Slashdot Mirror
Senate Confirms Elena Kagan's Appointment To SCOTUS
eldavojohn writes "As expected, by a vote of 63 to 37 Elena Kagan has been appointed as the 112th member of the Supreme Court of the United States. Kagan, only 50 years old, has no judicial experience. The Washington Post explains: 'Other justices have corporate law backgrounds or a long record of arguing before the court. Kagan worked briefly for a law firm and argued her first case before an appellate court 11 months ago. It happened to be before the Supreme Court, the first of six cases she argued as the nation's first female solicitor general.' Her fair use views and free speech views have made her a focus of Slashdot recently."
Nothing wrong with a SC nominee having no judicial or even trial advocacy experience, though you'd hope they'd at least have a significant body of legal scholarship. Kagan is very smart but she has none of these things, she's basically a career administrator/politician.
Does it really matter anymore? It seems these days the only difference between the two parties is gun control and abortion. The Compassionate GOP would have definitely voted for Universal Healthcare had Tzar Bush asked for it.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
I found it hilarious how pissed people were that she gave textbook answers during her hearings while simultaneously complaining that she would judge based on her opinions.
Aren't textbook answers the opposite of opinions?
PS: An activist judge is a judge who makes a ruling that you disagree with.
Living With a Nerd
I must be new here.
It's only recently that it became a major concern, largely because they use it as a proxy for competence to try and fend off ideological attacks. According to Media Matters, out of 111 Supreme Court Justices, 40 of them had no prior judicial experience. Hell, Rehnquist and Warren (relatively recent Chief Justices) had no prior judicial experience, and Rehnquist only died a couple years back. Personally, I'd be happy with a few more non-judges (ideally a couple non-lawyers) on the Court (not a majority, but two or three), just to provide a touch of humanity. Sometimes, the law isn't clear, and the Constitution almost never is, and having people who are inclined to sympathize with people rather than arcane precedents is a good thing. Yeah, it's not calling balls and strikes, but then, if you really believe any Supreme Court Justice is able to do that, you're delusional.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Yesterday's news about politics on a geek website. Where do I pay????
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Other justices have corporate law backgrounds...
That explains a lot.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Waiting for her to hear a few cases so we can see what she really thinks.
The problem is that nowadays presidents aim to nominate people with as little documentation of what they really think as they can get away with. Then we go through Senate confirmation hearings which are largely a chance for the membership of the Senate Judiciary Committee to play for the cameras while the potential justice avoids answering any questions.
I am officially gone from
You know, SCOTUS just sounds dirty every time I see it.
This is an old story about a procedural vote where the outcome was totally expected. This is news for nerds??
Slashdot really has fallen down thru the years, and now making it up with political and flamebait drivel is just driving them further down.
The most important qualifications for a Supreme Court justice are:
* knowledge of the Constitution and the history of law in the United States
* the ability to speak and write and (during a case) ask cogent questions about the law
In a country where most judges are either locally-elected or political appointees, "previous judicial experience" is a bit of a red herring. Kagan, having been an author and professor and dean at a prestigious law school, has all of the qualifications she needs to sit on the Court.
Slant the news much, do we?
http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2010/05/10/kagan-has-appropriate-experience-for-a-seat-on-the-supreme-court.html
40 SC justices had no prior judicial experience. Why don't you at least be honest on your writeup and explain why you REALLY don't like her instead of some made up proxy bs.
SCROTUS.
Sorry.
Both cops work for the same department. Both want the same thing out of you. Neither one is your friend. It's a negotiating tactic. Their boss wants something from you, so one of them is going to offer you a cup of coffee and a donut, then while he's out of the room getting it, the other one is going to bash your face in. When the friendly guy comes back with the coffee and the donut, he's going to apologize for his partner and explain to you that he has little control over his 'crazy' partner, and for everyone's sake, you'd better just play along.
