Producing strong, consistent originalist interpretation and wisdom at the Supreme Court for two decades is no small feat. So, it only seemed fitting that The Federalist compile 10 of the justice’s best quotes from over the years to celebrate the occasion.

biffbobfred Ars Scholae Palatinae
11y
1,172
Will they kick off Meta/Facebook for torrenting, or is “pirating is only bad if you’re not rich already” going to be the rule here? //

Messy Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
21y
190
can we just have dumb pipes? i don't want a utility knowing or caring what i do.
imagine getting your electricity cut off because the power company doesn't like what you cook. //

thadco Ars Centurion
9y
380
You child stole a candy bar. No more food for you or your whole family forever! //

TylerH Ars Praefectus
13y
4,472
Subscriptor
I would very much like the justices to ask counsel whether they would kick a customer like Facebook/Meta off for large-scale pirating in abuse of this position, or if they would turn a blind eye if the organization has a large enough contract.

I would also very much like the justices to ask whether Sony has considered just making the pirated content more conveniently available for purchase/access. I wager a large portion of pirated content is not actually readily available in an offline-consumable format.

Glaringly absent from these arguments (at least those covered in the article) is "why should the ISPs act merely on the accusation of piracy? Why not just send a notice after you have sued an individual in court and won/proven that they are the specific person committing the piracy? Wouldn't that preserve liability and due process, albeit at the cost of the copyright holder (where it ought to belong, frankly)?" //

Mad Klingon Ars Tribunus Militum
5y
1,776
Subscriptor++
Is Sony and the other copyright holders willing to assume liability for damages for submitting a list of IP addresses performing infringement and being wrong? Even a 90% correct rate would result in 100 improper cutoffs for every 1000 addresses. I doubt that Sony's lists are that good. A fair number of folks use an ISP connection as a VOIP landline. What damages apply if that is cutoff due to being on a Sony list and someone dies due to 911 not working? Or a house is destroyed due to delays in fire department arriving? Bonus points if that person proves no infringement happened. And before someone says "But cell phones....", not everyone lives in an area where cell services is available or reliable.

With Internet connections becoming increasing required for modern life, cutting a house off from the Internet should be a method of last resort. //

GFKBill Ars Tribunus Militum
21y
2,674
Subscriptor
“The approach of terminating all access to the Internet based on infringement, it seems extremely overbroad given the centrality of the Internet to modern life and given the First Amendment,” he said.
And "based on infringement" isn't even in the picture - the studios haven't taken these infringers to court, Cox et al are supposed to just take their word for it. On that basis alone this should be chucked out.

Sony and their ilk want a cheap shortcut, when they should be filing charges against the infringing user and letting a judge determine penalties, if they prove their case. //

GFKBill Ars Tribunus Militum
21y
2,674
Subscriptor
TylerH said:

Glaringly absent from these arguments (at least those covered in the article) is "why should the ISPs act merely on the accusation of piracy? Why not just send a notice after you have sued an individual in court and won/proven that they are the specific person committing the piracy? Wouldn't that preserve liability and due process, albeit at the cost of the copyright holder (where it ought to belong, frankly)?"

The whole thing is an end-run around due process, because it's easy and saves them the expense and effort of suing.

The courts should be telling them to pound sand. //

42Kodiak42 Ars Scholae Palatinae
13y
1,165
Clement said that hotels limit speeds to restrict peer-to-peer downloading, and suggested that universities do the same. “I don’t think it would be the end of the world if universities provided service at a speed that was sufficient for most other purposes but didn’t allow the students to take full advantage of BitTorrent,” he said. “I could live in that world. But in all events, this isn’t a case that’s just about universities. We’ve never sued the universities.”
Clement is either a ... moron, or is hoping the judges are by telling them this outright lie. This is nothing more than a brash assertion that a network configuration that supports peer-to-peer services has no valid personal use cases.
Stewart gave a hypothetical in which an individual Internet user is sued for infringement in a district court. The district court could award damages and impose an injunction to prevent further infringement, but it probably couldn’t “enjoin the person from ever using the Internet again,” Stewart said.
A court isn't even likely to block the user's internet access while the case is ongoing. The fact of the matter is simple: People's livelihoods can very well depend on continued and reliable internet access. What Sony is asking for is a clear violation of our fifth amendment rights by requiring ISPs to enact an unjustified punishment without due process in a court of law.

