Does Sotomayor even care what is in the Constitution?

[MarAzul]

She had these words to make me doubt she cares.

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination."

Geez! It's the courts job to make up for the world that was, in this world now? More or less without regard to what is in the Constitution. This seems to me to be nothing more than just turning about who is targeted for discrimination. By the court no less! Whom never face re-election.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/29/politics/sonia-sotomayor-supreme-court-liberal-voice/

 

[bodyman5000 and 1]

You being a dumb pink meatbag wouldn't understand. It takes a wise Latina to know how to make up shit as you go.

 

[MarAzul]

It takes a wise Latina

I think I heard that before. I guess I forgot immediately.

 

[MARIS61]

Sotomayor has never read The Constitution of The United States of America, because she is not a Real American.

She is a New World Ordian who owes her lofty position to Affirmative Action's racial discriminations, which are clearly un-Constitutional.

 

[MarAzul]

Sotomayor has never read The Constitution of The United States of America, because she is not a Real American.

She is a New World Ordian who owes her lofty position to Affirmative Action's racial discriminations, which are clearly un-Constitutional.

This seems to be a clear reason to vote for Trump. If we lose the Constitution, there will be no other course than CWII.

 

[Further]

Let me make this clear. Every SCJ respects and understands the constitution better than anyone on this board including me, MarAzul or HCP. They may interpret it differently than you, and differently than what you view as congruous the United States or your interpretation of the constitution. But to think they don't care, understand, have context, have experience or have philosophy behind their interpretation is foolish. That includes Supreme Court Justices with whom I utterly disagree.

 

[MarAzul]

Let me make this clear. Every SCJ respects and understands the constitution better than anyone on this board including me, MarAzul or HCP. They may interpret it differently than you, and differently than what you view as congruous the United States or your interpretation of the constitution. But to think they don't care, understand, have context, have experience or have philosophy behind their interpretation is foolish. That includes Supreme Court Justices with whom I utterly disagree.

Oh Horse shit!

 

[Denny Crane]

I have no beef with her or her statement.

The court ruled in the 1880s that separate but equal was ok. In 1954 the court overturned Plessy v Ferguson with the Brown v Board of Education decision that integrated schools. Government should treat everyone equally but hasn't for centuries. The process of unwinding all the Jim Crow laws piled upon Jim Crow laws does take people speaking up (1st amendment!) and recognizing Jim Crow and kicking him in the balls.

I have no beef with any of the justices. As further said, they all know their shit.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

 

[MarAzul]

I have no beef

Ha! Well there are days when you know your shit, and then there are the others.

 

[barfo]

a dumb pink meatbag

Oh Horse

no beef

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

Time flies when you're blind drunk.
-- barfo

 

[bodyman5000 and 1]

Let me make this clear. Every SCJ respects and understands the constitution better than anyone on this board including me, MarAzul or HCP. They may interpret it differently than you, and differently than what you view as congruous the United States or your interpretation of the constitution. But to think they don't care, understand, have context, have experience or have philosophy behind their interpretation is foolish. That includes Supreme Court Justices with whom I utterly disagree.

Did someone say horse shit? I am sure they all understand what it says more than I do, I'm sure they do. I'm just sure that they do. I'm sure as sure can be. I'm so sure I can't say I've ever been surer of anything.

I also know that our political system makes a point of finding people who vote on things based on their political leanings.

The Supreme Court is actually one of the more obvious problems with our system. The number of 5-4 decisions is mind boggling. The best lawyers in the world aren't much better at decision making than a coin flip.

Fuck that.

 

[bodyman5000 and 1]

This seems to be a clear reason to vote for Trump. If we lose the Constitution, there will be no other course than CWII.

I'm not scared, the fruity pebbles with blue hair and hula hoop earrings aren't much to worry about. Just as long as they know the Geneva Convention doesn't recognize "safe spaces"

 

[Further]

Did someone say horse shit? I am sure they all understand what it says more than I do, I'm sure they do. I'm just sure that they do. I'm sure as sure can be. I'm so sure I can't say I've ever been surer of anything.

I also know that our political system makes a point of finding people who vote on things based on their political leanings.

The Supreme Court is actually one of the more obvious problems with our system. The number of 5-4 decisions is mind boggling. The best lawyers in the world aren't much better at decision making than a coin flip.

Fuck that.

You and I completely disagree I guess.

