Justice Clarence Thomas is finding increasingly creative ways to justify reshaping long-standing laws.
During a rare appearance at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, the George H.W. Bush–appointed justice said the Supreme Court should take a more critical approach to settled precedent, arguing that decided cases are not “the gospel,” ABC News reported.
Thomas, 77, compared his Supreme Court colleagues to passengers on a train, and said: ”We never go to the front to see who’s driving the train, where is it going. And you could go up there in the engine room, find it’s an orangutan driving the train, but you want to follow that just because it’s a train.”
He reasoned that some precedents were simply “something somebody dreamt up and others went along with.”
**Translation:**The law is whatever you pay me to make the law.
If Clarence is sentenced at Nuremberg, I suggest that it should be a drawing and quartering by his motorcoach fleet.
The right has always been hypocrites. Now they are so blatant they can’t even coherently argue their points. It’s just corruption. Pure and simple. The constitution and precedent only ever mattered when it was advantageous to them / their bribers.
“At some point we need to think about what we’re doing with stare decisis‚" Thomas said, referring to the legal principle of abiding by precedent. “And it’s not some sort of talismanic deal where you can just say ‘stare decisis’ and not think, turn off the brain, right?”
…I have no idea. What the holy fuck did you just say? Was that English, Clarence?
Oh that’s easy, stare decisis for things we like and overturning everything we don’t like. Simple!
When the US constitution was written, it was assumed they didn’t have to spell out exactly how the judiciary would work because the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition was over a millennia old without getting written down (predating statute law) but apparently that assumption was wrong.
Ironically I don’t disagree with him but for completely different reasons. It’s pretty obvious he wants to use this as an excuse to do whatever he’s paid to do by the biggest bribe.
But Jefferson pushed for vast changes and “revolution” (not the violent type which honestly feels pretty naive) every generation. Because why should the rules and ideals and commitment of the dead hold back the present and future.
I have always thought precedent, when it comes to interpreting laws, should have an expiration date. If congress doesn’t pass a law to support the precedent, then it is no longer valid after that date. For constitutional interpretations, once past the expiration, a lower court can’t use it as justification anymore.
That works great and all until somebody tries to block renewal of basic human rights. Put constitutional referendums on a schedule.
Here in Sweden two consecutive elected governments have to approve changes to the constitution. Seems like another useful tool to prevent abuse.
Lower court precedence, however, sure it would be nice with expiration dates so legislature has to authorize it explicitly to keep it. You could even have boards whose responsibility is to translate precedence from courts into law proposals to be voted on.
With the US 2 party system and first past the post voting system practically nothing would ever change then. Which does mean one crazy wannabe dictator can’t do as much damage. But also means getting progressive policies pushed through would also be impossible.
But I do like that idea in theory, once we solve our 2 party problem then something like that would make a lot of sense. I don’t know how we will ever solve that, figured for sure after January 6th and COVID that a real 3rd party would gain traction? And yet here we are.
We never go to the front to see who’s driving the train, where is it going. And you could go up there in the engine room, find it’s an orangutan driving the train, but you want to follow that just because it’s a train.
What?
It’s better than saying, “I’ve been bribed a shit ton and no one is caring, so I’ll say and do whatever I want.”
An orangutan is driving the train and apparently you’re cool with that.
I think he called Trump an orangutan, let’s tell Daddy and get him fired .
There’s pressure valves going off all over the place, and he’s fixing it by shovelling in more coal.
It’s the old orangutan-train-engineer argument, which gained legal precedent in Plessy v. Ferguson, brought by passage of an 1887 Florida law, whereby states began to require that railroads furnish separate accommodations for each race.
Yeah, it’s crazy because, if the train is functioning perfectly fine, and has been for centuries, why does it matter who’s driving it?
He wants to be the driver. That’s why. He calls into question the way things have worked because he wants to take over.
And besides, the train driver does not have any control over the route the train will take.
“Left wing activist judges! Activist judges! Activist judges! The left! The left wing activist judges!”
… fucking projection ass hypocrites. Always.
Legislating from the bench!!!
We can NEVER forget that this is what they do
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I really need to make a version of this gif that has dollar signs on the glasses
What a stupid metaphor. Settled law is called “precedent.” If there’s an orangutan driving the train it’s because YOU GUYS made that possible.
There is an orangutan driving the train. His name is Trump.
arguing that decided cases are not “the gospel,”
This is correct, but not in the sense that he provides. Society changes, what was okay before may not be okay now. Weighing precedent and modern society is a careful process. Tossing off precedent should have justification for why it’s being shrug and there needs to a preponderance that this is indeed the shift of society.
Walking in and saying, “well we should just outright critical” is absolutely not the way to do it. Overturning previous case law should happen, but that shouldn’t be the fucking default. And when you do overturn previous case law, you really need to bring a fuck ton of support, not, “meh we changed our mind.” Being a contrarian for sake of rocking the boat isn’t how our highest court should operate.
Yes, but on the other hand: he got his and fuck yours.
“One of the good ones.”
If everything falls to pure fascism, I hope I at least get to see the leopards eat Clarence’s face.
I will hope, but it seems a little unlikely. Somehow, the most craven ones seem to escape justice most of the time. It’s the true believers who rush out to the front, people like Stephen Miller or Alina Habba, who tend to start to catch some strays as the shit hits the fan. The dude who’s sitting in the back quietly doing 100 times more damage seems to eventually get away on a boat to the Seychelles or something. He might get impeached in 5 years, or he might live out his days secure in the knowledge that he can drive his fucking RV around and do whatever he wants.
I wonder how much these public statements cost whoever paid him to make them.
they aren’t paid per statement, they’re paid in batch. like, they’re given a … wtf do i know, some kind of compensation, then they make a whole lot of these statements, but it’s not like there’s a 1:1 mapping between reward and action. because if there was, somebody could point that out and say it’s bribery. like this, the reward is always “for something else”.
He reasoned that some precedents were simply “something somebody dreamt up and others went along with.”
Is he admitting this is how he writes his opinions?
It’s also meaningless, in the sense that it describes the entirety of society.
Going to flight school before piloting a 737 full of passengers is just a social construct, brah.
Thank you for illustrating the definition of thought terminating cliche. That’s like, my entire point.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yes, I was making a joke about it as if we were having a conversation or posting on a message board.
Like you mentioned, it was to further illustrate your point, and to bring some levity to the situation. My apologies.
Oof. This has turned into a pretty good example of why I think it’s stupid when people basically get offended when people don’t “get the joke” in regards to written sarcasm. But I clearly misinterpreted your intention, and made no attempt to get clarification - so my bad! Sorry about that.
Goddamn liberals and their aggressive reasonableness!
/s
Petition to make every fediverse comment require narration so that sarcasm can be easily detected.
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