Monday, November 18, 2019

Some thoughts on how little the public understands about the Supreme Court

People are truly clueless on how the United States Supreme Court functions, or what it even does.

There are, for example, a lot of news stories around right now suggesting that the Supreme Court had determined that plaintiff's who have sued Remington Arms have a meritorious suit.

The Court has determined no such thing.

The Court simply didn't act to intervene to stop the suit.  It rarely does that on any suit.  Anyone who has any familiarity with the Court at all would have been stunned if the Court did take that step.  

What it hasn't done is is to decide the merits of it at all, or whether there's any legal basis for the suit.

The Court will be taking up DACA.

DACA is just the sort of nightmare scenario that the Court now has to deal with as Congress will not do its job.  Indeed, that's basically the issue.

It's been clear for at least forty years that Congress needs to do something on immigration.  Nearly anyone who has looked at this has that opinion.  But it won't.  It won't in part as doing something is tough and any bill will be unpopular.  It also won't as the Democrats tend to see every immigrant as a future Democratic voter (a dangerously inaccurate assumption) and the GOP tends to seen every immigrant as a future servant of some sort (likewise inaccurate). Both parties also tend to secretly feel that immigrants serve a larger American economy by depressing wages and therefore prices, although nobody is going to admit they think that.  The reason that they don't want to think that is that this make both parties co-conspirators in an economic concept in which the lower rung of American jobs is made to intentionally evaporate. . . except for immigrants occupying them, and it also operates as an intentional act to keep wages in those occupations at rock bottom.

So it's easier to do nothing whatsoever.

Congress' failure to act caused President Obama to bring DACA into effect through an executive order.  That was almost certainly an unconstitutional act, but as its a lot easier to do nothing rather than something liberal members of Congress cry about the Court acting on DACA, which would in effect be a direction to Congress to do its job.  

You'd think that Congress would be screaming to resume its traditional powers, but of course it can actually do that just be doing it. And indeed, recently the Democrats have been voicing that view as they've been very unhappy with some things that President Trump has done.  Not so unhappy as to actually decide that they'll cause Congress to resume its mandated functions, but unhappy enough to suggest that they might to that.

Anyhow, DACA is going before the Supreme Court and some seem to think that this means they'll be deciding whether it was a good idea or not. They won't. The only question is whether the executive order that brought it about was constitutional or not, and it probably isn't.

Protesting in front of the Court has really become a big deal the last few sessions.  It's pointless.  There's no reason at all to believe that the Justices consider protesters views on anything.

If people really want to protest an issue in front of the Court, they ought to do that in front of Congress.  Things get to the Supreme Court because of things Congress does, or in the case of DACA, refuse to do.  And members of the House and Senate are elected and do have to consider the views of the voters.

No matter.  The inaccurate reporting and the protests will go on, I'm sure.

No comments: