News of the Supreme Court. Day three of the Jackson Hearings and Silence on Justice Thomas

 The Jackson hearings: Key moments from Day 3

and

Court remains silent on Thomas’ condition after he entered the hospital last week

I have to admit that for some reason I've found myself oddly disinterested in these stories.  I have no idea why, but I haven't really been following either, when normally I would.

Not be grim, but given the second story, both have the chance to become momentous events.

Lex Anteinternet: Biden Nominates Kentaji Brown Jackson to the United States Supreme Court

Lex Anteinternet: Biden Nominates Kentaji Brown Jackson to the Unite...:   

Biden Nominates Kentaji Brown Jackson to the United States Supreme Court

 

Jackson with Justice Breyer, whom she is nominated to replace.

She's no doubt qualified and is a sitting DC Circuit Federal Appeals Court Judge, but I'll admit I'm disappointed.  Jackson is a Harvard Law graduate, making the Ivy League grip on the court seemingly irreversible.  She's also married to another Harvard graduate, a surgeon, who is of the Boston Brahmin class.

I was hoping for a less Ivy League nominee

She's likely to pass, however, the Senate Judiciary Committee and receive enough votes to be seated, an important consideration for any nominee is this highly polarized era.

Justice Stephen Breyer To Retire.

Just when you thought the news wasn't tense enough. . . Russians looming over Ukraine. . . PRC looming over Taiwan. . . the mid term election. . . a baseball lockout. . . 

Justice Stephen Breyer decides to retire.

Uff.

Well, off to a titanic nomination spat with a 50/50 divided Senate.

The filibuster, however, won't apply, so the Democrats, assuming they can all agree on the replacement nominee, will get somebody in.  They key will be satisfying the moderate Democrats, although they are few in number.

Breyer, a 1964 Harvard law graduate, was appointed to the Court by Bill Clinton in 1994.  He was principally a government attorney early in his career before becoming a Harvard professor in 1967, although he took time out from that pursuit to engage in government service from time to time, including serving as a Watergate prosecutor.  He was an expert on administrative law.  He went on the bench in 1980.

Breyer had one of those legal careers that's both enviable and deceptive.  Undoubtedly highly intelligent, he actually practiced real law very little, spending no time whatsoever in private practice and the most of his career in academia or on the bench.  Of some slight interest, in his early legal career, 1964 and 1965, he was completing eight years in the Army Reserve, from which he left as a corporal.

Beyer, who is 83, has been under enormous pressure to retire due to Democratic fears that if he does not do so prior to the November election and should then pass away, certain a possibility at his advanced age, his replacement would not get through a Republican Senate or would be nominated by a Republican President.

2021 Reflections. The Legal Edition

This blog has been so slow that a person would be justified in believing its a dead blog.

It isn't, it has COVID 19.

Allow me to explain 

It was already the case that 2019 was an odd year, legal wife, for the journalist here.  The reason for that was that my schedule was such that I did very little traveling.  The last new courthouse (keeping in mind that I don't take photos of courthouses I've already taken, was in Fallon County, Montana.

Fallon County Courthouse, Baker Montana

There's no way on Earth when I took those that I anticipated there wouldn't be any new courthouses appearing later that year.  

And yet there were not.

2020 would have been different, but in late 2019 the news that a new disease was loose in Asia hit.  By January, there were pretty clear signs that something was frightening about it.

January is, of course, Tet, or similar holidays in Asia.  I.e, the Lunar New Year.  It's a big deal and in spite of the imposition of Communism on Asian societies, they still celebrate it.  The Lunar New Year caused Asians to travel all over their own countries and all over the globe.  Easter and Christmas do the same in the West.  The combined impacts of all those holidays sent people moving all over, and the disease was soon global.  Living through it at the time, it seemed to hit Italy first, but who really knows.  

Anyhow, by March things were shutting down.  Trials I had scheduled that summer were cancelled. Courts shuttered their doors.

And Zoom came in.

Now, in January 2022 we're looking at the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of COVID 19.  It's going to close some things somewhere.  It's inevitable.

