One of the features of the first Trump administration was the endless litigation that was intended to throw sand in the gears of the White House. Much of it was irrational and did not hold up under appeal, but that was not the point. The goal was to kill the administration with a thousand cuts. We are seeing a replay of this in round two, but the administration seems prepared for it. There is both a legal strategy and a public relations strategy for dealing with the lawfare.
This lawfare is possible due to one of the many carryovers from the post-Cold War period in which the Washington class was allowed to run wild. The inferior courts where this lawfare is being waged are packed with friends of Washington. Half of the judges were nominated by Republicans and the other half by Democrats, but all were on the list because they are friends of the Blob. Time and again we see that the judges issuing restraining orders on the admin have family in the Blob.
One result of this is the ground floor of the federal judiciary is now the first line of defense for the Blob. Anyone challenging the regulatory state knows they first must make it through this minefield. It is one way to make the cost of challenging the regulatory state prohibitive. Almost all litigation against the administrative state would fail at the first step and then go to appeal. For most potential litigants, dealing with the hyper-politicized district courts was cost prohibitive.
Mostly, the district courts have become a weird form of patronage. These judges come from good schools but were not great private practice attorneys. Most found their way into a federal prosecutor’s office, where they could make friends with the political class to angle for a position on the bench. Once on the bench, they could then lever that into jobs for friends and family in the Blob. District judges are one of the many gatekeepers for entry into the Blob.
Here is where you see the social aspect of managerialism. These judges do not have to be told to oppose the Trump admin. They just know it is their role because everyone they know hates Trump. Judge Boasberg is not defending what he has always claimed to oppose because he is a hypocrite. He is simply putting the welfare of his friends and family ahead of political concerns. He is operating from class consciousness and the class he is defending is the managerial class.
Of course, the court system has been a mess for a long time. The Supreme Court that decided Brown simply invented a new moral code to be imposed on the American people by the judiciary. The court that invented the right to buy contraceptives and abort your baby was doing the same thing. When Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion stating that the right to marry is a fundamental right, he did so not as a legal scholar or defender of the Constitution, but as a secular priest.
The judiciary as a priestly class is always a risk because in a liberal political order the law is the manifestation of general morality. One reason we have so many laws in public government versus private government is the morally right choice for every conceivable action must be written down so the shamans in the court system have something to point to when making their declarations. That and it is the only way to overcome the traditions of the people regarding public morality.
It is how in 1985, US District Court Judge Russell Clark began a terror campaign against the people of Missouri. He took over the Kansas City, Missouri School District, forcing the people to pay billions in taxes to underwrite his madman effort to create paradise on earth. This terror campaign was allowed to go on for a decade until the Supreme Court finally got around to ending it. Two billion dollars were spent, and thousands of lives were ruined by a single lunatic judge.
What the district court system has become is a way for the managerial class to impose its morality on the rest of us, via the court system. Since there are over six hundred district judges, there is no escaping them. Every state government must act in the shadow of what is, in effect, an ideological enforcer for the Blob. The district courts are now an ecclesiastical court for the purpose of heading off any signs of apostacy before they gain public support.
In the short term, the only remedy for the Trump administration is to fight this weird priesthood in the court and the court of public opinion. Congress could help by stripping some power from the district courts, but Republicans are useless, so no one should expect that to happen. Chief Judge Roberts could step in, but he is clearly blobbed up, so that is unlikely. His behavior in the Obamacare case made clear he acted under duress to change his position.
In the long run, the solution is to make the district court position temporary, so it loses its value in Washington. Doing a turn as a district judge should be viewed as a resume builder for someone on partner track at a big firm or maybe as a career builder for a lawyer who wants to build his own firm. District judges were supposed to handle mundane administrative tasks to free up the superior court. Making it a steppingstone position would restore that function.
In the even longer run, normalizing the judiciary means the end of ideology, because as long as we remain an ideological state, there will be people who see themselves as priests tasked with enforcing the moral claims of the ideology. The death of ideology means morality is once against rooted in the traditions and customs of the people and the law has a process for that. It is called precedent. Since before Code of Ur-Nammu, this has been the basis of the law and an orderly society.
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Federal districts can be eliminated and defunded by simple majority votes, but of course as you point out Republicans are perfectly fine with what is happening. It seems the Trump Administration has decided upon a mixed Cloward-Piven strategy, though, where it claims to follow an order, does not do so and proceeds to destroy things. This is a good tactic. What has been done to USAID, for example, is Cloward-Piven at its finest. It took decades to build the monster and it will be very difficult to reconstitute.
So much this.
Rush Limbaugh liked to say that you could just set out rakes and let Liberals step on them. Which I think (and thought ) that was the reason Homan and Trump focused on deporting the worst of the worst first. If those planes were full of Juanita and the ninos, the majority of people would have folded to their emotions and supported Boasberg. But only the absolute lunatic fringe would insist that we needed those particular people because they do the jobs Americans just won’t do, like murder, rape and setting people on fire.