Sure, one guy gives you some crappy coffee and a stale donut while the other guy gives you a chair to the face, but they are both working for the same rich asshole, trying to get the same thing from you: your cheap and silent obedience.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
good thing she is on the SCOTUS
she'll never get close to a mans SCROTUS!
by adding one more Harward law school person to the hive mind - oh yeah we are going to have "diversity" coming out of our SCOTUS now
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
He traded Sammy Sosa. Nuff said.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Pre-med student made Surgeon General of the US.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Amazing how fast that one dropped out of the right wing lexicon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive
Seriously. This story is way off-topic and it's showing up here almost 24 hours after the fact.
Slashdot's article-selection system has been getting more and more stupid as time goes on.
We need a little constitutional reform.
She has almost no court experience, but she _did_ stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
36 Republicans and one Democrat tried to block Kagan's appointment. The Democrat is Ben Nelson (D-NE), who represents the (Omaha) insurance industry (which also is the Credit Default Swap industry) and routinely votes with Republicans, especially in filibusters that prevent a simple majority vote that would usually pass.
You can see each of the Republicans give their reasons for voting against Kagan's appointment to the Supreme Court, and judge for yourself whether those are either the real reasons, or good ones.
--
make install -not war
Karma to burn, karma to burn. Anyway that's easy, because neither the Pubs nor the Dems actually believe in free speech. They believe in Ford Speech, IE the right to say whatever you want as long as they agree with you. (For those that care I call it that because it's just like the saying about what color model-T you can get.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
The President of the United States can nominate any citizen regardless of legal expertise. With enough hard work and study of the Constitution they would be protecting, anyone could do it in theory.
Where the theory breaks down is in practice. The SCOTUS docket is so jam packed with cases requiring complex inturpretation of both law and Constitution, a strong judicial background would definitely help.
The game.
nuf said.
I may not be a smart man, but I know what an inode is.
George W. Bush appoints some woman with no judicial experience to the Supreme Court, and when people express concerns about her lack of qualifications, he goes out and finds a better qualified candidate.
Barrack Obama appoints some woman with no judicial experience to the Supreme Court, and when people express concerns about her lack of qualifications, he laughs in their faces and pushes her through confirmation anyway.
Well, he did say he was going to "change" things.
I wish people would stop this "Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard" = *No experience* nonsense.
The woman knows more about the constitution, how's it's been applied/ignored in the past, how the courts have dealt with it since the country was founded, and what's actually written in judicial opinions than most of the judges in the federal court system. One doesn't teach Constitutional Law at places like Chicago and Harvard without being at the top of the game. Hell, some of the students at these places come into classes knowing more constitutional law than most judges.
I know it's fashionable to write places like Harvard off as "the elitist left" and other such nonsense, but seriously, you don't teach there unless you are a major expert in the field. Saying she has no experience is just plain stupid.
There maybe faults with Kagan but "no judicial experience" is kind of disengenious. She has a pretty extensive record being a clerk for a couple of judges including for Marshall. She has an extensive record in academia including Harvard Law. She has some record being Solicitor General. Kagan appears to have spent a lot of time in and around the Supreme Court of the United States. While never being a judge at state or federal levels that isn't a requirement for the job where Kagan appears to be familiar with constituional law and qualified to comment on constitutional questions.
Harriet Miers on the other hand is by profession a personal attorney with a corporate law background and doesn't appear to have any more of a constitutional background than being an advisor to the President. Worse still being a direct council to Bush means there could and would be direct conflicts of interest and previliage in some instances.
There are legitamate complaints about Kagan but she is heads and shoulders above qualifications on constitional law, history, and even procedures than Miers.
Actually,
Can you cite specific instances of congress being racially motivated to go against Obama based on race ALONE?
Or are you just gratuitously playing the race card as so many others do to ANYONE who dare oppose this president?
Can you provide links of the examples while he is sitting president?
She might be qualified, but is she the best person for the job who might sit on the bench for 30+ years? I doubt that very much.
Other justices pushed by Shrub had no experience either.
The WaPo didn't complain. IIRC it thought that it was a good idea to get new thought in, uncluttered by "experience".
Got the city to build a new stadium
So he had practice ripping off the public to line his pockets.
Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer that relied on federal subsidies. JFK's family not only made money from illicit activities, they maintained their fortune with sweet favors from the government.
