Not grasping the courts

I have noticed where a really old post here, the one about Sandra Sotomayor being interviewed by Oprah, has suddenly become one of the most popular posts on this blog.  I was surprised when that occurred, but by that I take it that people are searching her out as a topic.  Sotomayor that is.   You can't escape Oprah.  I'm confident that when the first human beings land on Mars that they'll be confronted by a television set running part 237,472 of the Oprah retirement special.

Anyhow, I'm sure that happened as Justice Sotomayor signed the order certifying the Constitutionality of the contraceptive provisions of the Affordable Health Care Act to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Little Sisters of the Poor v. Seblius.  Sotomayor gets mentioned in that context as the news has reported that she issued a temporary order prohibiting the application of the AHCA to the Sisters.  The order, in its entirety, reads as follows:

IT IS ORDERED that respondents are temporarily enjoined from enforcing against applicants the contraceptive coverage requirements imposed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 42 U. S. C. § 300gg-13(a)(4), and related regulations pending the receipt of a response and further order of the undersigned or of the Court. The response to the application is due Friday, January 3, 2014, by 10 a.m.

That's it.

So from this, we have people commenting, if they are political liberals, about how this must mean that Sotomayor is a secret conservative, and they've been betrayed, and at the same time we have those who are conservative expressing hope that maybe she's not as bad as they feared.

Well, whatever may be the case, you can't read anything into an order like this other than that this matter is going to the U.S. Supreme Court. That's it.  An interlocutory order of this type merely sees to preserve the status quo ante.

But, just like the occasional protestors outside of the U.S. Supreme Court, all the commentary shows how little of a grasp people have on what the Court does.  The Court is not a legislative body.

This isn't to say that it gets everything right.  That would be absurd.  It makes some titanic flops in errors of judgment on occasion.  And it does that most frequently when ideology creeps into its decisions. But, by and large, that happens less often than people like to imagine.

And it is true that the individual world outlooks of judges influence them, and it would be absurd to argue otherwise.  Who sits on the  Supreme Court really matters.  But when people get happy or angry over anyone Justice's acts, we should take pause. What a judge does often isn't what lay people believe them to be doing.  And quite often, whether they get things right or wrong, they're just trying to apply the law.  Here, Sotomayor, who has drawn this duty for a time, was applying the longstanding judicial rule of trying to preserve the status quo until the Court has a chance to rule. That's the only thing anyone can read into this, one way or another.

Which is exactly what she also did in Herbert v. Kitchen, the Utah polygamy case in which a Federal District Court (incorrectly I believe) struck down Utah's prohibition on polygamy.  This matter is going up to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. Sotomayor issued an order stating:

The application for stay presented to Justice Sotomayor and by her referred to the Court is granted. The permanent injunction issued by the United States District Court for the District of Utah, case No. 2:13-cv-217, on December 20, 2013, is stayed pending final disposition of the appeal by the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

Here, I would note, I think the Administration acted shamefully by having Eric Holder, the Attorney General, rapidly announce that the Federal government is going to recognize the rushed 1,300 unions created in the interim between the Federal trial court's action and the Supreme Court's injunction on the topic of the homosexual marriages, thereby effectively indicating that the Administration is prepared to ignore any negative ruling that may ultimately arise months from now when the  Tench Circuit, and potentially the United States Supreme Court may rule.  Those on the political left may cheer that action, but by the same token it opens the door to future administration taking the old line of Jackson about the Cherokees, "the court made the law, now let them enforce it" come back, and that cuts both ways.  Respect for the law would have required that the Administration wait for the result like anyone else. And the Attorney  General, and a President who was a law professor, should know that.  Now the same groups will have no complaint if a future politically right Administration choose to ignore dist