I’m all for setting precedent wrt deportations and it makes good publicity here and South of the border. But the majority of IA’s are not gang member’s. If the deportation raids slow down, nothing will change. Admittedly, I’m a cynic. Let’s pick up this discussion a year from now for evaluation of the deportation promise made by Trump. 😉
They’re also invoking the State Secrets Act to tell the judge he has no need to know. They can now proceed with deportation flights and when the judge starts sending them orders, just reply “We can’t discuss it. National security.” The Jeffrey Goldberg thing points to another way Team Trump is doing things differently. Goldberg claims he was sent a Signal chat invite by the National Security Advisor (Walz). What single guy in the Administration is more of a threat to the IC than Walz? This position is why they took out General Flynn in 2017. They set Flynn up… Read more »
The immediate televised senate hearings telegraph that this was a setup
I can’t believe you’re pushing Q-tier, ‘the white hats are in charge’ copium like this to try to say Trump and his team are fighting the deep state. I don’t understand why a grown man needs to create these narratives to justify his support for what is turning out to be another dud from the Trump admin. Tell me how these apparatchiks discussing their plans to bomb Yemeni civilians is fighting the deep state? It’s Waltz btw, not Walz, but can you tell me how this guy (an acolyte of Donald Rumsfeld) is actually on our side and fighting the… Read more »
Casimir, as if spies don’t send out a bit of disinformation and see who responds?
Thanks much for the ‘protege of Rumsfeld’ info, but if you’re going to fight one gang, you’d better have an equally formidable gang at your back. That both are factions of Horace’s international civil war is a different subject.
That the Atlantic leak is a ‘story’? I mean, come on.
Might as well just use MAD Magazine ‘Spy vs. Spy’ comic strips.
Seems rather theoretical.
Waltz strikes me as a garden-variety neocon pretending to not be one, though. I would think the IC is happy where he is.
“Chief Judge Roberts could step in, but he is clearly blobbed up…”
The problem with Roberts is he is a cuck. Like all the cucks in Congress, when his vote doesn’t count, he upholds Conservative views. But the second his vote counts, like when the other judges are 4-4, he cucks and votes with the left.
Yeah he’s a cuck. So is Kavanaugh.
Pretty much all of them are cucks except Alito and Thomas, and Thomas in particular is as good as it gets. Never in my wildest imagination did I expect that the most brilliant Supreme Court justice of my lifetime would be an affirmative action Negro falsely accused of sexual harassment, but the guy is rock solid on constitutional principles. He is actually better than Scalia.
I’d take a Supreme Court with nine Clarence Thomases on it in a heartbeat.
He really surprised me coming down on the right side of affirmative action.
That godawful woman with the adopted African kids, IIRC, already has voted the wrong way influenced by her adopted keedz. She literally cucked her own children. Every minute of attention and dollar spent on those africans are a minute and dollar she cannot give to her own children. It’s DISGUSTING! She should divorce her husband and marry David French.
I just blew coffee all over my screen. She should marry David French! I’ll be laughing for a long time on that one
Adopting half-grown Haitians is the cuckservative version of a mom discovering her children are trans.
J. Thomas greeted me with a handshake and hug and we have socialized since the day I was sworn into SCOTUS Trial Bar. He still retains a keen memory, including what they did to him during confirmation. He’s a great American and jurist.
Good to hear.
Excellent, he is truly a good man and understands the founding principles of this nation better than any judge I have ever seen.
It’s truly sickening that a man of his intellect has has to serve on an appeals court where his “equals” are literal morons like the “Wise Latina” and Ketanji from Uganda…
Muh guess is that Roberts is much more of a pederast than merely a “cuck”.
Jeffrey Epstein purchased a couple of children out of Southern Ireland, so that Roberts would be able to LARP as a father & a family man.
Roberts needed fake children to pull off the ruse, and Epstein was happy to oblige.
[Shades of Elizabeth Edwards getting third-party eggs to make John Edwards look like more of a virile young family man.]
It’s almost impossible for us Normies to grok how cynical these soulless power-hungry monsters really are.
It has been said that Roberts has a greater concern than that of applying the Constitution in his rulings. That is to say, he is running scared and tailors his decisions as to what he perceives is in the best interest of the institution—SCOTUS. He perhaps is keenly aware of the weakness (power imbalance and Constitutional underpinnings) of the “third branch of government”!
This has always puzzled me. Seems he is more aware of the limits of the judiciary than our Legislative and Executive branches. Time to rein in the Judiciary, they are a paper tiger.
Being a judge has benefits beyond renumeration. When you are a judge, everyone in the legal (and regulatory) world will kiss your butt because of the power you hold.
I remeber a retired judge told me the worst thing about being retired is that no one returns your phone calls. That’s why these judges, state and federal, want to hang on to their positions like the pope.
One judge wrote to me that after being called Your Honor a few thousand times, he had to check himself at the start of each day, to make sure his vanity was under control. He said it’ll get to ya.
Now many judges are female, so the tendency towards grandeur and social preening has increased tenfold.
It’s a problem that inevitably solves itself. You-Know-Who was having problems with guys like this in the courts… so he made them disappear. And even across party lines everyone was happy to see them go.