Humphrey’s Executor has had major negative implications for America’s separation of powers and the ability of presidents to fully exercise their Article II authority.

America’s lower judiciary is out of control — and Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is putting it on notice.

In a Thursday order, the nation’s highest court granted (in part) a request by the Trump administration to temporarily pause a lower court blockade on the National Institutes of Health’s bid to terminate DEI-related grants totaling nearly $800 million. The ruling was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s Democrat appointees saying they would have denied the administration’s application in full. //

In addition to signing onto the majority’s Thursday decision, Gorsuch penned a concurring opinion in the case in which he ripped into the lower judiciary’s out-of-control behavior. While noting that “[l]ower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions … they are never free to defy them.”

Citing a related case recently before the Supreme Court (Department of Ed. v. California), the Trump appointee highlighted how the high court “granted a stay [in that case] because it found the government likely to prevail in showing that the district court lacked jurisdiction to order the government to pay grant obligations.” He wrote, “California explained that ‘suits based on “any express or implied contract with the United States”’ do not belong in district court under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but in the Court of Federal Claims under the Tucker Act.”

“Rather than follow that direction, the district court in this case permitted a suit involving materially identical grants to proceed to final judgment under the APA,” Gorsuch wrote. “As support for its course, the district court invoked the ‘persuasive authority’ of ‘the dissent[s] in California‘ and an earlier court of appeals decision California repudiated … That was error.”

Gorsuch went on to underscore that “the promise of our legal system that like cases are treated alike means that a lower court ought not invoke the ‘persuasive authority’ of a dissent or a repudiated court of appeals decision to reach a different conclusion on an equivalent record.” More to the point, however, he noted that the district court’s apparent rebuke of the precedent very recently established by SCOTUS in the California case is not an isolated incident among the lower courts.

“If the district court’s failure to abide by California were a one-off, perhaps it would not be worth writing to address it. But two months ago another district court tried to ‘compel compliance’ with a different ‘order that this Court ha[d] stayed,'” Gorsuch wrote. “Still another district court recently diverged from one of this Court’s decisions even though the case at hand did not differ ‘in any pertinent respect’ from the one this Court had decided … So this is now the third time in a matter of weeks this Court has had to intercede in a case ‘squarely controlled’ by one of its precedents.” //

“All these interventions should have been unnecessary, but together they underscore a basic tenet of our judicial system: Whatever their own views, judges are duty-bound to respect ‘the hierarchy of the federal court system created by the Constitution and Congress,'” Gorsuch wrote.

Writing for the majority, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not mince words when criticizing the lack of legal rationale behind the Biden appointee’s emotionally-charged dissent. //

While noting how the principal dissent authored by Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor “focuses on conventional legal terrain, like the Judiciary Act of 1789 and our cases on equity,” Barrett highlighted how Jackson’s dissent “chooses a startling line of attack that is tethered neither to these sources nor, frankly, to any doctrine whatsoever.” More specifically, she underscored how her Democrat-appointed colleague’s expressed views on the power of courts go beyond those of judicial supremacists — those who believe the judiciary is superior to the other branches of government. //

“Waving away attention to the limits on judicial power as a ‘mind-numbingly technical query,’ post, at 3 (dissenting opinion), [Jackson] offers a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush. In her telling, the fundamental role of courts is to ‘order everyone (including the Executive) to follow the law—full stop.'” //

“We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.“ //

While agreeing that the executive has an obligation to follow the law, Barrett chastised Jackson for “skip[ping] over” the fact that the judiciary must do so as well, and that separation of powers must be upheld.

“JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: ‘[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.’ … That goes for judges too.”

‘When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.’. //

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court declared rogue lower courts’ universal injunctions against President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship order to be unlawful.

“[F]ederal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them. When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too,” Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote.

Anybody who knows a law book from an LL Bean catalog knows that federal judges just made up this concept of universal injunctions. There's no basis in statute, no basis in Supreme Court precedent. There's no basis in English common law.