And even if it's milder, it's effectively the last blow in how the litigators do business.  Things are never going back to the way they were before.

In 2021, I did four trials.  Two of them had some kind of mask mandate in place.  Every courthouse is different.  Depositions have largely gone over to Zoom, and they don't ever appear likely to go back to being live and in person.  Lots of hearing are now by Microsoft Teams.

Ironically, even though I spent a week in a really beautiful courthouse in another state, I'd note, I failed to take a single photograph of it. 

An evolution towards electronic appearances in things was occurring before COVID 19, but the pandemic pushed things over the edge and fully into the electronic world.  I really don't like it, and I don't like what it will likely mean for the law either.  I'm lucky to have principally practiced before it occurred.

2020 and 2021 saw the best and the worst of lawyers in spades, which is something we should note before moving on.  For the worst, lawyers working for the Trump Administration or affiliated with it were full participants in a plot to illegally retain power for the ex President.  It's shameful.  

For the best, most lawyers didn't participate in that or approve of it. The Court system itself really rose to the occasion and kept the coup from working.  Lawyers in at least one state wrote a letter to their Senator, also a lawyer, flatly demanding that the Senator retract the Senator's position in regard to the coup, which the Senator did not do.  It was a brave thing for them to do.

One thing that Trump accomplished that was a real accomplishment (and frankly its Mitch McConnell's accomplishment) was to bring in a set of Supreme Court Justices who actually apply the law as written.

Much of our current problems with huge political polarization stem in fact from the capture of the highest courts by the political left in the mid 20th Century.  The courts of that period were perfectly comfortable with creating new rights out of thin air and foisting them on the public, when the public wouldn't have supported them democratically. That partially lead to a right wing belief that the left was anti-democratic and involved in what some regarded as a slow moving left wing coup.  When one camp drops a belief in democracy, the other will follow sooner or later.

We've finally gotten past the US. Supreme Court acting like a super legislature of Platonic Elders.  It was long overdue.  That's gong to be painful for a few years, but perhaps it helps us get back to where we always should have been.  Big social issues ought to be decided in legislatures, not in courts.

Let's  take a look at the upcoming year and therefore put out a few, a very few, resolutions for the field of law.  Most of these we have little hope of being carried out, which doesn't mean that we shouldn't state them anyway.

1.  End the UBE

The UBE has proven to be a failure.  It's mostly aided the exportation of legal jobs from states with smaller economies and communities to neighboring ones with larger economies and communities, something now aided by electronic practice.  It's made the standard of practice more uniform, by making it more uniformly bad.

The UBE ought to go, or a local state bar reinstated where it exists. For that matter, its time for residency requirements to come back on.

2.  Quite with the bad legal reporting

If you listen to the news, any news, you'll get the impression that the justices of the United States Supreme Court act like a session of World Wide Wrestling every time they meet. That's far from true.

The vast majority of U.S. Supreme Court decisions are heavily one-sided.  I.e., 9 to 0, or 8 to 1 decisions are much more common than 5 to 4.  In the last session, for example, Justice Sotomayor issues and opinion in a criminal case that accused the lower court of ignoring the plain language of a statute. She was writing for the majority.

You never hear stuff like that.

That's mostly because in an average year there's maybe one or two. . . or no, cases that are actually interesting from the Press's prospective.  And those are the ones that tend to be lopsided.  It gives a skewed prospective on the court.

3.  Age matters

I've been saying this for a while, but its disconcerting that the Federal bench has no mandatory retirement age.  

I'm not saying that any Federal judge I've ever encountered seemed impaired. Far from it. But courts belong to the people, and the median age for the people is a lot lower than the upper reaches of the Federal bench. That matters.  

For that matter, I think the state mandatory retirement age for judges ought to be depressed.  It's 70 now, and there was a move in the legislature a few years ago to raise, or remove, it.  I think it ought to be lowered to 65.  Frankly, I'd prefer it being lowered to 60. Again, not because I have a problem with a current judge, but people are younger than that, as a rule.

And at some point this is going to catch up with us.  