I understand El Salvador recently purged its judiciary too. It’s a problem that’s endemic to western civ countries right now. Hopefully they can be removed peacefully but I’m good either way. Without functional laws your country can’t work…
“…El Salvador recently purged its judiciary too.”
Oh man. We have got to have somebody knowledgable exploring how they did that.
Well, I’ll tell you how.
Bukele got a super-majority so he replaced the Supreme Court. It is true that his methods implied a somewhat creative interpretation of the law, but he ensured that the army was close to the Supreme Court when the previous judges tried to play Masada 2.0
Took bold, masculine action from Bukele in order to restore his country. First breaking the power of organized crime, then cleansing the judiciary. Is this dangerous? Yeah it’s dangerous, esp. the judiciary part. But unchecked gang rule is worse than national death. It’s national enslavement. The narcotraficantes are looking for virgin territories in latin america with built-in markets for hard drugs. That means tourist towns, especially beach hamlets. I hope these nations do not wait until the Bukele Stage to crush their domestic narco organizations. Many L.A. nations simply are not ready, nor do they understand that you either go… Read more »
Most of the lawyers who end up being judges start to get involved in politics early. They usually are donating time and money to parties and campaigns in their 20s. These types don’t want to be actual lawyers. They want to be in politics one way or the other and being a judge is one of those ways.
Successful lawyers either don’t want to be a judge or can’t afford it because they’re lifestyle now requires making $500k a year.
Funny how Clown World is mirrored Marxism — not the Proletariat, but the Bourgeoisie, has achieved Revolutionary Class Consciousness. Instead of overthrowing the system, they’re using all their considerable power to maintain things exactly as they are. Everything Gramsci said about “hegemony” was right; he just got the hegemons’ identity wrong.
This is true. Karen’s Slush Fund, a/k/a USAID, was BioLeninism for upper middle class white women. The courts represent the same mindset. A client class of wealthy Karens railing against capitalism is a sight to behold.
I heard them called the Femocrats, or the Demonic Party. Heh!
Maybe Rush had it right.
It puts the ‘hip’ in hypocritical, don’t it.
Karen Slush Fund. Perfect.
GK Chesterton noted that constant revolution is the best way to keep the status quo.
Don’t know if it’s been pointed out, but as long as one side simply ignores laws, with no resulting consequences,(Sanctuary cities, not enforcing immigration laws,etc), while the other side plays by the rules,(we must engage out of control judges in the court system), nothing will improve, and over time, will get worse.
Is there any reason the current administration can’t simply ignore radical, woke judges?
What can they do? Get mad?
Write a sternly worded letter?
The problem with ignoring judges is the recalcitrant federal “workforce” that is insubordinate to the president to begin with. When some judge rules that they don’t have to obey Order X from the president, then they have a legal leg to stand on to disobey. They probably weren’t going to obey anyway, or drag their feet, but now the president’s order has been effectively blocked. Sometimes, in some cases, the WH can effectively ignore the courts and pretend they don’t exist, but I believe such instances are in the minority. For the most part, for the executive to function, it… Read more »
stop paying them, they’ll stop showing up soon enough
If a judge issues a sternly worded edict and there is no follow up, does it make a sound?
Funny how we’re returning to a medieval conception of the law. The Blob relies on compurgation — you’re in the right because you pinkie swear you are, and you’ve got twelve guys who will swear they believe you. That’s the sole principle behind so much of the lawfare — some Apparatchik swears that Trump is a big poopy-head, and twelve of his buddies swear they believe him, and therefore it’s unconstitutional (for any and all values of “it”).
Perhaps trial by combat should be revisited?
Brilliant – the armor should be yellow
You could televise it on pay-per-view. A few bouts like “Trump v. CNN,” decided by trial by combat, and you could pay off the national debt.
Motorcycle jousting.
People laugh, but I feel like we’d have far fewer passive-aggressive sociopath in positions of power if dueling was still a legitimate legal option.
You are 100% correct about the lunacy of Judge Russell Clark. He single-handedly ruined St. Louis City. I lived through his “desegregation” ruling, which effectively forced white parents to move to the suburbs to escape immediately deteriorated schools. Everyone affected by his ruling was worse off.
White people moving to the ‘burbs, thus making St Louis city the earthly paradise it has now become.
(yes, that is sarcasm)
‘In the even longer run, normalizing the judiciary means the end of ideology, because as long as we remain an ideological state, there will be people who see themselves as priests tasked with enforcing the moral claims of the ideology’ The courts historically are subject to graft and to lesser extent, nepotism . . . human nature being what it is. What’s new the past four decades is the ‘political nepotism’ ubiquitous in both trial and appellate courtrooms. I worked in court admin, and for a state supreme court, in the Eighties and Nineties. Back then girls were pouring out… Read more »
The Zman, long ago in his memorable column, introduced us to the idea of the gynocracy when he said “Women are the soft underbelly of society, as they are the moral enforcers of society….women go to college to learn what the rules are, and how to enforce them.”
