U.S. Supreme Court to hear cases by telephone in May | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Supreme Court to hear cases by telephone in May

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SCOTUS to hear arguments by telephone, but only days ago shut off extended absentee voting in Wisconsin.

Voters in urban precincts (read: minority voters) were forced to stand in long crowded lines for hours in the rain with only a handful of voting sites.

The Wisconsin election should have been nullified and rescheduled rather than attempting to change the rules at the 11th hour. Even allowing for late ballots would not have enfranchised those without a ballot.

Allowing late ballots is a less worse outcome than the travesty SCOTUS enabled with the nakedly partisan decision.

SCOTUS did not shut off extended absentee voting. They weren't even asked to comment on it. They were asked to comment on a decision by a federal judge that went above and beyond what the initial question to that court was. No one asked the district court to extend the election date, but they did anyway. SCOTUS said courts can't do that. They can only extend the date if they had been asked to do that. No one asked. Please don't twist the truth. SCOTUS explicitly stated that they're not answering the question of whether or not the date can be extended.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19a1016_o759.pdf

This is good. The powers of the Supreme Court are -- and should remain -- limited. We should not welcome authoritarianism simply at the service of convenience or even safety.

What should have happened is the Wisconsin state legislature should have met and extended the ballot. They are the sole entity that is blameworthy in this fiasco. Their decision would have been unquestionable in front of any court. We should stop expecting the courts to be able to rule by fiat. That is not their purpose, rightly so.

I think a lot of folks hoping for SCOTUS involvement were thinking more generally of it as a voting rights type issue.

If that was even an option for them to do is still relevant of course.

It's really disingenuous to lay everything at the feet of SCOTUS. Anything related to elections could be seen as a voting rights issue, and if SCOTUS issued binding opinions on all of them it would be a disaster.

It would simultaneously federalize elections, and subvert Congress.

You really don't want a bunch of appointed-for-life judges to have total control over all elections in the country.

The Constitution has little to say about voting, but we all know voting is a complex topic. Voting policy should come from the legislature and SCOTUS should merely oversee it.

I'm not sure what you mean by disingenuous.

I can understand folks being concerned / upset that SCOTUS wasn't involved, and they can too still recognize that the question maybe wasn't really posed to SCOTUS.

I suppose anything 'could' be a voting rights issue, but the important thing is to actually talk about what that anything is. Limited polling places, being required to wait hours, risk your own health to vote ... to me there is an argument to be made there.

I'm not at all sure what your comment about judges deciding are... a judge(s) did decide already.

My point was that SCOTUS restrained the lower courts from getting involved in specific and somewhat creative remedies to the problem. I think that restraint is good, because the alternative is worse.

> I think a lot of folks hoping for SCOTUS involvement were thinking more generally of it as a voting rights type issue.

Then they are asking for exactly the kind of 'answer to a question that was never asked' that the Supreme Court told all courts to stop giving.

Agreed. I can understand folks concerns, but also everyone should understand why the thing happened.

One doesn't preclude the other.

Thank you for this explanation. There's a lot of misinformation that ultimately erodes trust in our institutions when it's not warranted.

You should read the other replies. The comment you are responding to itself appears to be the one that is misrepresenting events.

No, I'm not. In the original complaint (linked in a comment above), the democratic party did not ask for what the court granted.

> This is good. The powers of the Supreme Court are -- and should remain -- limited

Wouldn't not intervening be the limited thing to do?

No. The federal court that issued the flawed decision is subordinate to the supreme court. In an ideal world, they wouldn't have intervened. However, once they do so in an overly authoritarian way, now it is the supreme court's responsibility to undo that.

Think of it this way. Your kid goes and destroys your neighbors window. Now, not intervening in your neighbor's life means not touching their window and not breaking their stuff. However, a person you're responsible for went ahead and interfered anyway. Now you're obligated to undo it to the best of your ability in the interests of non-intervention. You may need to take active steps to do so, including installing a new window. While installing a new window for your neighbor is a major intervention, if you look at the larger context, it may be a component of staying non-interventionist.

Or if sci-fi is more your bent. Consider the prime directive from Star Trek, a rule of non-intervention:

> As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Starfleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Starfleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship, unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moral obligation.

Notice that non-intervention is key, unless the prime directive is already violated. Then acting to right an earlier violation is considered kosher.

> The powers of the Supreme Court are -- and should remain -- limited

This argument would have been a lot more convincing before Bush v. Gore.

We shouldn't let bad precedent get in the way of a good decision. Unless you also believe Plessy v Fergusson should still be a thing.

It alarms me that so many people look at the series of decisions, including the Supreme Court decision, and will argue 'yeah, this is fine'.

Sending people out in these cities was an ethical failure of enormous proportions, and the decision making processes that allowed it to reach that state should be roundly criticized.

If we aren't creative enough to realize that our systems require change at this period, that we actually need some level of societal organization change.

All organizations at all levels that blocked stay at home orders in Wisconsin no longer serve human welfare, and should be dropped.

Indeed. The legislature should be held accountable in some way. But asking for punishment of arbitrary groups -- especially groups that do not have the power to do what you are asking -- is ridiculous.