I'm not saying I agree with any particular justices interpretation on a specific issue, just that there are different philosophical ways to interpret the constitution and I do believe that SCJ's respect and care about the constitution. As far as them being appointed, yes, but they are appointed because of how they view the constitution, but it's not like they sway to the appointees wishes to get the robe. It's a lifetime job, if they actually believed alternately to what they told congress/pres at appointment time, they would simply vote how they believed once they got the job. 4-5 decisions are common because thats why those cases were being reviewed, because the legal matter is unestablished. It comes down to interpretation.

 

[bodyman5000 and 1]

You and I completely disagree I guess.

I'm not saying I agree with any particular justices interpretation on a specific issue, just that there are different philosophical ways to interpret the constitution and I do believe that SCJ's respect and care about the constitution. As far as them being appointed, yes, but they are appointed because of how they view the constitution, but it's not like they sway to the appointees wishes to get the robe. It's a lifetime job, if they actually believed alternately to what they told congress/pres at appointment time, they would simply vote how they believed once they got the job. 4-5 decisions are common because thats why those cases were being reviewed, because the legal matter is unestablished. It comes down to interpretation.

Blah blah blah, if we have to worry about which party is in office when one of them dies the system is obviously broken.

Interpretation means "I know it says this and that but this is a bad guy so I'm sure congress meant for him to get caught"

9 people? Not adequate.

 

[PtldPlatypus]

Interpretation means "I know it says this and that but this is a bad guy so I'm sure congress meant for him to get caught."

You oversimplify. Most of the issues that come before the Supreme Court don't have the answer in clear concise language in the Constitution. For instance, in the case for which Sotomayor wrote the dissent, a man was detained on the street, and then an open warrant was found on his ID, and then drug paraphernalia was found on his person. The 4th amendment simply says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." The interpretation in this case comes in the word "unreasonable".

• Does the fact that he had an outstanding warrant make the search of his person "reasonable", or...
• Does the fact that the warrant was located during an unlawful stop make the search "unreasonable".

That's absolutely up to interpretation. I'm a conservative by nature, but I tend to agree with Sotomayor's dissent on this one.

 

[Denny Crane]

You oversimplify. Most of the issues that come before the Supreme Court don't have the answer in clear concise language in the Constitution. For instance, in the case for which Sotomayor wrote the dissent, a man was detained on the street, and then an open warrant was found on his ID, and then drug paraphernalia was found on his person. The 4th amendment simply says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." The interpretation in this case comes in the word "unreasonable".

• Does the fact that he had an outstanding warrant make the search of his person "reasonable", or...
• Does the fact that the warrant was located during an unlawful stop make the search "unreasonable".

That's absolutely up to interpretation. I'm a conservative by nature, but I tend to agree with Sotomayor's dissent on this one.

And yet she has no problem with the NSA and other government agencies spying on people, reading their emails, listening to their phone calls...

 

[PtldPlatypus]

And yet she has no problem with the NSA and other government agencies spying on people, reading their emails, listening to their phone calls...

Silly me, I thought we were talking about this case and her above-linked commentary thereupon. Do you have links to comments from her regarding government spying, so as to contribute to informed discourse? On the contrary, her comments here seem to suggest that she does have an issue with warrantless spying.

 

[Denny Crane]

Silly me, I thought we were talking about this case and her above-linked commentary thereupon. Do you have links to comments from her regarding government spying, so as to contribute to informed discourse? On the contrary, her comments here seem to suggest that she does have an issue with warrantless spying.

This thread is about Sotomayor, not some specific case.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/11/nsa-spying-challenge-turned-aside/

NSA spying challenge turned aside
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to consider a challenge to the National Security Agency’s global sweep of telephone and electronic communications — the first such test case to reach the Court since former NSA analyst Edward Snowdon began releasing publicly a pile of secret papers disclosing details of that surveillance.

 

[Denny Crane]

A second time:

https://www.rt.com/usa/scotus-klayman-writ-rejected-901/

On Monday, the high court said simply that Klayman’s request had been denied, putting the fate of the matter back for now in the hands of the federal appellate courts.

According to Ars Technica journalist Dave Kravets, legal scholars had predicted that Klayman's petition would be rejected by the Supreme Court.

“Still, there was a glimmer of a chance that the justices would have accepted Klayman's case and decided the outcome of what is likely the biggest constitutional crisis the Supreme Court has been presented with in the digital age,” he wrote.

“The high court's inaction Monday means the future of the phone surveillance program will most likely play itself out in the political theater before the judicial arena. Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the stated provision allowing the bulk collection, expires June 1, 2015,” Kravets added.