This applies, I think, to lawyers as well.  Age takes its toll. Age also narrows us, and we tend to end up our occupations.  Both are bad potentialities.

4.  Wider net

Recently one of the Bar Commissioners noted that a state Supreme Court justice had expressed concern over a lack of applicants for judicial positions.  I'm frankly not surprised that there has been.

Part of this may reflect a disturbing trend in general.  In what most of us thought was the late stage of COVID (it might not have been, as we now know) the press started reporting on the Great Resignation.  Now some are doubting that this is occurring, but at least in the legal field it seems that the Great Hesitation is operating.  I'll post about that in general in one of our companion blogs, but anyone in the legal field anywhere knows that younger lawyers are seemingly just not entering practice right now  I don't know what they're going, frankly  Some that are, are job hopping rapidly.  One judicial law clerk I became somewhat familiar with in another state was on her fourth job as a clerk, and second clerkship, and had only been working for less than two years.

Anyhow, one thing that seems to have gone on for the last few state administrations here is selecting judicial applicants based on certain criteria that were set out, publically or silently, which is fine and makes sense as, after all, it's a political appointment.  That was a change from some prior administrations, however, which took a broader view.  Anyhow, after this being the case for a long time, I think certain private practitioner categories have simply quit applying as it was obvious that they weren't going to be admitted.  

A wider net needs to be cast.

On that, one thing the judicial nomination committee used to be able to do, although I don't know if it still can, was to submit names of its own choosing.  At least one judge in the southeaster part of the state became the judge that way.  He was completely surprised by his own nomination and struggled with it at first as it meant a big reduction in income.  He accepted the position as he felt it was his duty.  If the committee can't do that, it ought to have that power restored and actually use it.

The Lamp: Gerald Russello, R.I.P.

There hasn't been a photo of a courthouse put up here in well over a year.  I missed my opportunity to do that, fragrantly, when I tried a case in the State of Colorado's Denver District Court a couple of months ago.  I spent the whole week in and around the courthouse and never took a photograph of it. 

In my slight defense, I couldn't remember if I'd photographed it before, from the outside.  I had not.  I should have, just as a precaution.  And because it's a beautiful courthouse, and because I was also inside it, which I hadn't been.

I was busy, and just didn't.  

It's a shame to, as the courthouse in and of itself gives us a real view of how things were in the law, and how they now are.  

As odd as that may seem, that's my introduction for a blog post I'm linking in here, which is the following.

GERALD RUSSELLO, R.I.P.

BY MORGAN A. PINO

I suggest you read the post.  It's about somebody who was obviously very decent.

Normally I wouldn't post that here.  If I were to do so, it would be on one of our companion blogs, but I'm doing this here as lawyers work in courthouses and well it just feels like it should be here.

Part of the reason the last photograph of a courthouse that was put up here is so long ago has to do with COVID 19.  The last photo was in February 2019.  Now, there weren't any from February for the rest of that year either, so its not all due to COVID 19. Truth be known, I've taken photos of nearly every courthouse in Wyoming, with two exceptions I can think of, and there are very few let in the state to photograph as a result.  I was also taking a lot of photographs of out of state courthouses, but I had a lull in travel to new places in 2019 and then 2020 effectively was the year of no travel.  Indeed, I haven't been on an airplane since some time in 2019, due to COVID 19.  It's been a huge change in my work habits.  

And not only in mine, but in everyone's.  Now some lawyers are so acclimated to Zoom depositions they'll take nothing else.  I had hoped that would go away, as I hate them.  It shows no signs of doing so, however.  We may be stuck with Zoom depos and the age of lawyer travel may be over forever. It'll probably sound odd for me to say it, as I'm not a natural traveler, but I miss that part of the practice.

Anyhow, another thing I've really been noticing since COVID 19 is the decline, and changes, at least in my view, in all sorts of things law related.  Some people are having a really hard time simply resuming work.  Finding new lawyers to come to work for a firm has become increasingly difficult and some young lawyers don't seem to want to really work at all, at not least in private practice.  

And I've become disgusted with lawyer hypocrisy.