This is false. The remedy was requested in oral arguments before the district court. This was pointed out in the dissent by Justice Ginsberg, but completely ignored by the majority. You can see this in the record off the original district court case, captured on RECAP.

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16989159/democratic-nat...

As a result of the Supreme Court's order, tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens did not receive an absentee ballot, despite putting in a lawful request prior to the deadline. We will never know how many votes were not counted as a result, nor how many people were infected while standing in line to vote because their absentee ballot did not arrive in time.

I also find it interesting to note that the majority did not sign their names to the decision, hiding behind a "Per Curium" byline. This is highly unusual, as the per curium designation is usually reserved for obvious and unimportant cases. The dissenters, in contrast, had no problem accepting personal responsibility for their opinion.

So I'm reading https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wiwd.45522/..., which is the original complaint.

In it the democratic party asks:

> while allowing all ballots postmarked on or before election day but received within a minimum of 10 days thereafter to be counted

This states that a ballot postmarked before April 7 but received up until the 13th should be counted. The Supreme Court said this is fine.

The district court instead ordered that ballots postmarked before April 13th be counted. This is not the same as being postmarked before April 7 but received by the 13th.

The Supreme Court 'struck down' an order mandating that ballots postmarked after the 13th be counted. They did not strike down the order that said that ballots received after election day (but mailed on or before election day) be counted. Can you cite where in the complaint you see the party asking for the court to order any ballot postmarked before the 13th (rather than the 7th) be counted?

EDIT: I'm not trying to be combative, I just want to understand where you're coming from, and I don't see what you claim is there in the original complaint you cited.

It was a 5-4 vote along part lines, and this summary is not accurate. Read the ruling itself, particularly the dissent.

For those curious:

There are 20 arguments that were to have been heard in March and April that were cancelled as a result of the coronavirus. Of these, 10 are now rescheduled by telephone in May. The other 10 are not rescheduled as of yet.

I've heard speculation in the past month that SCOTUS could simply choose to decide the easy 9-0 cases solely on the basis of the existing briefs, without oral argument. Given that the 10 arguments that are now scheduled for May includes all the "time-sensitive", big, and controversial cases, and the 10 not rescheduled appear to be more boring circuit split cases, this does increase my belief that they are planning on doing this.

As a side note, the case perhaps most relevant to many people in this site, Google v Oracle, is one of the ones not rescheduled for argument.

> As a side note, the case perhaps most relevant to many people in this site, Google v Oracle, is one of the ones not rescheduled for argument.

Does this imply that it’s one of the easy cases? If so, which way do you think they’re going to decide?

I wonder if only seeing the facts, and not seeing the faces or names of the parties would make for fairer rulings in public courts.

Plus, using remote techs would make organizing the whole thing way easier, and safer for the victim.

More fair, but voices still signal age and gender, so implicit bias remains.

And culture, and education.

as a fairly well off white dude i resent this attempt to make things less fair for me!

I like how fair it is atm. I fare pretty good thanks. (this is a joke before some muppet gets triggered)

You called?

Voices can be transformed to all look the same and hide gender, age and origin. Remains vocabulary, education, etc.

I wonder how they operate as far as tech goes.

I worked at a company where we had an 'executive IT support team' that basically pushed all the buttons for executives when it came to conference calls and other technical events.

It was an effective system.

I have personally done telephonic hearings.

Basically, all the filings (motions & evidence) were handled by mail, clerks scheduled the call via phone, then on the day of the hearing the clerks got all the parties on the line — the judge entered the call, heard arguments, issued an order, dispensed with signatures, had the clerks right up the order, judge signed the order, clerks filed the order, and mail copies to both parties.

Tech wise, it was dead simple.

For context, vast majority of US courts as a results of the virus are moving to telephonic hearings where needed or moving hearings to later dates as possible.

US supreme court justices are very old people, with all except one having some heath issue.

If they get infected, the chance of a lot of them being incapacitated or dying is high.

And probably unprecedented.

Not surprised they are moving from in-person, but i am surprised they aren't moving to a video system; so much of communications are visual.

What marginal value does video provide over telephone?

To see if they are still awake?

Seems like a lot of work and bandwidth for something that could be simply addressed with “are you there?”

It's a fair question - when you're presenting an oral argument the goal is to teach/convince/explain. The ability to see your audience is huge: do they have a quizzical look, are they trying to jump in on your comment; do they look at you with incredulity? an experienced attorney (which all of the SCT bar are) will use these visual cues to focus their argument.

does anyone still use telephone for important decisions?

its all f2f or video isnt it?

Expect more not less

This is going to drive the “Is RBG actually dead?” conspiracy people crazy.

Doesn't she ask a lot of questions? I suppose some people who are prone to QAnon type conspiracy theories will say that it's a deep fake synthesizer, but unless she goes radio silent I think they'll probably not act up.

No amount of factual evidence actually deters the CT.

It might lead them to that, but the folks associated with the Q stuff really aren't limited to ... any sort of logic / limitations. It seems like the all the way in the sand conspiracy folks can define anything as a confirmation of just about anything, including their own repeated failed absurd level predictions, their own obvious photoshops, and etc.

Clarence Thomas hasn't said anything in years!

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