bad writing
Supreme Court, can’t you budget for an editor?
if the Kagan family weren’t so liberal, they would work in US military prisons in Iraq
New York Magazine reported a while ago that Elena Kagan liked to torment students when she taught civil procedure. Today the Times reports that browbeating subordinates is a Kagan family trait.
On her mother, an elementary school teacher:
“I did talk to her about calming down and told her that they are still children and have a ways to go,” said Dr. Seidman, who is now director of the private Columbia Grammar School on the Upper West Side. “In almost all cases, it wasn’t anger that was vicious. It was more her being upset with the students for not wanting to push themselves a step further.”
On her brother, a high school teacher:
Aja Colon, a 16-year-old junior, saw a stricter side of Mr. Kagan, who also serves as a disciplinary dean. During an event last fall called Freshmen Fridays, Mr. Kagan tore stickers off students’ shirts that bore labels like “fresh meat” and other inappropriate phrases. “He yells,” Ms. Colon said. “He definitely yells. He’s a fan of that.”
I wish I were a senator. At the confirmation hearings I would ask Elena Kagan, “are you genetically predisposed to humiliate people who have less power than you do?”
not that there’s anything wrong with being ugly
When news outlets run stories about government figures, they can either display an official-type photo of the person or a random one. Potential Supreme Court nominee and arguable lesbian Elena Kagan has a nice pic on her office’s website (there are also flattering candids out there), but blogs keep using horrible shots whenever they’re speculating about whether she’s a lesbian—including supposedly pro-gay sites [New York][Slate][Queerty]. It seems like they’re using imagery instead of English to say: “she must be a lesbian, look how ugly she is!”
To counteract the media’s ugly lesbian stereotype, here is a beautiful picture of a lesbian:
even more exciting than if the gay marriage trial mattered to gay marriage
Savor this moment. Think about where you are so that you can tell your children one day. Because legal history is being made. Just like judicial activism defined the baby boomers’ constitutional vision, judicial transparency will define ours. And it’s all thanks to huffy op-eds that were published this weekend.
The anti-gay side in Perry v. Schwarzenegger didn’t want the trial webcast and the gay side did. The Supreme Court sided with the anti-gays, so now liberal journalists are refuting its argument. And instead of dissecting the logic of the ruling, they’re lashing out against the entire concept of shrouded judging.
The Atlantic: “why can’t the American people watch what our biggest and most important judges do at work?” Slate: “the Supreme Court’s decision to stay the broadcast […] betrays a deep ambivalence about the same humble American voter whose very rights the court purports to be defending.” LA Times: “If matters of social change are going to be debated in the courts, we all should get to view the process — and, through our reactions, to participate in it.”
Just last week the “cameras in the courts” movement was a populist idea that the populace didn’t care about. Stuck. But because the Supreme Court’s recent anti-camera ruling just happened to hurt Team Liberal, now the Liberals are pro-camera. Judicial transparency has found a constituency which blogs.
Brown v. Board was about racial equality but sparked a war over “judicial activism.” The gay marriage case looks similar: a cultural issue inspiring pundits to pay attention to a totally different legal theory issue. I’m psyched. The conservative justices probably ruled against the cameras because they are grossed out by gays. Now they’ll have to defend judicial elitism—their lifestyle, the cornerstone of their identity!—nonstop for the rest of their lives.
you must be the change you wish to see in the world, Scalia
Scalia just said something I agree with: presidents should appoint a wider variety of lawyers to the supreme court, not just judges. According to Scalia, the US is starting to resemble Europe, where judging is a separate career track from lawyering. “Your whole life you have done nothing but be a judge and you come to think the government is always right.”
But Scalia’s not serious about intellectual diversity. If he were, he’d hire different clerks. Right now all the justices only consider one type of applicant: the recent law school graduate with perfect grades and no experience. (Scalia in particular has admitted he only pays attention to people from top schools.) Why not seek out older attorneys on sabbatical from public interest or corporate law firms? I guess because grown ups are less likely to worship his fat ass.
Scalia’s asking Obama to appoint judges who are more likely to challenge presidential power, but he refuses to hire clerks who might challenge him.
if I were powerful, I’d censor all references to my so-called physical awkwardness and runny nose
This image has probably been photoshopped by Kennedy’s office.
Last week we learned that when Justice Kennedy speaks to prep schools, he requires the student reporters to get his approval on their stories before publishing them. Now we learn that he does the same thing to college kids. At GWU, he insisted that a reporter change a quote from “it’s” to the more patrician “it is.” That’s good. If the American public believed its judges elocuted casually, the legitimacy of the Court would be undermined.