They just made it up because they don't agree with what a president or Congress has done. You know, if they disagree, you know, I'm sorry—fill out a hurt feelings support. Buy a comfort rock.

But they can't just say, "I disagree and I'm putting the entire action by another branch of government on hold, because I don't like it," and that's what they've been doing…. //

They're not the superior branch of government. They're an equal branch of government. //

RocketGeezer NorCalGC
a day ago
That’s largely true for SCOTUS too, since Article 3 defines it’s jurisdiction, but doesn’t really define it role. SCOTUS has done a pretty good job of defining its role since the founding.

The lower federal courts, whose establishment, funding, role and jurisdiction were to be done by Congress, have been established and funded by Congress, but have essentially defined their own role and jurisdiction. Naturally, they’ve gone far afield from what the founders likely envisioned, especially in the last 30 or 40 years.

The lower federal judiciary now boils down to small, insecure people in minor roles trying to make themselves way more important than they were intended to be. I’d say that most of the lower federal judiciary has a bad case of SCOTUS envy! //

camd83 Marek76
5 hours ago
Excellent point! The President is the only person elected by the whole country - how can an unelected, single district judge, override action for the USA taken by the country-wide elected official? Wish SCOTUS was more definitive in their decision. Looks like the Left will just switch from injunctions to class-action lawsuits which will be approved by these same judges.

In a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court granted the government's applications to partially stay the district court's nationwide injunctions in the birthright citizenship cases, noting that universal injunctions "likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts." The caveat here is that the applications are granted "only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue."

The key to the court's decision appears to be summed up thusly:

When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.

Additionally, the court has instructed the district courts to "move expeditiously to ensure that, with respect to each plaintiff, the injunctions comport with this rule and otherwise comply with principles of equity."

This Supreme Court term may well be remembered as a turning point. Not because the justices dismantled the administrative state in one dramatic move, but because they took important steps to rein in its excesses.

A string of rulings issued Friday—from McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates v. McKesson Corp. to Diamond Alternative Energy v. EPA to FDA v. R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co.—shows the Court is serious about restoring balance between unelected regulators and the courts tasked with holding them accountable.

What ties these decisions together is not a single ideological agenda. It is a shared recognition that when agencies act like legislative bodies or try to wall themselves off from judicial review, they go beyond their constitutional limits. The Court’s recent work reminds us that regulatory power must remain subject to oversight and correction when needed. //

District judges must independently interpret statutes, even when an agency has already spoken. As Justice Kavanaugh put it, “When a statute is clear, it is the law—not the agency’s interpretation—that governs.”. //

In FDA v. R.J. Reynolds, the Court pushed back on the FDA’s attempt to control who could challenge its decisions. The agency argued that only manufacturers could challenge its denial of premarket approvals. The Court disagreed and ruled that retailers, who are also harmed by these decisions, have every right to challenge them.

This ruling matters because it keeps agencies from deciding who gets to take them to court. When regulators pick their critics, there is no real oversight. //

None of these decisions dismantles the administrative state. Nor should they. What they do is draw clearer boundaries. Regulators should not act as lawmakers. They should not decide who can challenge them. They should not expect courts to accept their interpretations of the law automatically.

These rulings stand out because they are not driven by ideology. In fact, in some of these cases, Justice Elena Kagan, one of the Court’s more progressive voices, joined the conservative majority. That tells us something important. It suggests that Kagan recognizes, as the majority does, that unchecked regulatory power is dangerous no matter who holds it. If a progressive agency can go too far, so can a conservative one. The Constitution’s checks and balances are there to protect everyone.

Together, these rulings mark a shift toward restoring that balance. In our system, laws should come from legislators, be applied by judges, and not be dictated by unelected bureaucrats. That is a balance worth defending. //

Warren Pease
8 hours ago
“None of these decisions dismantles the administrative state. Nor should they.”

I must disagree with this premise. The administrative state is prima facie unconstitutional. Laws must be passed by both houses of congress and signed by the president. Having unelected bureaucrats make “regulations” with the force of law (these people can jail you and ruin you) is antithetical to a representative republic. SCOTUS should stop screwing around and remove the authority of anyone but congress to do things with the force of law.