 

[PtldPlatypus]

Actually, it's about things she has actually said, not things you simply baselessly presume her to believe. Missing the part in either of those where Sotomayor herself said anything supporting government spying. Can you help a brother out?

 

[Denny Crane]

Actually, it's about things she has actually said, not things you simply baselessly presume her to believe. Missing the part in either of those where Sotomayor herself said anything supporting government spying. Can you help a brother out?

I'm hopeful that the things she said she will act on. Acting on them is more important than lip service, no?

 

[Denny Crane]

https://www.justsecurity.org/29409/scalia-privacy-whats-next/

His dissent in a 2013 case, Maryland v. King, is a classic example of Scalia in full outrage mode. In King, the Court upheld a Maryland statute permitting police officers to take DNA samples from suspects arrested for certain serious crimes. Scalia wrote a scathing dissent, warning of the slippery slope from taking DNA for serious offenses to getting DNA at a traffic stop. He predicted that as an inevitable consequence of the majority’s decision, “your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason.”

Scalia also wrote the opinion that would come to protect millions of pot growers from warrantless government snooping. In Kyllo v. United States, federal agents used a thermal heat scanner to determine that Danny Lee Kyllo’s triplex was giving off so much heat, it could only be growing marijuana. Scalia, writing for the majority, required police to get a warrant to use this “sense-enhancing technology.” Notably, he called it “foolish” to suggest that the “degree of privacy” the Fourth Amendment guarantees “has been entirely unaffected by the advance of technology.”

And, in United States v. Jones, he brought together a majority of his colleagues to hold that when law enforcement officers install a digital age GPS tracker on a suspect’s car — here, enabling the police to track Antoine Jones cheaply and ceaselessly over the course of a month — they must get a warrant first.

Taken together, these cases show a justice committed to privacy in the digital era.

 

[crandc]

It's an OUTRAGE! AN OUTRAGE I TELL YOU!!!

No, not the cases Denny referred to. MarAzul got his jock strap in a bunch because Justice Sotomayor said the Constitution could be used to address racism? And? The Constitution refers to equal protection; racial discrimination, by definition, means unequal protection. A social problem cannot be addressed until it is publicly recognized as a problem. So Justice Sotomayor said recognize racial discrimination and apply Constitutional remedies? And?

IT'S AN OUTRAGE I TELL YOU!!!

Well, actually, it's not.

And if I were to have to decide whose interpretation of the Constitution was more accurate, a Supreme Court justice with a long resume or an anonymous poster on a sports board with a history of proclamations about things he knows nothing about, I'd go with Sotomayor.

 

[PtldPlatypus]

I'm hopeful that the things she said she will act on. Acting on them is more important than lip service, no?

What she has actually said is more important to what you assume based on the actions or inaction of the court as a whole. Unfortunately, I don't believe she can really force the entire court to hear a case simply because she has an opinion on it. She is, as she has stated before, only 1 of 9 (or of 8 at the moment).

 

[Minstrel]

I'm hopeful that the things she said she will act on. Acting on them is more important than lip service, no?

The Court refuses to take cases for a number of reasons. Many times, in such high profile issues, it's because they want further evidence to emerge first, so they send it back to the lower courts.

Also, as I recall, whether a Court decides to take up a case is based on all the Justices, not just one.

You might as well say that Scalia didn't care about NSA domestic spying.

 

[Denny Crane]

What she has actually said is more important to what you assume based on the actions or inaction of the court as a whole. Unfortunately, I don't believe she can really force the entire court to hear a case simply because she has an opinion on it. She is, as she has stated before, only 1 of 9 (or of 8 at the moment).

I gave you evidence that Scalia made similar comments. If they believe the NSA activity is egregious, they'd accept a case and rule on it. Surely spying on everyone is a tad more important than the police using a GPS device to follow a suspect, no?

Action vs. words.

 

[Denny Crane]

The Court refuses to take cases for a number of reasons. Many times, in such high profile issues, it's because they want further evidence to emerge first, so they send it back to the lower courts.

Also, as I recall, whether a Court decides to take up a case is based on all the Justices, not just one.

You might as well say that Scalia didn't care about NSA domestic spying.

I do say he didn't care enough.

 

[Minstrel]

I do say he didn't care enough.

Possibly. Unknown, though, as with Sotomayor. The Court tends to be fastidiously closed about anything beyond actual decisions. Who voted in which direction in a tie, who voted to accept a case, why they didn't accept a case--they generally don't release those details.