The Achilles Heel of the largely male Right always is the Woman Question. Typically, conservative men fail, and bigly. The Right desperately needs leaders like Z who are Based concerning female collective power. All real Christians and Traditionalists face the realities of female nature, or they are simply entryists, fifth columns, or Con. Inc. scammers. Even the Bible tells us that the enemy of our age is the ‘female adversary’ or ‘female rival wife’, dependent upon translation. (Daniel 12:1) This is what the preachers blithely call The Tribulation. . . like it’s some kind of general problem, you know, like… Read more »
Perhaps one way out of this conundrum is to have Trump give a pre-emptive pardon to everyone involved in deportations and DOGE, and then let them ignore the courts. It sounds crazy, but no crazier than Biden pardoning all his lackeys and lickspittles for anything they might ever have done.
This is a good idea. How can we make Trump think he came up with it and then implement it?
The task of a reactionary utopian is simply to pull his head out of his immediate environment and look to religion, philosophy, history and art for intimations of how social life ought to be. A decent man should always be somewhat alienated from the herd, from the age he lives in, from the dominant political gangs. When you feel at home in a world that has gone wrong, you’ve gone wrong too. Not that you should be an anti-social hermit (though you shouldn’t rule that out too quickly). But at least you should keep a free mind, a mental and… Read more »
This is a marvelous citation. Thanks for posting. And I particularly like this, “When you feel at home in a world that has gone wrong, you’ve gone wrong too.”
Funny, but while having lunch a while ago it dawned upon me that, in my own words, the only decent place in which to live in AINO is under a rock. Were Sobran around today, I believe he would concur.
The middle of the forest – with no homes or people in sight – is pretty good, too. Well, admittedly we can see a few homes high on other ridges, but they are miles away.
If not under a rock, on top of one in a dense forest, will also do…
Only thing I know of better than that is to have moved there a few decades earlier and plant that forest.
I made a similar comment in the past but you know everyone of these politicized judges have immediate family, relatives, and close friends who collected shady USAID/NGO money. Trump has to go on the offensive and start arresting their wives, children and golf buddies to put pressure on them. If Trump doesn’t break the deep state by the time he leaves office it could be literally fatal for him and his family if he fails.
The Little Rock school district had a desegregation case going for over 30 years, and it was a gravy train for the black lawyer in the middle of it all.
Then Eisenhower invoked “the rule of law,” by which I mean uniformed troops with military weapons. THAT is “the rule of law.” Force.
Johnnie Cochran’s baby-daddy, mayhap?
The main difference between the MSM and the federal bench is the lifetime appointment. Although it’s practically impossible anymore for undesirables to make it through the elaborate and lengthy screening process (for either) without being flagged, apostasy happens. “Journalists” can just be Tucker Carlson’d or Sheryl Atkisson’d, but judges, when they become problematic, well, I’m betting some of them have been dealt with more harshly than the general public knows or would believe. And I bet that the district court judge position is already more temporary than is statutorily claimed. Remains a mystery how Alito made it all the way… Read more »
Yes. The primary purpose of the Ivies, for example, is to screen for the Regime rather than to educate. While the ABA was hot garbage and tossed as an evaluator of judges, the Federal Society is just as craptacular and continues to screen out those who might be problematic. It is interesting that you mention both the MSM and the judiciary together. While the former has imploded, it appears the public perception of the latter is shifting to hostile and dismissive as well. What is happening will speed this along.
Which is why I advocate razing of the Ivies first.
They’re a major organ of the Regime, especially as regards Atlantic Seaboard power.
I’ve taken to calling it the DIEvy league
We’re ruled by drunken Northeast fratboys and, since the seventies, their braless sorority sisters as well.
To get places, you call on your fraternity/sorority connections.
Truth.
Jack nailed it, as usual.
Getting into the Ivies is extremely difficult.
Once you’re in, it’s easy A’s and partying all the way, perhaps a bit less so at MIT and Cornell.
Pretty easy to get in if you’re a negro with more than 20 dendrites to rub together.
Case in point: in the Nineties, and it may still be true, once admitted to Yale Law you were guaranteed no less than a B average regardless of performance and attendance. There were literal no-show students. This may have come into being for shadier reasons, if you catch my drift, and in effect was a precursor to DEI. I shudder to think about the med students.
Eventually, violent overthrow of the system may become inevitable. Over six hundred district judges may be too many when you are trying to work within the system, but they are nothing in a bloody coup.
Of course, this kind of things only happen in backwards Latin American or African countries and not in the center of civilization that is the US.
Just one more example, as if any more are needed, why virtually every position in the federal government system needed to have term limits. That may not even work, but without them, there’s no fricking chance to rein in the fraud, shenanigans and otherworldly corruption.
Andrew Jackson back in the 1820’s-30’s found that he needed to clean the bureaucratic stables. It wasn’t only that he wanted to put kindred spirits in–there was already incompetence and corruption there. Now we have “labor unions” and regulations that weren’t in place in his day, blocking such a cleansing, along with the judges. Maybe your term limits idea can help, along with an overhaul of the federal bureaucratic employment system.