Where this goes is anyone's guess. The lawsuit by the Democrat Attorneys General seems a bizarre claim to entitlement. Likewise, the GAO opinion ignores the law it claims to enforce, as the Trump administration has not refused to spend the funds, but is reexamining how those funds are used. In a sane world, the Democrat lawsuit would fail for lack of standing, as no one is entitled to federal funds. Even though no one was found to have requisite standing to challenge the 2020 election results in court, we're seeing a new legal philosophy in play under President Trump where anyone has standing to challenge any act by the administration.

Ultimately, I think the Supreme Court will have to rule on the legality of the Impoundment Control Act. This was enacted by a hostile Democrat Congress against the efforts of a Watergate-damaged Richard Nixon to stop spending on stupid stuff to bring inflation under control (some of this should sound familiar). It was one of at least two pieces of legislation intended to make the president into a servile butler rather than the Chief Executive. The other piece is the, in my opinion, facially unconstitutional War Powers Act. There is a large amount of evidence that, previous to the Impoundment Control Act, presidents treated Congressional appropriations as a ceiling that could not be exceeded, rather than a mandatory number to be achieved. The former makes sense if the president controls the executive branch; the latter only makes sense if the president's only function is to do as he's ordered. As we're seeing with the struggle in Congress to cut spending, the only way to control the budget is for presidents to have the right to refuse to spend.

The administration is on course to bring all "independent" agencies under the control of the White House.

It will push the envelope until the impoundment issue reaches the Supreme Court, and I think it will win.

In a unanimous decision that restores sanity and reaffirms the true meaning of civil rights, the Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a misguided judicial doctrine that had, for decades, warped Title VII protections into a one-sided tool of “equity.”

Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Services is not just a technical correction of legal doctrine, it is a resounding declaration that equality under the law still matters more than identity-based scorekeeping.

For years, some federal courts imposed what was known as the “background circumstances” test, a requirement that majority-group plaintiffs (read: white, male, heterosexual, or Christian employees) provide extra proof that their employer was the rare kind that discriminated against the majority. //

Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said plainly what constitutional conservatives have argued all along: “Title VII’s disparate-treatment provision draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs.” The law, she explained, “makes it unlawful to discriminate against any individual… because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” //

Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, filed a separate concurring opinion that went even further, calling out the root cause: judge-made doctrines that create unequal burdens under the guise of helping the marginalized. “Such a rule is undoubtedly contrary to Title VII, and likely violates the Constitution,” Thomas wrote. “[T]here can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race.” //

Equality > Equity
This case is more than just a victory for a woman who was passed over and demoted in favor of candidates who checked more fashionable demographic boxes. It’s a victory over the growing trend of replacing equality with equity.

Equity, as practiced in far too many corporate HR departments and public institutions, demands unequal treatment to engineer equal outcomes. That’s not fairness, that’s retribution disguised as justice. In this case, it meant denying Marlean Ames the same legal protections everyone else enjoys, simply because of her orientation and perceived privilege.

The Ames decision, by contrast, restores the foundational principle that every American, regardless of background, deserves to be judged on the content of their character and qualifications, not on their demographic label.

In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday upheld the claims of a woman who faced workplace discrimination because of her “majority group” identity—in this case, being a heterosexual.

The decision upholds the rights of majority group individuals to be free from “reverse discrimination,” a right considered protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered the opinion. Justice Clarence Thomas delivered a concurring opinion, in which Justice Neil Gorsuch joined.

The court struck down the “background circumstances” rule imposed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, a rule that restricts protections for members of majority groups.

June 1 marks the 100th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark parental rights decision in Pierce v. Society of Sisters.

That historic opinion recognized “the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.” It also famously declared that “the child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

Sadly, despite that—and even now—many federal programs continue to encroach on parental rights. //

....

These federal programs violate parents’ fundamental right to direct their children’s upbringing, education, and health care. The government should help—not hinder—loving parents in fulfilling their “high duty.” Including parents helps. Keeping secrets hinders. //

Fortunately, Congress has the authority—and the opportunity—to protect parental rights from federal government overreach by passing the Families’ Rights and Responsibilities Act.

This act recognizes that parents’ fundamental rights are entitled to the highest level of constitutional protection. It requires courts to apply the proper standard of judicial review—“strict scrutiny”—to federal violations of parental rights.