On the day I read this, which is to say today, I already read the news about a lawsuit being filed which contains a lie.  I know one of the lawyers associated with that complaint, and back when we were in law school that lawyer would have dismissed any concept that they'd file a suit containing a lie, but now its happened.  I'm not going further into it, but this sort of thing is appalling.

Just the other day I sat through a CLE in which another lawyer I know made a statement about how lawyers are essentially the guardians of society and advance what needs to be advanced in society.  After a year in which plenty of lawyers were associated with an effort to advance a political fabrication, that's at least open to question, but at the same time, the courts deserve enormous praise, and they're part of the law, for keeping that from occurring. The legal profession can and should be really proud of that while, at the same time, we should be deeply ashamed of those members of our profession who acted in an antidemocratic manner.

Also at that CLE I heard another lawyer speak about how he became a lawyer as he loved cross-examination.  I don't know if I buy that.  How would you know if you loved cross examination if you weren't a lawyer already?  It's like claiming you love saudero tacos if you've only ever had Taco Bell.  Come on.  Anyhow, that sort of thing gets to me.

I've tried lots of cases over the years, but it bothers me when people claim they love destroying people on the stand.  I've done it, and I've seen it done.  Recalling it as a war story is one thing, but to claim you love it in the abstract is quite another.  It's a skill, like argument is for a lawyers, and like killing is for soldiers.  A person needs to be cautious about what the claim to love. The day we took Hill 502 is one thing, the other thing is something else.

All of which gets me to this.

I don't know who Gerald Russello was and I don't know Morgan Pino is.  But as expressed in this article, they're decent human beings, and maybe even better than decent human beings. They're the way that lawyers ought to be.

Blog Mirror: Practicing During Covid

This article is an absolute classic. The best written work to come out of the pandemic.

Practicing During Covid.

Lex Anteinternet: Monday August 4, 1941. Courts, out of jail, and i...

Lex Anteinternet: Monday August 4, 1941. Courts, out of jail, and i...: 

Monday August 4, 1941. Courts, out of jail, and in the desert.

Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, facing front, seated with Emanuel "Mendy" Weiss and Phillip "Little Farvel" Cohen who shield their faces, and Louis Capone, in a Kings County Courtroom during jury selection.

Holscher's Hub: The Courthouse Deer

Holscher's Hub: The Courthouse Deer:  

The Courthouse Deer

 

Lex Anteinternet: Amy Coney Barrett as a Mirror

Lex Anteinternet: Amy Coney Barrett as a Mirror: 

Amy Coney Barrett as a Mirror

Judge Laurence Silberman, for whom Barrett first clerked after law school, swearing her in at her investiture for the Seventh Circuit.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Coney_Barrett#/media/File:20180223_185543_NDD_5533.jpg  CC BY-SA 4.0view termsFile:20180223 185543 NDD 5533.jpg Created: 23 February 2018

Yesterday we published this item about long term demographic trends in the U.S.

The Conservative Tide?

Um, correction, we published those about long term demographic trends on Earth, and how that will, and already is, impacting culture..

Following that news, Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the United States Supreme Court.

This is interesting in the context of itself, as well as the context of what we were writing about.  Barrett is, in some ways, a mirror on where we are now, and where we're going.

She's also a mirror on how we view democracy itself, at an existential level.  Are we for it, or against it?

Barrett's nomination angered and upset the old order liberal establishment.  She appeared to be what liberals have really feared over the years but never had to really fully face, at least since the death of Scalia.  A legal genius who is a textualist.  And here, in a Twitter exchange between two U.S. Senators, who can see the upset distilled and refined.

First, Senator Ed Markey, a semi freshman Senator (he started finishing John Kerry's term in 2013 before being elected to his own first full term and had a long stint in Congress) from Massachusetts and then the reply from Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse.

Markey, who made it to Congress for his freshman at age 67 (he's now in his 70s) although he did have a prior term as a Congressman from Massachusetts from 1976 until 2013.

Ed Markey@SenMarkeyOriginalism is racist. Originalism is sexist. Originalism is homophobic. Originalism is just a fancy word for discrimination.1:22 PM · Oct 26, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

Sasse, on his second term and still in his forties.

