Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia dead at age 79

The clearest way to understand the difference between the courts in Canada and the US is that people in the US make very specific predictions about EXACTLY how the Supreme Court will rule and how the various judges will split along an issue. And those predictions are accurate 98% of the time.  Think about same-sex marriage, or Citizens United, or the second amendment case from a few years ago.  Or the grand-daddy of them all: Bush v Gore.

We simply don't have that in Canada.  The Court's unanimous decision on the assisted suicide matter could not have been confidently predicted.  Nor its 5-4 split on the recent decision about whether to extend the delay period for the government to bring in a new law on assisted dying.

That's a huge difference right there, that suggests that individual politics has very little, if no, bearing, on how the SCC does its job.

One of Poindexter's companies was involved in a case that made it to the high court. Last year, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case involving an age discrimination lawsuit filed against one of these companies, court records show.

The nature of Poindexter's relationship with Scalia remained unclear Tuesday, one of several lingering questions about his visit. It was not known whether Scalia had paid for his own ticket to fly to the ranch or if someone else picked up the tab, just as it was not immediately clear if Scalia had visited before. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/02/17/justice-sc...

An unethical bastard till the end.

Mr. Magoo wrote:

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Well according to some babblers in the Venezuela thread the GOP is absolutely right to say that Obama should not appoint the next SC Justice. After all it is only his job under the Constitution as President but the opposition is calling foul so they must be right and he should just not proceed as if he was still President.

If you're talking about me, then I would totally agree that Obama shouldn't appoint the next Justice if Scalia had died in between the election of a new government and its swearing in.

Do you see the difference?  In Venezuela, the new appointments came AFTER the electorate gave Maduro & Co. the pink slip.  In the U.S. the election is still 8 months away.

No you don't understand it at all. President Maduro of Venezuela has a term of office that goes until 2019. The opposition since the last congressional elections rules both houses just like Obama has faced for 8 years. So according to your logic Obama should not have done anything and certainly not something as sensitive as a SC appointment anytime in his term of Office since he is merely the President with constitutional powers but his party is in a minority in both the House and Senate so he has no legitimacy to act after all his party lost the elections. Like I said you agree with the whack jobs in the GOP that the constitution is meaningless if the President does not control Congress.

You are allowed your opinion but personally I think it is ridiculous and shows that you have a very low opinion of other countries constitution's and are willing to side with right wing propaganda about the evil socialists. Imagine the audacity of President Maduro to think he is still the President until his term of Office is up. Imagine Obama thinks he is still President until the end of his term. That is an affront to all right thinking people.

voice of the damned wrote:

pookie wrote:

The clearest way to understand the difference between the courts in Canada and the US is that people in the US make very specific predictions about EXACTLY how the Supreme Court will rule and how the various judges will split along an issue. And those predictions are accurate 98% of the time.  Think about same-sex marriage, or Citizens United, or the second amendment case from a few years ago.  Or the grand-daddy of them all: Bush v Gore.

 

So, there was widespread certainty that the SCOTUS would bring down a pro-SSM ruling in Obergeffel v. Hodges? That's not quite how I remember it. Though it's probably the case that most of the uncertainty arose from mystery surrounding the thoughts of one man, Anthony Kennedy. (For some reason, he was considered a swing, maybe because he was a Republican but had authored previous gay-rights decisions)

 

And on that general issue, in the earlier case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, Scalia joined what was effectively a pro-SSM mahority in voting to let stand the overturning California's Proposition 8. I believe his decision was based on procedural grounds, but the point is, he probably wouldn't have voted that way if he had simply been concerned with advancing a GOP and/or anti-SSM agenda.

 

And Justice Sotomayor, an Obama appointee, voted to let Prop. 8 stand, but then voted with the pro-SSM majority in Obergeffel. I suspect she was on the opposite side of the procedural issues from Scalia, but I really don't know.

 

As for Canada, well, in a case like assisted-suicide where it was unanimous, I'd be a little bit skeptical that NOBODY saw the decision coming. Maybe not the general public, but if the relevant jurisprudence was so widely held that there was not one dissenting vote, I have to think that, at least seasoned court-watchers would have some idea of what the prevailing thought on the court was.

 

All that said, yes, I'd agree that the SCPTUS is more politicized than the SCOC, at least on certain "litmus-test" issues(eg. abortion). Probably related to the confirmation process, which of course lends itself to political pandering.