I think cities that foot the bill for stadium owners are downright stupid, but it's not as if Bush was the only one to get that kind of deal. All of them do. And you make it sound like he's the only one that's ever profited from stupid government policies.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Oh please.
"represented the government by arguing for the constitutionality of a statute prohibiting corporations and unions from spending funds from their general treasuries to advocate the election or defeat of political candidates. "
It's about political advertising and power. It's about not allowing corporation to buy up all there air time, or pamphletting every parking lot if disingenuous statement, like yours.
AND it only applies to item created using money from there general treasuries. It is not, and was never, about banning books.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The dems are cowardly, spiteful, self-centered little pussies who sell out the country to make a quick buck for themselves, but the republicans are cowardly, spiteful, self-centered assholes who sell out the country to make a quick buck for themselves.
Fixed that for ya.
The major reason to be rid of the 17th amendment is prior to its instatement Congress couldn't coerce the states. Now many Federal power grabs are backed by indirect forcing of the states to pass laws. For example, congress has no power to mandate seat belts. But it wants all the states to have such a law on the book and passes a Federal law that removes the federal highway funds of any state that fails to enact a seat belt law.
There are numerous other examples of this. It is bald, naked, coercion, and it is wrong. Repeal the 17th amendment and Congress would lose this power because all the Senators would know that the moment they passed a law telling the state legislators what to do they'd lose their seat.
The whole point of the senate was to have half the power of the Congress subject to the State's approval. State legislators are themselves career politicians - watching what Congress does is their job and livelihood. It isn't ours. We could care less about what Congress does day to day and don't have time to keep tabs on them.
Ironically, since the 17th amendment the roles of the House and Senate have reversed. State legislatures have used gerrymandering to control the House. This control isn't perfect - it certainly hasn't prevented coercion, but it has allowed them to influence the House more than they can the Senate. Senate seats have become competitive in most states where House seats almost never are do to Gerrymandering.
Want to fix the mess? Repeal the 17th amendment. Remove the right of districting from states and place it in the hands of a computer algorithm. Divide states into districts of 10 or less reps and use STB ballots to elect them. Elect the president with Instant Run off ballots. These measures would demolish the power of the parties (they'd persist, but in a highly weakened state). It would be nice to see this solution take effect, but too many people in power would lose power if it was ever enacted so it's nothing more than a pipe dream.
Look, Kagan is in, I can live with that. She's biased to the 'left', I can live with that.
BUT for the qualifications off being apart of the SCOTUS, out of 300million people, is this the best quality we got? I mean compared this to Brandeis, Douglas, Marshall, McKinley....
from 1994-2006 (during which time that deficit reduction you mentioned occurred)
You appear to have your facts a little bit crossed up. The deficit reduction started in 1993 after the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 (aka "Deficit Reduction Act of 1993) was passed. Not one Republican voted for the bill, and Al Gore ended up having to cast the tie breaking vote to push it through.
The deficit immediately started to rise in 2002 after the Bush Tax cuts went into effect.
As for 2006, by the time the Democrats took control of congress the budget deficit has almost reached it peak under the Bush administration, so you are essentially blaming the Democratic congress for what happened before they took power.
As for Obama, he inherited a 1.2 trillion dollar deficit from the Bush administration. I believe current projections have the deficit at 1.6 trillion, with Obama's contribution being largely the result of the stimulus.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
um, No, they don't.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I could really care less if Obama was born in the United States or not. He won with 53% of the vote, it pretty much settled any questions around his citizenship.
The problem with this theory of the rationale for the 17th Amendment is that when the Congress proposed it, 29 states already had systems of direct election of Senators, and nearly enough state legislatures had passed demands for a Constitutional convention to adopt an amendment on the matter to make such a convention mandatory -- the Congressional action to formally propose the amendment was bowing to the manifest will of the States and attempting to exert some control of the specific language of the amendment and prevent it from drifting into other topics as well, since once a convention is called, there's no telling what it will produce (this is especially well illustrated by the results of the convention called to do a few quick nips and tucks on the corners of the Articles of Confederation.)
You get to see your loved one when they are dying in the hospital. You don't get taxed when your spouse dies and the money has to transfer to you. It's not equal. And you're an asshole.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com