Senator Ben Sasse@SenSasseReplying to u/SenSasseActually, “originalism” is another way of saying that texts and words have meaning. That's not to claim that all texts and words from 1789 were correct – but that when they need to be changed, they should be changed by elected legislators, not unelected judges.4:55 PM · Oct 26, 2020·Twitter Web App

First of all, it must be stated that Markey' statement is so blisteringly ignorant that it should disqualify him from voting for dog catcher.  This is dumb beyond belief.  It's not only partisan, it's just outright stupid.  The fact that Markey has a law degree from the Boston College of Law is proof, as if any is needed, that you really don't need to know anything about anything in order to graduate from law school.

You also apparently don't need to know the Constitution or care about the truth of it.  Markey has been in Congress since 2013

It also shows that the oath of office that Senators take is regarded as a complete joke by some. The oath states:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God. 

I know that it's hoping against hope, but there should be a point at which the violation of your oath of office has an implication, with that properly being that the Senate should refuse to continue to seat you.  You're an oath breaker in your office.  You should go. 

Sasse isn't a lawyer, and is a PhD, so there's apparently some hope for other disciplines yet remaining.

Of interest, Markey, who joined the National Guard while in college, which he says wasn't to avoid service in Vietnam, and who made it to Specialist E4 after five years of National Guard service, was born in 1946.  Sasse in 1972.  Markey is a reliably left wing politician who just made it to the US Senate, after a long career in the House. Sasse is a very independent Republican who is on his second term.*

In other words, here we see the prefect example of what we wrote about yesterday.  An aged, and now nearly irrelevant, East Coast Boomer politician is stating absolute idiocies about the Constitution, and being corrected by a post boomer respected, and more experienced at the Senatorial level, Mid American politician.

In the reaction to Barrett we're seeing a lot of this, although savvy politicians of all generations avoided it.  Long term political survivor, for example, Dianne Feinstein just flat out didn't go there, and for good reason.  She's taking a lot of whiny heat for her decision not to, but given her long history in politics, she's adept at reading the Washington tea leaves and avoided committing forced errors in the second Barrett confirmation she participated in.

The real complaint on the left, to the extent they've been able to express it, is expressed in terms of "she's going to take away our rights", ignoring the fact that it takes five Supreme Court justices to do anything and if Barrett is reliably a textualist there's only one other actually on the Court.  But beyond that, what the real fear is that the Justices will stop making stuff up and send things back to the states to be voted on.

That fear is based on something we all know to be true. The Constitution doesn't cover all that much.  If it isn't in there, it really is left up to the states.  Liberals fear that the American people simply aren't as liberal as they are.  So they don't want these things voted on.  Its not the Courts taking away their rights that they fear, but rather a declaration that they aren't rights and therefore they aren't protected by the Constitution, and are free for legislative address.  

Liberals have real reason to fear that, to be sure, because the evidence is pretty good a lot of state legislatures would in fact not recognize a lot of things that the Supreme Court has said are rights over the years.  But that's the thing about democracy.  People don't always see things the same way you do.

Indeed, they often don't.

Indeed, the recognition of this by humorist and social commentator Garrison Keillor, who is openly left wing also brought a firestorm of criticism from his own fellow travelers.  Keillor made a comment about some things just not worth ripping the country apart for anymore, and included abortion among them, and then was subject to aggressively negative comments.  Keillor's suggestion was that the country could tolerate the states deciding their own way.   That brought the classic argument used when somebody can't think of something to argue about from some on the left, which was to turn on accusations that Keillor acted inappropriately to women on his staff.**

Garrison Keillor was accused of bullying and humiliating women on his staff and no one should be shocked that he continues to be anti-women. . . 

Lyz Lenz, former columnist for the Cedar Rapids Gazette. 

I don't know the details of the arguments about Keillor, but that reply is just weird.  What Keillor stated isn't anti woman, and what we'll note below here should be obvious, Barrett is a woman.