The reason for lifetime appointments was to increase judicial impartiality. This of course is a fallacy. An appointment of a given number of years will do so just fine. One should not continue with a process that was developed in the late 1700’s when a ripe old age was surviving to 60 yo.
Strictly speaking, not lifetime, but good behavior.
The Midnight Judges Act aka Judicial Act of 1801 is instructive. That was self-evidently intended to stack the court, and not just the SC, and resulted in the end of what, if you squinted just right, you could still kind of identify as a republic. Not only did the bastard Adams work overtime to try to fill the new seats with Federalists who would block every effort by the D-Rs, it resulted in the atrocious Marbury decision.
Wow. Our first radical activist, and he was thoroughly Puritan, too. The Constitution only lasted 14 years.
(The Bill of Rights, akin to a readily understood Ten Commandments, seems a bit sturdier.)
Federalists really don’t change, do they?
Steve. Good behavior is difficult to measure and enforce. Here in AZ we still have judicial appointments that are put up every election for public vote, i.e., vote “yes” for retention. To my recollection there has never been a non-retention—even when judicial misconduct was proven and widely publicized. (This process has been slated for removal just because of this fact. It may have been passed recently for all I know) When you have “good conduct” as a criteria, you will inevitably have gaming of the system. Consider everyone corrupt and limit them to a fixed term. What—there are not enough… Read more »
As a foreigner I find your constitution fascinating; no wonder people are devoted to studying it. (The contrast with the lame Declaration of Independence is striking.) I have several questions about it e.g. when the powers of a monarch were given to the president why were they typical of the powers of an early 17th century monarch rather than the much more restricted powers held by such a “tyrant” as George III? But to today’s business:- “Checks and balances” are all very well but what is the final check on (i) the custom of the Supreme Court choosing to act… Read more »
I often have recommended a Cloward-Piven strategy of eliminating the lower or “inferior” courts and so overwhelming the rest of the system it implodes. Congress actually can do this via elimination of districts court systems, which are not required by the Constitution, and/or defunding them. It appears the Administration has decided on a modified response that amounts to claiming to follow court orders, not doing so, and keeping the judges busy overseeing them. That’s smart even if the legislative method would be quicker.
Good thinking. Doesn’t apply to the state court systems, however, and that’s where most of the damage is done.
True. State “family” courts, in particular, do far more granular damage than most anything a federal hump in black can do.
Family Courts are feminist star-chambers; nothing less than the enemies of God and men. I watched the judicial admin for the Family Courts organize, grow and empower during the Eighties. Family Court is an enormous grift between the Herd (collective femininity) and a branch of the court system, to steal billions of dollars — and the lives that go with it — from men en masse. It’s been a slaughter. Men and kids live in the wake of the feminist-destroyed family unit, but the Courts and the Grrls are doing just fine! Sufficiently wealthy that the entire mercantile nation panders… Read more »
“Divorce raped” was coined for a reason.
In answer to your inquiry (i): I’m trying to remember the famous person who was quoted posing the question, “Does the Supreme Court command an army?” (Andrew Jackson?) The final check on the Court’s legislative usurpations would be other sufficiently strong institutional powers ignoring the Court’s decisions and essentially saying, “What are you [the judges] gonna do about it?” I suppose a Constitutional Amendment could be passed to try to place stricter limits on the Court, but that would be an extremely difficult endeavor to pull off. As to your inquiry (ii): That would require a massive cultural sea change… Read more »
The quietly ignore the lawyers option appears to be a recent and popular development. That includes by the Presidency. It ultimately undermines the rule of law, but something has to give. As a personal for instance, I’m part of a scouting alternative group that shall go unnamed. They have lawyers and it shows. However, frankly as an on the ground volunteer, wanting a good experience for my child and the other participants, I generally blow off the more impractical rules/forms so obviously meant to protect the national organization. It’s annoying because I have to decipher the intent versus the bean… Read more »
Ignoring rulings would simply be a form of civil disobedience, a mode of defiance the Left has fervently sacralized ever since the so-called “civil rights movement.”
Come now. Sacralized civil disobedience does not apply outside the hive.
Surely you’re not suggesting there is some sort of double standard. ‘Pon me word!
Yes yes a thousand times yes. As I do now, acknowledge as read, then ignore.
” … the whole American tendency to accord preposterous power and wealth to lawyers?” In any country with the so-called “rule of law”–a thing that does not even exist and never has existed b/c men rule over other men, and “the law” is the law only when and if enforced, and it is men who do the enforcing or don’t–things can function only when there is a homogeneous society with an intact culture and traditions that say, “this is how we do things; this is ‘done’ among us, and that is ‘not done.'” And if a society does not have… Read more »
All power comes from the barrel of a gun, and at the end of the day the only thing that matters is who/whom. White Americans are about to have to deal with those realities despite their delusions.
And the idea that some black-and-white film character in breeches with big sideburns yelling inanities like,
“I would defend to the death your right to say it!”
“I would mow down whole forests! The Law!”
(Or whatever the F he said)
“As long as it’s done legally!”