With respect, that is not what I said.  I said that in the US you can, a whole lot of the time, predict where individual judges will come down and, by extrapolation, how the Court will rule.  SSM proceeded almost exactly as people predicted in that the conservative and liberal wings voted exactly as expected.  Anthony Kennedy had telegraphed where he was going to go for over ten years, but the point is that he is the most like a Cdn judge in that he does not have one judicial voice.  That is very rare on today's Supreme Court.

Proposition 8 was a complicated case, because to vote against standing is neither inherently liberal nor conservative.  It was entirely dependent on the degree to which the judge wanted the substantive case to come to decision (and either rule in favour, or rule against).

But, yes, there are weird alliances than can develop.

Did people have an idea that assisted suicide was on the way out?  Actually, no, because of the prior decision in Rodriguez.  We did not know how the Court would deal with that, and, more to the point, we could guess but not confidently predict where individual judges would come down based solely on their "liberal" or "conservative" leanings.

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No you don't understand it at all. President Maduro of Venezuela has a term of office that goes until 2019.

That's super.  But:

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The Supreme Tribunal's 32 justices (magistrados) are appointed by the National Assembly and serve non-renewable 12-year terms. Appointments are made by a two-thirds majority, or a simple majority if efforts to appoint a judge fail three times in a row.

Seems that the National Assembly, after PSUV lost hard in the recent election, but before the newly elected Assembly could be sworn in, rushed through a bunch of new (and presumably beholden) appointments.

Had they done this BEFORE the election, that wouldn't have been hinky, but to do so after most of them lost the election, and prior to the actually elected representatives taking their seats, is pretty obviously opportunistic.  Perhaps the Constitution of Venezuela permits representatives who lose their seats to continue making new laws anyway, which I can't say I really understand, but even so, it's pretty gross.

In contrast:

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The Court normally consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

Similar idea -- that the new Justices must be approved by an elected body -- except that Obama isn't waiting until the Democrats lose to appoint a new Justice.  As you note, he doesn't even control the Senate -- all he can do is nominate someone.  The representatives elected in the last election will make the final call.  If Maduro had wanted to go the same route then he could have either appointed new Justices before losing the election, or he could have waited until after the new Assembly was sworn in and taken his chances just like Obama is.

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Imagine the audacity of President Maduro to think he is still the President until his term of Office is up.

Maduro is certainly still the President and I'm not suggesting he isn't.  I'm suggesting that the Assembly that rubber-stamped the new Justices had lost their mandate, and approved new Justices that would serve their interest rather than the electorate's interests.

NorthReport wrote:

SCOTUSblog founder mulls another possible nominee; this state AG won't be on the list

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/scotusblog_founder_mulls_another_...

Goldstein changes his mind every day. And I think he's wrong on all of them .

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The US has no government between Nove and Jan. Okay I understand now.

Of course they have a government.  That government, called a Lame Duck government, just typically doesn't convene to force through new bills, laws or appointments.

Note that the Venezuelan Assembly convened two days before Christmas, in a special session, outside of their schedule, JUST to force through new bills, laws and appointments.

I'm just re-quoting something already posted in the thread you referenced:

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Little about Wednesday’s inauguration was orthodox. Though the National Assembly’s final session was officially Dec. 18, pro-government lawmakers called for a special four-session, two-day marathon to quickly name, debate and swear in the new justices.

And I may as well re-quote this too, in case anyone seriously thinks they convened for two days, right before Christmas, in order that the Supreme Court not be shorthanded:

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Mr. Cabello then led the magistrates as they raised their hands and swore to uphold the constitution in the name of God, the 19th-century liberator Simón Bolívar, and Mr. Chavez

He's right up there with God.

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Lawyer: Supreme Court Should Let Scalia 'Vote From Grave' Because 'We Know What He Thought'

That's step 1.  If it were to succeed, step 2 would be:

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"We should allow Ronald Reagan to campaign, get re-elected, and govern from the grave, because we know what he would have thought of ISIS".

The Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday signed a letter to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declaring that they will not hold hearings for President Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court, according to a statement from committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA). 

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/judiciary-committee-letter-no-scot...

Whenever I see new replies in the thread I keep wondering if he's come back to life