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zataomm  11mo ago (text post)   5751 thread views

Colorado Supreme Court Thread

Link to the decision

I don't know to what extent there are established precedents for when a topic is worthy of a mega-thread, but this decision seems like a big deal to me with a lot to discuss, so I'm putting this thread here as a place for discussion. If nobody agrees then I guess they just won't comment.

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I'll give you the other 5, but c'mon. Alito is absolutely a partisan hack.

What is your evidence for that claim?

I'm not going to go through every example of it, but the man just obviously talks and thinks like a politician, all the time. Eg, The simplest difference involves respect for precedent: Justice Thomas "gives less weight to stare decisis than a lot of other justices." It is, "in its way, a virtue of his jurisprudence," Justice Alito says. "He sticks to his guns." . . . The disadvantage of this approach, Justice Alito says, "is that you drop out of the conversation, and . . . lose your ability to help to shape what comes next in the application of that rule."

Look at Alito's reasoning here. It is not legal reasoning. It's political reasoning. He's not saying "this is what the law demands" or "it's important to follow consistent principles". He's saying "this is how to maximise your own influence". And he constantly says things like this.

But what does that have to do with being partisan? His point is that Thomas, by being very willing to throw out precedent, ends up being ineffective as a justice. Like it or not, the ability to influence other justices, and thereby influence majority opinions, is a big part of the job. You say that Alito's reasoning is political, not legal, but the internal deliberations of the Court are partly political, in the broad sense. If including "all deliberate speed" in Brown was necessary . But that is not the norm. You are singling out Alito for behavior that all the justices engage in. Moreover, that kind of behavior is often necessary in order to do what you think the law demands in the long run, because judge-made law is nothing but slippery slopes. See, eg, the de facto abandonment of the Lemon test.

I thought that was obvious enough to not need stating. He is a partisan hack because he reliably finds his way to the GOP-aligned position every time, and he's flexible about how he gets there.

I guess I don’t understand why you are saying that, when I specifically asked what evidence you have for that exact claim. No offense, but it sounds like you don’t have any.

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