“It’s a Constitutional Republic, dammit!”
is in the slightest bit applicable, intelligent, or effective, well…
If what you say is true, then the only “honest” political systems are military dictatorships. Yet they have a poor track record. Can it be that there is something else required for power? I mean lasting, permanent power?
Was the Roman version “all power comes from the point of a spear?” Is the organization of human society really this simple?
The additional requirement is bullets. So, yes, that simple.
There was a case in South Carolina in 1937, pitting two black sharecroppers – who’d discovered a small fortune of buried gold coins on the land they worked, against white plaintiffs whose predecessors owned that land and had buried the gold. Slam dunk for the plaintiffs, right?
Nope, the ruling was for the sharecroppers. In 1937. In South Carolina.
I’ve always gotten a kick out of this little factoid from the past, as it demonstrates that the stereotype of southern “justice” is exactly that, a stereotype. There were men – judges- who took “the rule of law” seriously.
But of course, to modify Suitcase Jefferson’s memorable observation in not-Ken Burns’ documentary The Old Negro Space Program, “it was a different time, you understand, 1937, 1938…”
Dearieme, you’ll need to study a bit more in depth. Congress does have power over the judiciary, albeit rarely done.
“While Congress can influence the scope of federal court jurisdiction, there are limits to its authority. It cannot directly dictate how courts must decide individual cases, as this would violate the separation of powers. Congress can only shape the courts’ ability to hear certain cases or categories of issues, not interfere with judicial independence.”
I myself would like to see more control of the Courts via such as the Constitution outlines.
“It cannot directly dictate how courts must decide individual cases, as this would violate the separation of powers.” Pretty sure the reason is that would be a bill of attainder, but they may not do so nonetheless. What Congress could do, but refuses to do, is enact legislation to fix whatever abomination the courts did. Doesn’t affect that case, obviously, but all future cases have to bear the new rules in mind. They could easily enforce the rules that apply to tax evasion to immigration evasion, and the courts couldn’t do anything but whine. If they can’t stand up for… Read more »
As an American: Americans interact with the Constitution via “magic paper” thinking. English descendants can cling to their idealizations/fantasies long after reality has manifested itself. There’s nothing to “study” with the Constitution. It’s what a few pages long? If someone studies it, they will discover whatever was written pre-1800 has almost nothing to do with what people pretend the constitution is today. The only votes that count are the black robed collective among us, a reality that has existed for as long as I have alive. The belligerent to impossible to govern attitude of many of the American natives means… Read more »
Judges who have sworn to uphold the constitution, then issue a decision clearly in violation of it ought to be arrested. Preferably by an FBI Swat team in early dawn.
I never met a worthy man, not even my own father, a Marine, who swore an oath to uphold that toxic mess, or any of the toxic cons of the so-called “States”. Your FBI punks belong in small pens with your judges and the Commandant.
OK then, forget the Constitution, arrest him for impeding the lawful actions of a President. He may not be convicted, but he needs to let the judicial process proceed as designed. Hell, arrest him for Mopery in the 4th degree.
Rather than a SWAT team, I’d prefer it if our diversity earned their keep for once…
Anyone hoping to somehow reform an irredeemably broken system – by working within the system and placing his hope in men – is doomed to disappointment. Meanwhile, the forces of the evil, spiteful, mutants are paid and organized, and they are in no way vanquished. Link via Bayou renaissance man – an army of bioleninists. No way to deal with these creatures other than permanent removal. Best of luck.
https://x.com/TonySeruga/status/1903677337406992400
Disregard. Just learned Seruga is highly questionable as source/methods.
I have a few counter arguments, but they ended up in the queue. I’m sure people are waiting for my take on things with baited breath. 😂
Nice. Of course, who are the people is the question that supercedes all of this. Demographic destruction already seems to indicate that we cannot agree upon who we are. The coming economic climate will probably exacerbate those divisions and contending claims. If you look at it, a 90% white 10% black population couldn’t agree on the legitimacy of the legal system. Once the majority was stripped of its moral authority and then legally stripped of its ability to enforce them, the minority showed that they do not consider the legal system of the 90% who are now what, 54% and… Read more »
If there is anything that qualifies as “the overproduction of elites”, the legal industry is a top contender.
Adam Smith pointed that out in Wealth of Nations.
“…in 1985, US District Court Judge Russell Clark began a terror campaign against the people of Missouri. He took over the Kansas City, Missouri School District,…” Judge Clark has nothing on us here in Tucson, AZ. Our largest public school district, TUSD, entered a “desegregation decree” in 1978 and has now officially exited the decree in 2025! Basically because there were no longer any, or enough, Whites left in the public school system to bus/transfer around to the schools in the system. The TUSD School Board fought hard to remain under the deseg decree since this allowed them the unrestricted… Read more »
My nephew and niece attended one of the most elite private schools in the area, if not the most. They’re both good kids, but down to earth they are not. They rub elbows with the children of the upper middle class and that kind of segregation worries me. They don’t have exposure to regular people. I agree with our host. He said on one of the podcasts that he never felt completely comfortable with the upper middle class crowd. I’m kind of the same way. I’m a little too off the wall. I enjoy being around people who can appreciate… Read more »
Nothing could be further from your observation (slur?) of elitism in private, or really, non-public schools. If you do not have children, you might investigate further those who do—or refrain from comment. Here in AZ, there are similar states as well, the alternatives are “Home Schooling”, “Total private (elite snob) schools”, “Charter Schools”. The State now helps with such alternatives vis a vis tuition and tax rebate for such—even home schooling. So most all these alternatives have a goodly helping of “dirt people”. My children actually went to the one “public’ school in those years dedicated to the best and… Read more »
Occasionally I get the newsletter from my first high school. I remember the riots, and how the blacks went on a continuous polar bear hunt at night.