This is the same standard the Supreme Court has applied to safeguard other fundamental rights—like free speech and free exercise of religion. Congress is well within its constitutional authority to ensure that federal programs properly respect parental authority. ///

Therefore... School choice!?

SCOTUS Takes Up the Power of Nationwide Injunctions and the Threat to Executive Authority.

May 16, 2025

Mark Twain once used the word, Podunk to describe a small, unimportant town. Today, a Podunk pettifogger from just such a place thinks he is David taking on Goliath. But this time, Goliath is the duly elected President of the United States. //

The Presidential Executive Order (EO) has become the way to govern Washington at a time when Congress is entirely dysfunctional. However, the vast network of federal district judges, who are, by definition, supposed to be apolitical and neutral, often rule against the EO. They do so increasingly on a "nationwide" basis, far beyond the districts their courtrooms oversee.

It has become a pressing and multifaceted issue. The United States federal judiciary has 677 district court judges (across 94 districts, including territorial courts like those in Puerto Rico and Guam). These are lifetime appointments under Article III of the Constitution. When an activist federal judge deems the underlying challenge to an EO from a plaintiff noteworthy, the judge sets out to ensure "uniform relief" across the entire country through a nationwide injunction. Even the nine Appeals Courts do not have such a reach. Even the Supreme Court doesn't have the same power unless at least five justices agree! //

Expectedly, Justice Clarence Thomas expressed his displeasure again at nationwide injunctions, pointing out that the U.S. judicial system operated without them until the 1960s, so why were they necessary now? Justice Samuel Alito, who has previously been a skeptic, hinted that he would vote to scale them back.

Chief Justice John Roberts focused on the procedural aspects of nationwide injunctions, suggesting that the Supreme Court has become more efficient at handling emergency cases expeditiously. He undercut the concerns of Justices Barrett, Gorsuch, and Sotomayor.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh had the best legal solution by suggesting that class-action lawsuits could serve as an alternative to nationwide injunctions. His questioning was a rare demonstration of principled legal analysis, not tainted by politics.

One of the most frequent questions posed in response to articles regarding decisions by federal judges is: Who appointed him/her? In theory, that shouldn't matter — blindfolded Lady Justice and all that. In practice, all too often, it seems that it does.

But...maybe not quite as much as people assume. I decided it might be interesting to take a closer look at some of the statistics regarding the federal judiciary. Some of those stats will come as no surprise. Others, though, well, see what you think. //

While many assume the court typically rules in partisan fashion, the bulk of the decisions in each term are unanimous (accounting for roughly 47 percent of the decisions over the most recent three terms).
In contrast, the 6-3 decisions (what one would expect if the decisions were strictly party-line) account for only 22 percent of the decisions. //

Next, we'll take a look at the makeup of the federal judiciary, beginning with the District Courts.

Number of district courts - 94
Number of district judges - 677 (does not include those who have taken senior status). //

Alright, but what about the Circuit Courts of Appeal? Well, we have that breakdown as well.

Number of circuit-level judgeships - 179 (not including those who have taken senior status)

Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein
·
BREAKING: #SCOTUS allows Trump to fire labor board members. Apparent 6-3 decision with all liberal justices in dissent. Court says more harm from denying POTUS right to remove officials than from those officials staying in office. Doc: https://documentcloud.org/documents/25951855-24a966-order/
4:44 PM · May 22, 2025. //

Tom Fitton @TomFitton
·
In a massive blow to the permanent administrative state, the Supreme Court, in 6-3 order, lifts stay on @RealDonaldTrump firings of Democratic appointees to "independent agencies." Key majority finding does not augur well for the future of constitutionally suspect agencies that protect appointees from being fired by the Chief Executive:
6:21 PM · May 22, 2025

The stay reflects our judgment that the Government is likely to show that both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power. But we do not ultimately decide in this posture whether the NLRB or MSPB falls within such a recognized exception; that question is better left for resolution after full briefing and argument. The stay also reflects our judgment that the Government faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty.

