Hacker News Reader

Comment by psunavy03 | Hacker News Reader

The Supreme Court has told Trump to pound sand as often as it's upheld his policies. As dangerous as many of the things the Trump administration is doing are, there are other dangerous narratives out there, and the caricaturing of the Supreme Court is one of those.

There's a huge difference between "I disagree with this legal rationale" and "this court is illegitimate." Like it or not, every Justice on the Court is there legitimately. One of them via bare-knuckle hardball politics, to be sure. But according to the rules.

View on HN

One of them is there because Congress made up rules to deny a sitting president his legitimate right to make a nomination. So I would say that judge is illegitimate to a lot of people.

The President made a nomination. The Senate refused it. It's the Senate's prerogative to deny confirmation to the nominee.

The Senate made it very clear they would refuse any nomination.

Which is a scenario it seems the Founders didn't really anticipate.

There's a difference between putting a nomination to a vote and denying versus "we don't accept nominations in last year of an outgoing POTUS" yet turned right around and did it for Trump's third nomination. In that sense, 2 out of 3 would be deemed illegitimate on the same rule being applied in opposite ways. If you can't see the hypocrisy in that, then we really can't have an honest conversation

Do they get to stay there legitimately regardless of what outside influence they receive? https://theweek.com/in-depth/1022846/a-running-list-of-clare...

(Thomas was appointed by GHW Bush, pre-dating the first Iraq war)

Yes. That's what the impeachment clause is for.

Legitimacy can mean more than just following the letter of the rules. There's a pretty good argument to be made that refusing to even hold hearings for a nominee is a violation of the Senate's Constitutional duties. And refusing to uphold norms is a completely reasonable basis for calling something illegitimate as well. A pretty big chunk of our legal system is based on precedent and norms rather than written law.

An anecdote - it is maybe lesser known fact in the west, but Putin deems himself a very law abiding person, and he proudly repeats this many times over his 26 year reign. The only tiny problem is that he himself first changes those laws as he sees fit. And then he can play pretend to be law abiding.

I think you get the hint. In despotias laws mean nothing really. USA is not there yet, but the process is very gradual, glacial even. But irreversible.

This deeply misunderstands the Court. The legitimacy of the Supreme Court rests not simply on the justices being placed on the Court via the letter of the law, but also on the Court being an impartial arbiter of what the Constitution says. With verdicts like Trump vs. USA, the Court (especially certain justices) has pretty well jettisoned even trying to convincingly appear to like a judicial body and instead is behaving as a purely political actor. The Court has never been immune from politics, but its legitimacy rests in restraining itself by what the Constitution says, even when the justices don't like it.

Giving Trump “Presidential Immunity” instead of allowing him to be tried for the insurrection and auto coup he attempted really tips the scales though. In terms of eroding democratic norms, that was a landslide.

Overturning multiple precedents coming from decades ago, citing legal theorists from before the creation of our country to do so, and the increasing use of the shadow docket to geld the lower courts seems pretty illegitimate to me.

Also lol, this court is turning into heads Trump wins, tails everyone loses.

They ruled that Biden couldn’t forgive student loans but Trump has absolute immunity.

> The Supreme Court has told Trump to pound sand as often as it's upheld his policies.

Has it? Last I saw, they had overturned nearly 90% of lower conservative court rulings to be in Trump's favor, and a huge portion of those were on the shadow docket.

They also said it's fine to gift the justices, just not before they make a ruling.

And they gave the President a lot more immunity than he previously had.

If they're not actually corrupt, they look exactly as if they are.

psunavy03 is lying to you. Trump is very obviously not losing in front of the supreme court 50% of the time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com