offer safety escorts to all including Sotomayor and Kagen.

 

It does help my mind somewhat, as I have a good family connection to Breyer, and he is a healthy man who loves what he does. He feels very strongly about the balance of the court and I don't think he'll leave on his own while we're in this spot.

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Wow, that's encouraging to hear about Breyer. I think everyone is most concerned about Kennedy since rumors of his retirement are swirling. It would really stink to replace the one reliable swing justice with another Gorsuch. That throws the balance all out of whack for the foreseeable future.

 

Of course, if Thomas then retires down the road and gets replaced with someone more liberal, the problem takes care of itself.

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As long as we don't have a very long line of one party in the WH, we will have a fairly balanced SC. This is one reason why I honestly don't get so worked up about it. Yes, it will eb and flow from one side to the other. But, in general, it will be fairly balanced.

11 successfully confirmed justices in a row were by Republican presidents from 1969 to 1993. Bill Clinton nominated 2 (a catastrophe to conservative interests! We must never let this happen again!), W nominated 2, Obama nominated 2 except it should have been 3.

 

So, in the past 48 years -- this will soon be a half-century -- the count stands at 14 R - 4D.

 

The last time the 'liberal' wing had a majority on the Court was when? We're currently at a solid 5-4 and it's about to swing further to the right (RBG, Breyer, and Kennedy are by far the oldest ones, right?). If balance is legitimately a concern then there was a clear remedy for the 2016 election -- and this has become only more urgent for the 2020 ballot and forward.

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As long as we don't have a very long line of one party in the WH, we will have a fairly balanced SC. This is one reason why I honestly don't get so worked up about it. Yes, it will eb and flow from one side to the other. But, in general, it will be fairly balanced.

11 successfully confirmed justices in a row were by Republican presidents from 1969 to 1993. Bill Clinton nominated 2 (a catastrophe to conservative interests! We must never let this happen again!), W nominated 2, Obama nominated 2 except it should have been 3.

 

So, in the past 48 years -- this will soon be a half-century -- the count stands at 14 R - 4D.

 

The last time the 'liberal' wing had a majority on the Court was when? We're currently at a solid 5-4 and it's about to swing further to the right (RBG, Breyer, and Kennedy are by far the oldest ones, right?). If balance is legitimately a concern then there was a clear remedy for the 2016 election -- and this has become only more urgent for the 2020 ballot and forward.

 

You have to remember where some of those Rep appointed justices ended up ideologically on the bench. Kennedy often sides with the more liberal and he was a replacement for Bork who didn't make it through confirmation. Going back to Nixon, there have been several justices who tended towards that pivot position that Kennedy now hold - showing to be more liberal than what one might have expected. Some actually proved to be ideologically liberal on the court. Yet, I don't know of one Dem appointed SC justice who surprised and became more conservative on the court.

 

The mix is good however. Scalia was very good friends it has been told wt Ginsburg. I wouldn't want a 100% liberal court or 100% conservative court. FDR tried to stack the court and congress stopped him.

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I don't think a case can even begin to be made that the Democratic Party is more likely to tend to ideology in their SCOTUS nominations than the GOP. The Republican nominations that ended up 'liberal' are considered massive failures not to be tolerated again. We are instead promised more in the mold of Scalia, Alito, Thomas. Without those 'failures', the Court would be in a quite alarming place.

 

Meanwhile, Obama nominated Merrick Garland out of a shortlist of respected, centrist judges.

 

I suspect "the mix is good" as long as the conservatives have the sway, which they've had for a long, long time. Meanwhile, the prospect of even a modest interruption with a liberal-leaning SCOTUS sets off a massive threat response from the GOP. At some point this has to be characterized as court-stacking, too -- only the GOP-controlled Congress, burgeoned by voters happy to support this, are leading the way.

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Appointing judges on the SC is just as big of an issue in Dem elections as it is in GOP. To say the Dems are flowers and bubbles is disingenuous at best.

 

Both sides want judges that are more towards their ideological side. Obama went more centrist mainly because he knew he couldn't get anything more liberal through the Senate.

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I think we want to see everything as a mirror image, but there's no counterpart to the GOP's internal enforcement of ideological rigor. Also, I think SCOTUS nominations are a slightly bigger deal on the GOP side -- for two big reasons.

 

We have not had a very balanced SC for a long time. It's not a balanced position to regard this as basically balanced.

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I think we want to see everything as a mirror image, but there's no counterpart to the GOP's internal enforcement of ideological rigor. Also, I think SCOTUS nominations are a slightly bigger deal on the GOP side -- for two big reasons.

 

We have not had a very balanced SC for a long time. It's not a balanced position to regard this as basically balanced.

Bold: Name a Pro-life judge appointed by a Dem. :dunno

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I think we want to see everything as a mirror image, but there's no counterpart to the GOP's internal enforcement of ideological rigor. Also, I think SCOTUS nominations are a slightly bigger deal on the GOP side -- for two big reasons.

 

We have not had a very balanced SC for a long time. It's not a balanced position to regard this as basically balanced.

Bold: Name a Pro-life judge appointed by a Dem. :dunno

 

To be fair, we do not yet know the views of Sotomayor or Kagen. They've never ruled in on a woman' right to make a medical decision.

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I think we want to see everything as a mirror image, but there's no counterpart to the GOP's internal enforcement of ideological rigor. Also, I think SCOTUS nominations are a slightly bigger deal on the GOP side -- for two big reasons.

 

We have not had a very balanced SC for a long time. It's not a balanced position to regard this as basically balanced.

Bold: Name a Pro-life judge appointed by a Dem. :dunno

 

Name the last time the court wasn't a conservative majority.

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  • 5 months later...

 

I've litigated almost all of my career. I've taken hundreds of depositions, read and used the Rules of Civil Procedure daily,  argued hundreds of motions, and had multiple jury trials in different venues. And I would still not consider myself qualified to take the Bench.

 

It is absolutely terrifying that this corrupt Administration is nominating such grossly unqualified people to lifetime positions.

Ask yourself, why?

Edited by QMany
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