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Supreme Court

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

Supreme Court After today, no one will have to go back 50 years for the classic case of the Court manipulating standing doctrine, rather than obeying the edict to stay in its lane.  Elena Kagan, dissent in Biden v. Nebraska, et. al. © 2023 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court Barack Obama, who won the popular vote by 9.5 million votes in 2008 and five million in 2012 and served eight years in office, was able to appoint only two Supreme Court justices. Donald, who lost  the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost three million votes and was in office only four years (and impeached twice), was able to appoint three. Mary Trump, The Reckoning  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court But we cannot exceed the scope of our authority under the Constitution, and we cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous infuences such as concern about the public's reaction to our work. Samuel Alito, February 10, 2022, initial draft of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v Wade , expessing the Court's conservative majority's let-me-kiss-your-ring subserviance to the religious conservatives who make up the base of the Republlican Party that got them appointed to the Court, and its go-fuck-yourself disdain for others, including the vast majority of Americans who don't want Roe v. Wade overturned  © 2022 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court [Clarence] Thomas should never have been on the court. Now that we know his wife was plotting the overthrow of the government, he should get off or be thrown off. You can't administer justice when your spouse is running around strategizing for a coup. Maureen Dowd, New York Times, March 26, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court Colleagues, this is a scheme akin in complexity and tradecraft to an intelligence agency covert operation, only this one is not being run by one country against another. This one is being run in and against our own country by a handful of creepy billionaires and their donations trying to impose their self-serving ideology on the rest of us through our least democratic branch, the branch that doesn't care if normal people hate this stuff because they're in robes for life. That's our federal courts, and particularly the Surpeme Court. And the big dark money donors have pretty well pulled it off, too, following Lewis Powell's admonition to use strength in organization and united action. Sheldon Whitehouse, August 5, 2021, on efforts by the Judicial Crisis Network to make the Supreme Court a tool for use by the right- wing anti-government mega donors it represents © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court  The Court can function as the last word because it has allies who want  it to have the last word. Richard M. Valelly, American Politics © 2018 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court The current court's concept of equal protection has essentially boiled down to supporting white plaintiffs who claim to have been disadvantaged by affirmative action. Eric Foner, “Partisanship Rules” (2001) © 2017 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court During the Trump administration, for instance, the justices issued 28 orders at the request of the administration that blocked adverse lower-court rulings while the government appealed. This had the effect of allowing the government to enforce policies that had been invalidated by every other court ruling on their legality. In contrast, the Supreme Court issued only four such orders during the 16 years spanning the presidencies of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The court is also using these orders far more often to directly block government policies at the outset of litigation, when lower courts have refused to do so. Washington Post, September 3, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court The effort to capture the Court has likely been the most effectual deployment of right-wing and corporate resources into our common American political life, and America is now a very different place as a result of it. Much of it, like the proverbial frog in the proverbial pot, we've even gotten used to and accept it now as normal, when it isn't. Sheldon Whitehouse, June 22, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court The FBI sacrificed her [Christine Blasey Ford] to the gale force political pressure applied by the [dark money] scheme [to capture the court] to get this well-auditioned nominee [Brett Kavanaugh] into place. And let's get real. You don't apply gale force political pressure for judges who are just going to call balls and strikes. $400 million, $400 million has been spent in dark money on this court capture scheme. For $400 million, you don't want balls and strikes; you want judges who will throw the game for you. You want what you paid for: a captured Court, and if you look at its track record, that's this Court. It's the Court that dark money built, and it's delivering. Sheldon Whitehouse, September 21, 2021, summarizing the history of the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court Four of the five-justice conservative majority on the Supreme Court – Samuel Alito, Jr., Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts – were appointed by George W. Bush and Donald Trump, presidents who lost the popular vote [As of May 13, 2019] © 2019 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court I am going to do everything I can do to make sure four years from now, we still got an opening on the Supreme Court. Richard Burr, October 30, 2016, Republican Senator from North Carolina © 2016 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up. John McCain, Republican Senator from Arizona © 2016 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court I would suggest a more realistic view: for much of its history the Supreme Court has been the most conservative branch of the US government, and its justices have been chiefly motivated by their personal ideologies, which, like all good lawyers, they camouflage as solid reasoning. … I think a more objective view is to recognize that the justices sought to impose their conservative views on the will of the majority by  concocting legal theories to fit the moment. Jed S. Rakoff, New York Review of Books, September 19, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court  If you look at other western legal systems, there is no parallel to the bind  in which America finds itself. The closest analogy to a Supreme Court whose majority follow originalism — fidelity to the alleged wishes of long-deceased men — sits in Tehran. Iran's Council of Guardians is unelected, regulates women’s bodies, cannot be re- moved and is impervious to public opinion. They answer to a higher power. The more America's Supreme Court resembles a theocratic body, the more it imperils itself. Edward Luce, Financial Times, May 3, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court In recent years, the Court has had a lot more friends than it used to. Amici filed 781 briefs in the 2014 Supreme Court term, a more than 800% increase from the 1950s and a 95% increase from just 1995. In the 2010 term, 710 amici briefs were filed in 78 cases. By 2019, that number had swelled to 911 briefs in just 57 cases. … There is another odd feature to this uptick in amicus briefs. Most of the time, you file an amicus brief when the justices have taken a case and are poised to actually decide the outcome of that case — the so-called merit stage of the case, which makes sense because this is when the rulings actually become law. But these days, more and more amici arrive when the Court considers whether to take up a case, when the justices are deciding whether or not to grant certiorari. Sheldon Whitehouse, November 16, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court [I]n the recent view of a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, democratic responsiveness need not mean responding to all citizens equally. It can mean responding unequally, giving special weight to people or corporations that spend large amounts of money. Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America?  [2017] © 2019 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court [I]n the recent view of a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, democratic responsiveness need not mean responding to all citizens equally. It can mean responding unequally, giving special weight to people or corporations that spend large amounts of money. Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America?  [2017] © 2019 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court [T]he instances in which conservative and  liberal Supreme Court justices diverge from their preferred methods of statuary inter- pretation to reach results more consistent with their ideological leanings are so numerous as to cast in doubt their claims of adherence to such methods [as texturalism or originalism]. … … a cynic might suggest that the Supreme Court are unanimous in viewing principles of statuary interpretation as matters of convenience. Jed S. Rakoff, New York Review of Books, September 19, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court It took a lot to … to drive  the Court's  reputation to its historic low. … It took the marriage of a man who needed adulation as a shield against self-doubt and a woman who needed a guru to shield her from ambiguity. It entailed the tribal pride of a little girl in a patriotic sash and the agony of a little boy who just wanted to open a second fucking box of cereal. Kerry Howley, New York Magazine, June 19 — July 2, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court Last night, the Court silently acquiesced in a State’s enactment of a law that flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents. Today, the Court belatedly explains that it declined to grant relief because of procedural complexities of the State’s own invention. Because the Court’s failure to act rewards tactics designed to avoid judicial review and inflicts significant harm on the applicants and on women seeking abortions in Texas, I dissent. Sonia Sotomayor, September 1, 2021, on the decision by Justices Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas to not enjoin an unconstitutional Texas law that banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and allowed Texas to evade judicial scrutiny by empowering bounty hunters to enforce it © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court [L]ess than half of Democrats (47%) would trust the Supreme Court to fairly determine the winner of a contested election, compared to two-thirds of Republicans (67%). World Justice Project report on U.S. Rule of Law Trends and the 2024 Election © 2024 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court [T]he main reason the Supreme Court has been for most of its history, the most conservative of the three branches is that conservatives have traditionally paid much more attenton than liberals to placing their allies on the Court,  because it is their best hope for preserving the values they seek to preserve against popular reforms. Jed S. Rakoff, New York Review of Books, September 19, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court Our Supreme Court is awash in dark money influence, with flotillas of dark money front groups, front groups that don't bother to offer value, that aren't even real in the sense that they have a real business or function, that exist merely to signal their donors' desired outcomes while hiding their donors' identities. It's an armada of fakery that the Court indulges. This fakery lets a small, wealthy donor elite manufacture sham allies to get themselves a bigger say at the Supreme Court than everyone else. They are out to get the Court to do stuff for them that Americans don't want and that Congress won't vote for. But, with a captured Court, they can get what they want, and they do. Sheldon Whitehouse, November 16, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court  The Republican justices on the Supreme Court just established a new constitutional right to donor se- crecy. And they did so for a group — Americans for Prosperity Foundation — flagrantly involved in right-wing political mischief and manipulation. Flagrantly involved. The Americans for Prosper- ity Foundation group's operating entity actually had even spent millions of dollars just last year to help get Justice Barrett confirmed.  They are so brazen about this they actually used  Americans for Prosperity Foundation as the named party, and not some benign entity they could have dredged up. Nope. They took the bet that  this precedent of a politically active manipulator being the named party would not phase the Re- publicans on the Court, and they would be able with that partisan majority to gain a legal foothold for their dark money. Sheldon Whitehouse, July 13, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court The result here is that the Court substitutes itself for Congress and the Executive Branch in making national policy about student-loan  forgiveness. Congress authorized the forgive- ness plan (among many other actions); the Secretary put it in place; and the President would have been accountable for its success or failure. But this Court today decides that  some 40 million Americans will not receive the benefits the plan provides, because (so says  the Court) that assistance is too "significan[t]." … the Court, by deciding this case, exercises authority it does not have. It violates the Constitution.  Elena Kagan, dissent in Biden v. Nebraska, et. al. © 2023 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court Something is not right around the Court. And dark money has a lot to do with it. Special interests have a lot to do with it. Donors Trust and whoever's hiding behind Donors Trust has a lot to do with it. And the Bradley Foundation orchestrating its amici over at the Court has a lot to do with it. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, confirmation hearing for Amy Coney Barrett, October 13, 2020 [Donors Trust is an identity scrubber for rich conservatives] [The Bradley Foundation funds legal cases and amicus briefs under dozens of names per case for conservative clients] © 2020 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court The Supreme Court is still great. It’s the greatest gathering of grievances we’ve ever seen on the high court. The woe-is-me bloc of conservative male justices is obsessed with who has wronged them. It might be an opportune time to hire a Supreme shrink so these resentful men can get some much-needed therapy and stop working out their issues from the bench. Maureen Dowd, New York Times, May 6, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court A system of government that makes the people subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy. Antonin Scalia © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they? Republican Senator Roman Hruska defending Nixon's nomination of G. Harrold Carswell for appointment to the Supreme Court © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court There is a pattern, a pattern of success when flotillas of dark money amici funded by a small number of wealthy right-wing donors show up, they win. The court that dark money built delivers in their favor. Exhibit A is probably the US Chamber of Commerce, where the idea for this scheme first bubbled up years ago with the Powell memo. Over the past 15 years or so, the Chamber has filed more amici briefs at the Supreme Court than almost anyone else, and it has gotten its preferred result more than 70% of the time. And no one knows what company or  what interest the Chamber may be fronting for. That is hidden from the Court and from the other parties. The Chamber can even hide if one of its members wrote or funded the Chamber's amicus brief in that member's own case. Sheldon Whitehouse, November 16, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court There is an important corollary to his [Justice William J. Brennan Jr.'s] famous Rule of Five, one powerfully at work in the current Supreme Court. That is the Rule of Six. A five-justice majority is inherently fragile. It necessitates compromise and discourages overreach. Five justices tend to proceed with baby steps. A six-justice majority is a different animal. A six-justice majority, such as the one now firmly in control, is the judicial equivalent of the monarchy’s “heir and a spare.” The pathways to victory are enlarged. The overall impact is far greater than the single-digit difference suggests. Ruth Marcus, Washington Post, Nov. 28, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court To state the obvious, judges do not know what scientists and public health experts do. So it is alarming that the Court second-guesses the judgments of expert officials, and displaces their conclusions with its own. In the worst public health crisis in a century, this foray into armchair epidemiology cannot end well. I fervently hope that the Court’s intervention will not worsen the Nation's COVID crisis. But if this decision causes suffering, we will not pay. Our marble halls are now closed to the public, and our life tenure forever insulates us from responsibility for our errors. That would seem good reason to avoid disrupting a State's pan- demic response. But the Court forges ahead regardless, insisting that science-based policy yield to judicial edict. Elena Kagan, dissent in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom © 2022 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court Today’s ruling illustrates just how far the Court’s “shadow-docket“ decisions may depart from the usual principles of appellate process. … the majority’s decision is emblematic of too much of this Court’s shadow docket decisionmaking — which every day becomes more unreasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend. Elena Kagan, September 1, 2021, on the decision by Justices Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas to not enjoin an unconstitutional Texas law that banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and allowed Texas to evade judicial scrutiny by empowering bounty hunters to enforce it © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court [T]rust is built on consistent adherence to the rule of law. The recent, radical rulings by the Supreme Court, which itself reflects political polarisation, have made clear that the law won't be applied  in the same way everywhere. The legal framework that binds you will depend on who you are, and where you live. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, July 10, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court Two recent Supreme Court rulings — one ending affirmative action in university admissions and another vetoing  Joe Biden's student debt forgiveness plan — have been lambasted by progressives as yet more evidence that the judicial branch is wrecking America. But there is a silver lining to almost everything, and I can see one here. The Supreme Court has unwittingly elevated the issue of income inequality, and the need for class-based educational reform in the US. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, July 17, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court  We are now dealing with the Thomas court. Jill Abramson, Financial Times, July 9, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court When big Republican donor interests come before the Court, they win. It looks like every time. I've show the pattern. I've published an article about it. It's currently at 80-0. Sheldon Whitehouse, October 27, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts? I don’t see how it is possible. Sonia Sotomajor, December 1, 2021, during oral arguments in the Mississippi abortion case, the latest in a series of cases conservatives on the Court are using to whittle away the right to an abortion © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court to 1%ers How do I love thee? Let me count the ways Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnet 43” © 2015 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court to Democrats Abandon all hope, ye who enter here Dante, The Inferno,  Canto III © 2018 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court to humanists, nonbelievers, secularists You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape the damnation of hell?  Matthew 23:33 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court to large corporations  Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you Matthew 7:7 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court to leftists, liberals, progressives Abandon all hope, ye who enter here Dante, The Inferno,  Canto III © 2018 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court to Republicans Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you Matthew 7:7 © 2018 Kwiple.com
 
Supreme Court to the religious right  Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you Matthew 7:7 © 2018 Kwiple.com