Justice Ginsburg: Cancer Surgery This Morning...

[Mountain Man]

Is there really that functional a difference between seeing the argument "live" compared to listening to the audio? The audio is fully available after the hearing.

I suppose not being there does mean you can't ask questions, but that's less of an issue in a multi-judge panel where there are others to do so. Clarence Thomas is averaging about once question per decade.

It'd be a problem if she misses the private conferences the court has where they discuss the cases (which occur several days after the arguments) and cast their votes, though. That's something you have to be there for. Though I guess she could join via conference call if necessary...

If that's the case then why have court at all? Just have each attorney submit their arguments in writing and then let the judges rule at their leisure.

[DesertBerean]

If that's the case then why have court at all? Just have each attorney submit their arguments in writing and then let the judges rule at their leisure.

As I said before, there are a LOT of cases heard already that are pending decisons...those discussions could be handled by teleconference. I admit though that for cases not yet heard I'm not sure that teleconferencing would be the right media.

[Mountain Man]

As I said before, there are a LOT of cases heard already that are pending decisons...those discussions could be handled by teleconference. I admit though that for cases not yet heard I'm not sure that teleconferencing would be the right media.

I was under the impression that Roberts was allowing her to rule on cases for which she was absent.

[DesertBerean]

I was under the impression that Roberts was allowing her to rule on cases for which she was absent.

That, I don't know...hm, how long was she out?

[Mountain Man]

I don't know. I'm just going by Cow Poke's quote:

Chief Justice John Roberts said in the courtroom Monday that Ginsburg would participate in deciding the argued cases “on the basis of the briefs and transcripts of oral arguments.”

which makes it sound like she wasn't actually in the courtroom to hear the cases.

[rogue06]

If that's the case then why have court at all? Just have each attorney submit their arguments in writing and then let the judges rule at their leisure.

That has been brought up before since it appears that historically speaking some of the justices don't appear to pay much attention to the oral arguments relying on the briefs already submitted and if necessary the transcripts. RBG has even been seen sleeping through the oral arguments before. It seems the oral arguments serve primarily to allow the justices to ask questions if they want something clarified

[One Bad Pig]

That has been brought up before since it appears that historically speaking some of the justices don't appear to pay much attention to the oral arguments relying on the briefs already submitted and if necessary the transcripts. RBG has even been seen sleeping through the oral arguments before. It seems the oral arguments serve primarily to allow the justices to ask questions if they want something clarified

That's usually the case at the appellate level, too. Sure, attorneys go in with a 15-minute presentation they'd like to give, but they typically get a short way into it and then spend the rest of the time answering questions.

[Cow Poke]

I don't know. I'm just going by Cow Poke's quote:

Chief Justice John Roberts said in the courtroom Monday that Ginsburg would participate in deciding the argued cases “on the basis of the briefs and transcripts of oral arguments.”

which makes it sound like she wasn't actually in the courtroom to hear the cases.

That's the impression I get --- she gets the summaries, documents, but was not there to hear the cases personally. But, apparently, still gets to weigh in.

[Mountain Man]

Here's an interesting perspective:

Source: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Absent For Oral Arguments – Media Claim, Without Evidence, Justice is of Sound Mind and Body…

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is absent from the Supreme Court bench for oral arguments today. After surgery for cancer removal last year, the media claim -without evidence- that Justice Ginsburg is sufficient of mind and body to review transcripts from testimony and preside over cases.

[...]

If I were a plaintiff in any case now in front of the Supreme Court, my first line of inquiry would be a request for any absent member to prove they were of sound judgement etc.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com...mind-and-body/

© Copyright Original Source

[Cow Poke]

Some of the liberals are still unhappy that she didn't step down when Obama could have nominated her replacement.

[Mountain Man]

Some of the liberals are still unhappy that she didn't step down when Obama could have nominated her replacement.

I have a feeling that she's one of them. She could have been enjoying her retirement by now instead of desperately clinging to her seat out of pure spite.

[Sparko]

If that's the case then why have court at all? Just have each attorney submit their arguments in writing and then let the judges rule at their leisure.

I think they do that sometimes.

Judges sometimes take months to make a decision after both sides submit their briefs and evidence. And that is in state and federal courts.

[rogue06]

Some of the liberals are still unhappy that she didn't step down when Obama could have nominated her replacement.

Right now there is a growing "Cult of Ginsburg" on the left, what with multiple Hollywood fawning movies, the CNN documentary about her and the like. I wonder if that feeling of adoration and veneration might turn to anger if her failing health allows Trump to nominate her replacement. Going from liberal darling and heroine to detested pariah. The fact that the far left Mother Jones is bringing this up indicates it is indeed possible.

Source: What the Cult of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Got Wrong

Fans defended her choice not to retire under President Obama. Now it may be too late.


On the Basis of Sex, a feature film on the pioneering legal work of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is due to roll out in theaters nationwide on Christmas Day. With Felicity Jones’ portrayal of Ginsburg as a hot, young ACLU lawyer, the canonization of “Notorious RGB” will be officially complete. The 85-year-old justice’s celebrity status as a badass feminist has never been higher. CNN, which earlier this year produced a Ginsburg documentary titled RBG, has declared her the “face of the resistance” against President Donald Trump’s agenda, and a new Ginsburg biography was published in October to coincide with the 25th anniversary of her confirmation. A retail store opened recently in Washington, DC, stocked almost exclusively with RBG merch: yoga mats, water bottles, T-shirts, action figures, magnets, and pins designed to look like Ginsburg’s lace “dissent collar.” The store is called The Outrage.