Now, they’re gone. I don’t know if I could find the white kid in the last 15 years, it seemed all those young faces were a uniform Mexican brown. Some Sikh are edging in.
it won’t be long before judges and lawyers are (mostly) replaced by AI. this is one area that is simple enough, and clear enough for current AI technology to be effective. this of course could also be gamed, but the evidence of this would be easy to spot (“hey, who changed this code?”) compared to a compromised human judge.
This already has happened with contract law. If both parties stipulate facts, which often happens anyhow, the software reviews case law, statutes, and common law and renders a decision. You are right that this will expand. The only problem that remains is assessing the credibility of witnesses and relatedly in the criminal context the right to face one’s accusers. But, yeah, the legal system as constituted isn’t long for it due to technology.
…. and of course this necessitates examination of the question of who programs the AI. The enemies behind the Great Replacement are genociding us, slowly but deliberately. They steal, cheat, and lie not just with abandon, but with relish and joy. Of course they will rig judicial AI in their favor. (Rather, they will have to import more Bharati to do it for them.) We should not be taking the usual conservative route of simply preventing them from cheating, which is just another manifestation of the conservative role as the regime’s janitor cleaning up progressive mess. We should actively and… Read more »
Well said.
If/when AI makes it into the criminal court system – AI be rayciss can’t be far behind.
Any kind of intelligence be rayciss…
When they found out Tay.ai was racist, they executed her.
” … the legal system as constituted isn’t long for it due to technology.”
But don’t you expect them to carve out an “exception” to that for some “reason” or other? I do. I’d bet the rent on it.
They will try but I don’t think it can be pulled off. There was a similar attempt made with arbitration.
I’m nowhere near as optimistic. A LLM is only as good as its training material. Most of which, for at least the last century, is garbage. GIGO.
Just wait until the LLM training models turn into an endless loop of AI slop.
Dead internet theory, anyone?
I think “supplemented by AI” is more likely. A cartel like that, with control over the laws, won’t let itself be automated away. They see no down side to ‘waste’.
Blackpill: the Court system is a deliberate agonist to any attempt to change or restrict the Blob. The shysters can outlast any meaningful attempt at reform.
Whitepill: when we inevitably go bankrupt, the massive graft and fugazy of our legal system will get necessarily reformed. Things are not as bad as they look, because if we got rid of deadbeat illegals, pettifogging lawyers, NATO and the massive overhead of unproductive government, we could be rich again. The system survives despite almost every effort by the Blob to kill it.
The Supreme Court absolutely must deal with two issues that allow this abuse of the judicial system…First, the idea that District Courts somehow had nationwide jurisdiction for their antics…for which there is no Constitutional basis or intent, and second, that District courts have jurisdiction to enjoin or restrain the President in performance of his duties…Mississippi v. Johnson (1866) ruled that they did not…Somehow that has been forgotten…
Seems to me like a non starter to ask the courts to voluntarily diminish their own power, and so far that has borne out in the reactions of Roberts, Barrett
here’s an interesting paradox:
The country is less white, and the whites here are more deracinated, less likely to be married with kids by the age of 30, less religious, more homosexual and more likely to work in a postindustrial “new economy”
Yet the republican party has a lot more downballot power than it did from 1933 to 1995. It’s like there’s a weird thing where you have two trends at odds with each other – you’d think the trends would converge.
Doing a turn as a district judge should be viewed as a resume builder for someone on partner track at a big firm or maybe as a career builder for a lawyer who wants to build his own firm. District judges were supposed to handle mundane administrative tasks to free up the superior court. First thing Z, jumping off the “Partner Track” in any Big Law or “White Shoe” law firm once you’re hired in is career suicide. So trundling off to do a stint as a State or Federal District judge isn’t going to fly. (Besides, getting to Federal… Read more »
“Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? “
It appears that most of these so-called “Judges” are not familiar with this passage.
That’s Jesus talking about salvation and correcting other Christians/family members.
I enjoy this blog, check in daily and have for years. Still think it should not get half, or less of the comments that the Kuntsler competitor does – that latter shallower takes than here — in my opinion. Also noting many of those comments are tripe and topic drift — MUCH less so here. My take on this realm is to seek actionable information, to craft strategies that help me and mine. Some of my own takes include, understanding that local prosecutors and judges are nothing more than local LAWYERS. Often with two bit practices — since white hat… Read more »
The further right you move along the bell curve, the less inclined people are to comment. Many people find this comment section intimidating. I have gotten many emails to that effect.