So when they sought emergency relief at 12:34 a.m. on April 18, Petitioners “were fully aware that the District Court intended to give the Government 24 hours to file a response.” A.A.R.P., 605 U.S. at _ (Alito, J., dissenting). They “said nothing about a plan to appeal if the District Court elected to wait for that response.” Id.

At 12:48 p.m. on April 18, however, Petitioners “suddenly informed the court that they would file an appeal if the District Court did not act within 42 minutes, i.e., by 1:30 p.m.” Id. //

This charge is worth exploring. To get to 14 hours and 28 minutes (rather than 42 minutes), the Court was obviously starting the clock at 12:34 a.m., rather than 12:48 p.m. (when Petitioners told the district court for the first time that they wanted a ruling before the Government could respond).

But starting the clock at 12:34 a.m. not only ignores the court’s express instructions respecting the Government’s right to respond. It also ignores the fact that the Court is starting the clock at—12:34 a.m.

We seem to have forgotten that this is a district court—not a Denny’s. This is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone suggest that district judges have a duty to check their dockets at all hours of the night, just in case a party decides to file a motion.

And then he adds the cherry on top:

If this is going to become the norm, then we should say so: District judges are hereby expected to be available 24 hours a day—and the Judicial Conference of the United States and the Administrative Office of the U.S.Courts should secure from Congress the resources and staffing necessary to ensure 24-hour operations in every district court across the country.

If this is not to become the norm, then we should admit that this is special treatment being afforded to certain favored litigants like members of Tren de Aragua—and we should stop pretending that Lady Justice is blindfolded. //

anon-fht2
4 minutes ago
The rationale for the Founders intentionally NOT Constitutionally requiring the other two branches to comply with the judiciary is playing out in real time. It is also apparent that the judicial insurrection by the district courts is bleeding over into the interactions between the lower courts, and between the lower courts and SCOTUS. Not in a good way either.

After reading the full response of the 5th Circuit appeals judge to the SCOTUS ruling, IMO Justice Roberts should be embarrassed that such a shoddy ruling by a SCOTUS court ever saw the light of day, much less received 7 votes of 9. It almost as if Justice Roberts wants a repeat of President Jackson’s response to a Marshal SCOTUS decision.

For the judicial branch, this seems like a slow motion catastrophe being played out with each new judicial “salvo” further undermining respect and trust for the judicial branch. Our Republic was in trouble enough with Congress and the Executive being viewed with disdain by most Americans. The Executive may regain some trust and respect under Trump, but the Judiciary had been more positively viewed than the other two branches, at least until this judicial insurrection against Trump began. Now the judiciary seems to being trying to outdo Congress for the level of earned contempt in which they are held, with SCOTUS attempting to show the way with this ruling.

IMO - YMMV

DemsShouldPayReparations Curmudgeon99
13 hours ago edited

"He is the worst Chief Justice in history, "

Really? Would you reconsider if you knew more facts?

Worse than Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. who wrote the Dred Scott decision, extending slavery in all States, which was one of the triggers for the Civil War?

In Thursday’s hearing, Thomas asked Sauer — who represented the Trump administration — about the history of nationwide injunctions and when courts first started issuing such orders. The solicitor general answered by citing Thomas’ concurring opinion in Trump v. Hawaii, a 2018 case that resulted in SCOTUS reversing “a lower court’s decision to uphold a nationwide injunction on Trump’s travel ban,” according to The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson.

In his concurrence in that case, Thomas noted how nationwide injunctions by lower courts “did not emerge until a century and a half after the founding.” He further observed that these injunctions “appear to be inconsistent with longstanding limits on equitable relief and the power of Article III courts.”

“These injunctions are beginning to take a toll on the federal court system — preventing legal questions from percolating through the federal courts, encouraging forum shopping, and making every case a national emergency for the courts and for the Executive Branch,” Thomas wrote.

In his response to Thomas, Sauer highlighted several examples of universal injunctions that he said began emerging in the early 1960s.

“So we survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions?” asked Thomas, to which Sauer replied, “That’s exactly correct.”

Sauer added, “In fact, those [injunctions] are very limited and very rare even in the 1960s. It really exploded in 2007 in our cert petition in Summers v. Earth Island Institute, we pointed out that the Ninth Circuit had started doing this in a whole bunch of cases involving environmental claims.”