But no amount of swag or hagiography can obscure the fact that, while Ginsburg is responsible for a great number of landmark legal decisions, her legacy may be sorely tarnished by one truly terrible one: refusing to retire when President Barack Obama could have named her replacement. That decision came into stark relief this month when Ginsburg fell and broke three ribs—and half of the nation took a collective gasp. Women took to Twitter to offer the justice a rib.

Irin Carmon, a co-author of Ginsburg fan-book The Notorious RBG who is as responsible as anyone else for the contemporary Cult of Ginsburg, encouraged devotees not to freak out. Their hero is resilient, indestructible even, Carmon insisted. Ginsburg has survived cancer—twice!—and still has never missed a day on the bench. “I am not RBG’s doctor, but I am one of her biographers, here to testify to her resilience,” Carmon wrote in The Cut. To reinforce her point, Carmon interviewed Bryant Johnson, Ginsburg’s longtime personal trainer, who said, “To all the stressed-out people in America, remember that the justice is TAN. Now, I always use that acronym: TAN. She’s tough as nails. You think three ribs are going to stop Justice?”

But Carmon and others who’ve helped turn Ginsburg into a pop-culture icon are deluding themselves. Ginsburg is a mere mortal. Falling down is the leading cause of accidental death in people over age 85. The actuarial table is not in her favor. There’s a real possibility Ginsburg will not outlast the Trump administration or live long enough for a Democrat to replace her. The situation today is one many liberal lawyers feared years ago and worked hard to avert. But the feisty justice rebuffed them all, a decision that makes all the hero worship hard for some of us to stomach.

The calls for Ginsburg to step down began in 2011 when Randall Kennedy, a Harvard law professor and former clerk to the late Thurgood Marshall, wrote a piece in The New Republic gently urging Ginsburg, then 78, to retire while Obama was in office. (He had suggested the same of Justice Stephen Breyer, now 80.) Kennedy was publicly airing private concerns among Democrats that it could be Ginsburg’s last chance to be replaced by a Democrat. “Justices Ginsburg and Breyer have enriched the nation with long, productive, admirable careers,” he wrote. “Those, like me, who admire their service might find it hard to hope that they will soon leave the Court—but service comes in many forms, including making way for others.”

Kennedy held up his old boss as a cautionary tale. Marshall’s health problems forced him to retire during the administration of George H.W. Bush, who replaced the legendary civil rights lawyer with Clarence Thomas, a conservative ideologue who has spent his 27 years on the bench working to unravel virtually everything Marshall fought for. “[I]f Justice Ginsburg departs the Supreme Court with a Republican in the White House,” Kennedy wrote, “it is probable that the female Thurgood Marshall will be replaced by a female Clarence Thomas.”

Ginsburg declined the advice and might well have used the line deployed by Felicity Jones in a scene from On the Basis of Sex, wherein the young Ginsburg tells the ACLU’s legal director: “You don’t get to tell me when to quit.”

After Obama’s 2012 reelection, the Ginsburg retirement calls came with a new urgency. In December 2013, the National Journal ran a piece titled, Justice Ginsburg: Resign Already!, in which writer James Oliphant observed that the passage of Obamacare would likely hand Senate control to the Republicans in 2014, thus preventing Obama from naming a Ginsburg successor. His concerns were echoed by prominent liberal legal scholars, notably Erwin Chemerinsky, now dean of the University of California-Berkeley law school, who wrote in early 2014 in the Los Angeles Times, “I do not minimize how hard it will be for Justice Ginsburg to step down from a job that she loves and has done so well since 1993. But the best way for her to advance all the things she has spent her life working for is to ensure that a Democratic president picks her successor.”





Source

© Copyright Original Source

[*Story continues at link above*]

[Sparko]

I have a feeling she is going to try to hang on until the next election hoping a democrat wins. If Trump does get reelected she will probably go ahead and retire regardless.

[Terraceth]

As I've said before, I think the reason Ginsburg is staying on is that by various accounts she just likes the job and would rather be doing it than being retired, rather than any idea of not wanting to resign under Trump. I don't think she'd have retired at this point even if Hillary had won the election. Although, the fact that this so-called "strategic retirement" is actually a concept is a bit of a problem. I don't know exactly of how to fix it, but it is a bit off that it's even a thing to begin with.

Incidentally, I haven't seen On the Basis of Sex but I did see the "RBG" documentary. It was pretty good. I had only two real criticisms of it. The first was that when going over her dissents in cases like Shelby County v. Holder, it didn't really say much about the cases themselves, what the reasoning of the majority was, or what even her reasoning was outside of like a one or two sentence snippet from each. The second was I wish they had her talk about the other members of the Court--sure, there was actually a bit about her relationship with Scalia that was interesting, but it didn't say anything else about the various justices she served with, which I believe would have been 12 when they were making the film (not counting Gorsuch, who would have been barely on the bench at the time). A part where they quickly went through her giving some thoughts or amusing anecdotes about each justice would have been great.

Other than that, pretty good film. It made me really wish I could've seen a film like that about other justices of the court--I would've loved to see one like it about Scalia in particular.