With his narcissistic censor jobs Kennedy reminds me of those Disney actresses who race off to pose naked and make a sex tape on their 16th birthday. It’s legal and everything but also it makes the world a worse place. Hey famous people, kids look up to you! Express your true self—whether that be a skank or a duke—in some way that doesn’t insult the First Amendment.
(Insulting the First Amendment is awesome when you do it on historical or sociolegal grounds, but egomania by itself doesn’t add to the collective wisdom.)
questions raised by Justice Kennedy’s insistence on censoring Dalton’s student newspaper article about his speech
Image control: keeps the justices looking good.
Under what ontology does changing quotations to “better reflect the meaning the justice had intended to convey” count as “fact checking”?
How come supreme court justices visit the Dalton School (NY) but not South Kingstown High School (RI)?
Was the newspaper’s faculty advisor, who said he “believed we could not publish anything without the approval of Justice Kennedy,” chosen for his post because he likes to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable?
“Editors at The Daltonian either would not comment for this article or did not respond to requests for an interview” because all teenage journalists in 2009 dream of becoming supreme court clerks?
Does Kennedy’s refusal to answer students’ questions signal agreement with Clarence Thomas’s theory that dialogue does not illuminate complex issues?
Why are America’s most verbal government officials so bad at explaining themselves?
Scalia thinks you can’t handle the truth
Scalia holds a coherent judicial philosophy which depends on both historical knowledge and rhetoric skills. But a lot of Americans see him as a mere politician, railing against gay marriage and abortion while paying lip service to racial equality. Why do they insist on caricaturing him? It’s not because they’re unsophisticated. It’s because Scalia’s judicial philosophy—the one thing that makes him better than Sarah Palin—obviously forces him to oppose Brown v. Board, but he refuses to admit it.
Since Scalia won’t explain himself, I will explain him.
Scalia thinks that rule of law is more important than integrated schools. That’s okay; every serious judge in America probably believes that rule of law is more important than integrated schools. If it weren’t for rule of law—the fact that courts help people after they’ve been treated unfairly—the only people with any power at all would be cops, drug kingpins, and Jared Kushner. Rule of thugs.
For most judges, rule of law and integrated schools don’t conflict because standing up for minorities seems to them like the opposite of thug rule. But this approach doesn’t strike Scalia as lawful at all. He thinks that when judges allow affirmative action and strike down unequal marriage laws they over-enfranchise minorities. Favoring certain people = rule of thugs. Super-powered courts are just as bad as powerless courts. Except in Scalia’s vision of lawlessness, educated black people, Ellen Degeneres, and Portia de Rossi rule the streets.
In order to resist favoring minorities, Scalia judges equality cases according to how he thinks the 19th century framers of the Equal Protection clause would want him to. Historians have shown that the framers did not intend to integrate public schools. So if Scalia is serious about his philosophy—and he’d better be, because it’s the only thing that morally justifies the dozens of anti-minority opinions he’s written—then that means he should believe Brown v. Board was wrongly decided.
Presumably Scalia won’t admit that because he thinks he’ll sound like a bigot. But everyone already knows he’s a bigot. Now he sounds stupid, too.
I think morals are the superior politeness that absorb the shock of force but I don’t think them the cosmic ultimate, or even the human.
Holmes
puff piece argues that getting too much respect is hard
Adam Liptak, a legal columnist I often like, incorrectly argues today that Sonia Sotomayor is taking on “one of the most demanding jobs in the land.”
Sotomayor will be doing the same work she’s been doing for over a decade. The only differences between judging on the Supreme Court and on the Second Circuit are that now she’s welcome to admit when she thinks Supreme Court precedent is wrong, and her clerks have more experience. The clerks, four slobbering work-addicted young geniuses, will perform all of Sotomayor’s drudgery. As for substantive work, there’s less of it lately—the Supreme Court takes on half as many cases as it did in the 70s.
If Sotomayor screws up, the consequences won’t manifest for decades and the responsibility will be shared with eight colleagues. She has a six figure salary, no supervisor, absolute job security, and the option to sell a book whenever she feels like it. A jumbo publisher will market it to the mainstream and editors will assign high profile, slobbering work-addicted old geniuses to review it. Ruth Bader Ginsburg will take her out to lunch.
Speaking of expensive restaurants, serving rich people is demanding. Also being an unemployed piece of crap with no power, status, or money is demanding. Following orders from imbeciles is demanding. The army, I’m guessing, is demanding. The Supreme Court is not demanding. It’s a reward for obeying authority a lot.
Well, here’s one downside to Sotomayor’s new job:
When she takes the seat reserved for the junior justice — the one on the spectators’ far right side — four other justices will move to new places on the bench. When there is a knock at the door during the justices’ private conferences, it will be Justice Sotomayor’s job to answer it.
So the Supreme Court’s dooshy. But let’s be real here, Sotomayor probably is too.
