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Originally Posted by loquitur
Will, I wasn't denying the overall patterns. They are there.
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What are we disagreeing about, then? That's all I was saying.
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Originally Posted by loquitur
Political views and judicial philosophy are two different things. Judges will usually apply the latter even if the result will conflict with the former - the idea being that judges are not in the business of making policy, they're in the business of deciding cases according to the law. That is why I used the eminent domain, medical marijuana and punitive damages cases as examples - in each of those, the supposedly left-wing justices reached the right-wing result while the right-wing justices went the other way. That's because they aren't looking at the result of the case, they're looking at the rule of the case. That is as true of Stephen Breyer (who, by the way, is a great judge) as it is of Nino Scalia (also a giant). They are not politicians.
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That being the case, a running tally probably would probably just be a waste of time.
Still, I have to wonder... couldn't a supreme court justice use favorable precedence to support their political agenda? I know in some cases there can be conflicting precedent, and if something does appear before the supreme court it's often not open and shut. Say Scalia names a conservative precedent and Ginsberg names a liberal precedent, is that political or judicial philosophy?
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Originally Posted by loquitur
As far as your chart is concerned, you really need to define what is a liberal result and which is a conservative result.
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Can you explain this to Jazz? When I brought this up, he basically called me stupid.
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Originally Posted by loquitur
Most of the non-bill-of-rights constitutional issues are questions of "who gets to decide" and NOT "what is the right answer." The NY Times characterizes these consistently on the result of the single case, which is stupidity writ large. In the who gets to decide category, there are disputes of Pres v Congress, Congress v States, agencies v courts, etc etc etc. The issue in those cases is not what the policy is, but who has the power to make the policy in a govt system of separated powers. The results won't be characterized easily as liberal or conservative, but you'll be able to read the cases and see what principles the various justices apply.
That's why the use of political labels as applied to judges is pretty problematic.
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Well put. I think I have a better grasp on this now. It has the appearance of being political to a layman (like, oh I dunno, me), but in actuality it's a lot more like establishing who has jurisdiction or what precedent has jurisdiction.
BTW, I hope you are clear that I never intended to call you a liar.
Jazz, do you think that a Republican Senate would impeach Bush under any circumstances?
Also, I'm not going to Berkeley Law in the fall. I'm going back to get my BA in Political Science. After that, I'll take the LSAT. Then I'd like to get clerical experience in the law field. Then, if my grades, scores, and recommendations are worthy, I'll apply to Boalt (or Berkeley Law, as they call it now). No where in this thread have I resorted to calling someone stupid. You cannot say the same.
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Originally Posted by Cynthetic
Will, no one is trying to be rigeously indignant.
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Count how many times you've said "intellectually dishonest". And FYI, you're using the term incorrectly. Intellectual dishonesty requires one knowing what one advocates to be false. None of my posts fall into that category.
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Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
I don't know where you are getting that his is turning into a "different ways to call Willravel stupid" since no one has to call you that
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This is likely a good example of intellectual dishonesty. Hit control + f then type in "stupid".