While judges have the authority to issue temporary injunctions to protect one of the parties in a case from harm while the court considers the case, the Trump administration claims the judges have abused this power, claiming to protect people across the country who aren’t parties to the suit.

Sauer noted that courts have issued 40 universal injunctions against the federal government, including 35 from the same five judicial districts.

He argued that these injunctions “prevent the percolation of novel and difficult legal questions” through the normal legal process. He also argued that “they encourage forum shopping,” that is, parties filing lawsuits in certain areas, seeking friendly judges who will issue injunctions on their behalf. He further argued that they circumvent Rule 23, the process by which plaintiffs apply for class action.

“They create what [Supreme Court] Justice [William] Powell describes as repeated and essentially head-on confrontations between the life-tenured and representative branches of government,” Sauer added, referring to a justice who served from 1972 to 1987. //

Justice Clarence Thomas asked Sauer about the history of universal injunctions, and the solicitor general pointed to 1963 as the first example.

“We survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions?” Thomas asked.

“Correct,” Sauer responded. “Those were rare in the 1960s. It exploded in 2007. The 9th Circuit started doing this with a bunch of cases involving environmental claims.”

The solicitor general noted that “the court consistently said you have to limit the remedy to the plaintiffs appearing in your court.” //

In response to questions from Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Sauer brought up the history of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, where “there were passionate challenges to nationwide policies,” but when judges held New Deal policies illegal, they issued “hundreds of injunctions protecting individual plaintiffs.” //

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s appointee, suggested that universal injunctions might be healthy for the judicial system.

“It seems to me that when the government is completely enjoined from doing the thing it wants to do, it moves quickly to appeal that,” bringing the case to the Supreme Court.

Sauer responded that the courts are supposed to work more slowly, methodically considering cases and not rushing them through emergency dockets to the Supreme Court. The “percolation” of cases through lower courts up to the Supreme Court is “a merit of our system, not a bad feature of our system,” he responded.

This ruling effectively reins in district courts that have been sidestepping proper jurisdictional channels in cases challenging Trump administration actions. The decision serves as a clear reminder that courts themselves must operate within their prescribed legal boundaries. //

According to Margot Cleveland, senior legal correspondent for The Federalist, the D.C. Circuit’s ruling hinges on a critical point: jurisdiction, which has sweeping implications. As Cleveland explains, many of the legal challenges being hurled at the Trump administration involve employment decisions—precisely the kind of disputes Congress has explicitly said federal district courts have no authority to adjudicate.

The court’s decision also strikes at the heart of a broader legal strategy being used by leftist groups to stymie Trump’s reforms—namely, the claim that the administration is engaging in “wholesale dismantling” of agencies. But as the ruling makes clear, the Administrative Procedure Act was never designed to handle such broad-based political grievances, and Congress never waived sovereign immunity to allow them.

In another key point, the court found that the lower court also overstepped its bounds by trying to restore federal grants—something Congress assigned to the Court of Federal Claims, not the district courts. All told, the decision is a sharp rebuke to the legal overreach being used to obstruct the Trump administration’s agenda. //

The Dark Lord LBPA
20 hours ago
Even worse. This is such a powerful decision it will be appealed to the full DC Circuit for an “en banc” hearing.

Radical Leftists hold a 7 - 4 majority among active judges on the DC Circuit. So, we will lose decisively on appeal.

However, this was such a good opinion it could provide the framework for a sweeping successful decision from SCOTUS. If, …

If Roberts, Barrett, and Kavanaugh decide not to support the judicial coup attempt. //

Hominem Humilem Sum The Dark Lord
18 hours ago
Alas, diminishing the power of the judiciary may not be something Roberts, Barrett, and Kavanaugh are inclined to do: they may prefer to leave the power in the hands of the judiciary and claim the ultimate authority for themselves. Admittedly, that would be a dangerous game to play, since the Article III crew have no indigenous enforcement capability (and would have to rely on the Executive and Legislative Branches to "take their word for it"). //

Mrminwnc Hominem Humilem Sum
18 hours ago
This sounds glib, but respect for the judiciary branch is essentially a courtesy extended by the other two, in particular the executive branch. If the others simply get tired of judges overreaching they can just ignore them.