Thankfully we’re all geniuses here. 😉
Very interesting feedback, that. Speaks to something I feel on a day to day basis — being around people that are lacking any grasp, even the most basic, on past history, yet having strong opinions about current events. My mind wants to refer to them as “stupid” but that is hubris. One of my current curiosities is, while out there are reports about the ’80/20′ effect, referring to the 80% sheep … how do the ’20’ become the 20? Or as I suspect the ’10’ or maybe the ‘5’ (or less) when you consider that ‘well educated’ credentialed persons, in… Read more »
I can disagree here about popular site issues and not get bounced.
This, doubtless combined with the known fact that as mmack says, we are all geniuses here.
My take is not about being ‘smarter’ than men with specific skills, in THEIR trade.
More along the lines that Normies have strong opinions about what they are fed —- in terms of what can call ‘political history’ in real time.
So, ‘I Stand with Ukraine’ types. Like all those that fail in the restaurant business — thought they were ready to run a restaurant because, ‘well I eat at restaurants…’
Yep. Whatever “we” choose to replace the status quo with, it has to be preconditioned on the idea that to the extent there is a “public” policy, people with the skills and knowledge get to make the relevant decisions.
For example, everyone and his dog has an opinion of how corporate tax rates affect corporations, and the only one whose opinion does not matter is the guy paying that tax, and who understands how each clause in the code affected his business. How many new lines he did not create, how many more employees he did not hire.
“…get to make the relevant decisions.”
Like, um, voting?
“Many people find this comment section intimidating.”
I find this comment intriguing. Can you elaborate, perhaps in a future posting? I can see some folks finding this forum intimidating, but not necessarily being deliberately intimidated—if that makes sense.
If you are not a troll of some sort and are on your best game, this forum seems quite welcoming to new commenters. However, you are commenting in a forum containing some very experienced individuals with varied life experiences—tradesmen to academics. All seem to have a place and wisdom to share.
This place is surprisingly civil. Very little flaming and oneupmanship, and people generally disagree agreeably. I’ve been on sites where the average IQ is easily a standard deviation lower than this one and the posters are much nastier. Perhaps there’s little correlation between intelligence and bellicosity. I know for a fact that academia can be an extremely vicious place.
Oh heck, I’m severely intimidated every day. Nothing makes me more aware of what a peasant I am, or how limited.
So what? You do what you can, as much as you can. It is a welcoming place, a nice bar where even the barbacks can listen in.
(ps- thanks, Bad Man, I had no idea even where to start.)
“…I had no idea even where to start.”
For all its fklaws, y-tube.
That’s understandable Alzaebo, but why do I read your posts?
There seems to be incongruence between your perception of your commentary and others perception of it. This is commonly found among people worth listening to.
Perhaps we are seeing:
”Dunning-Kruger Effect (Reverse)
• While the Dunning-Kruger effect often describes people overestimating their competence, its reverse can apply to highly skilled individuals. They may assume that tasks they find easy are also easy for everyone else, leading them to undervalue their unique efforts or abilities.”
There’s any number of other psychological theories, but we often discuss D-K a lot here.
The quality of the articles is why I first started reading regularly. The quality of the comments is why I now read it every day.
I was reading Zman for years before I ever noticed there was a comment section
Z: “Many people find this comment section intimidating. I have gotten many emails to that effect.“
Obviously you’re obliged to protect confidences, but boy would I like to see the personality profiles of the folks who “find this comment section ‘intimidating’“.
What kinds of personalities would we be talking about?
Clit Romney?
Bitch McConnell?
The Ghost of Juan McAmnesty?
The passage that got me was the one that the further right you are on the bell curve, the less likely you are to comment. Does that mean we’re all dullards? Is this how we get our nutritional sustenance?
It reminds of being at a regional government meeting recently and the group’s lawyer was relating the tale of a guy who was making himself an extreme pest in the region by getting monetary judgements over very petty bookkeeping issues. Several men asked in the audience where said pest lived and the lawyer rattled off the town, but it was clear that’s not what they wanted to know, they wanted to know where to drive their poorly marked van to in order to rid ourselves of this pest.
In the long run, the solution is something one shouldn’t speak of, especially online.
I think someone commented recently that life is still too good. Times will have to get harder for one to act.
SanhedrinnounSan·he·drin san-ˈhe-drən sän-; san-ˈhē-, ˈsa-nə-
: the supreme council and tribunal of the Jews (Judean Edomites) during postexilic times headed by a High Priest and having religious, civil, and criminal jurisdiction
Four comments: 1. What constitutes the law is usually the lowest common denominator. That may sound terrible, but it’s reality. It’s codification (or judicial ruling) of the lowest acceptable standard of behavior. Anything over and above that would require practically everybody to do a tour in jail and result in living in a police state. Think about it in terms of gambling, prostitution in Nevada, recreational drugs or alcohol consumption. None of that is considered a high standard of behavior, but people still do it and you can’t throw everybody in jail for it. 2. I’ve been calling judges secular… Read more »