Anyhow, at the same time, this also means that Liberals have become acclimated to an elitist view of government over the years, with the Supreme Court serving as a Platonic council of elders.  They liked the idea of the wise, symbolized by the late Justice Ginsburg, declaring things for the less benighted.  

The problem with that is that if you accept it, you have to accept it Soviet style.  I.e., if the Politburo says one day that we're friends of the Third Reich, we are, and if later it says they're our enemy, they are. No asking questions.

So you really can't ask a legislative body to appoint only benighted elders who are enemies of legislators. That makes no sense.

Indeed, in order for the Court to really work the way the left would have it work, the Court would have to be appointed by itself, something nobody is really willing to do.

Which is in part why court packing, as backed by AOC, is such a dumb idea.  Some upset Democrats would have the next Senate pack the Court.  This presumes that the next Senate will be Democratic, which is looking increasingly unlikely late in the election, but if that comes to pass, some future Republican Senate would just pack it more.  There's be no reason not to, once that was established, and at that point the Court would be nothing more than an arm of the national legislature, the very thing the left wing fears the most.  

Indeed, if it's packed, why not paced, why not pack it with jurisprudential conservatives, that would approach the law the same way that judicial liberals do.  The results of that would be to rule from the bench in a way that conservatives have never done in the U.S., but which there could easily be found people who would do.  Right now, a liberal focus is on abortion, for example.  Judicial conservatives might, at the very most, say that there's no right protecting it to be found in the Constitution, which is actually quite unlikely at this point, and send it back to the states.  But jurisprudential conservatives could take the same approach to the law that judicial liberals have and find that abortion is contrary to the natural law and therefore contrary and hence illegal due to factors that underlie the Constitution and which are beyond it.  People like AOC who would pack the Court, if they have any intellectual honesty, which is doubtful as it would require reasoning beyond politics, would have to accept that even if they are in the highly liberal camp.

In Ginsburgh, Barrett, Sasse, and Markey, we have the reflection of what we noted  yesterday. Ginsburg was a symbol of her times, and a hero of them for legitimate reasons. But those times have passed.  The geriatric nature of the national government makes this something that, for those in it, that is hard to appreciate, and the unusual domination of a single generation, the Baby Boomers, in the culture of the Western World further obfuscated it.  But the oldest departing recent Supreme Court justices, Kennedy and Ginsburg, were well past their eras when the departed the bench, one voluntarily and one through death.

In her life, Ginsburg very much reflected her times. She was a pioneer in the law and in the life of women at the time, becoming a lawyer when it was hard just for women to enter the profession, and raising two children while having a career, the oldest of which, also a lawyer, is now 65 years old herself.  She was a political liberal in a liberal era, and lead a pioneering life.

Barrett, in her 40s, is by contrast younger than both of Justice Ginsburg's children and is a pioneer in her own right, but the kind that many of the left don't care for and fear, just as in the 70s Ginsburg was the same for some on the right.  Also a career women, she is the mother of a large family of seven, for which it is always noted that two were adopted.*** She's outwardly religiously devout where as it seems Ginsburg was secular, at least to appearances.  And Ginsburg quietly endorsed an activist judicial approach which accepted, in essence, that the populace would not go where it needed to on its own and had to be lead there, while Barrett takes the approach that the populace goes where it goes, and should be restrained only where it clearly has been structurally provided that it can't go there.

That this would create fights on the left is telling.  It makes sense that justices like Ginsburg were opposed on the right, as they accepted imposing changes from above and irrespective of democratic feelings on them.  It would seem that everyone would be more tolerant of the concept of imposing changes from below, except for the basic distrust that most people don't want to go some places.

But the acceptance of the imposition of change on the left is mostly because the right has never attempted that in the United States.  It most definitely has in other countries.  Indeed, while its often argued by some that the American Revolution was a "conservative revolution", the disproof of that is that we've never really had one.  Other countries most definitely have had conservative revolutions which imposed conservative ideals from the top.  The Spanish Civil War was a species of conservative revolution in its impact, for example.  It could be likewise argued that Petain's premiership from 1940 to 1945 in France likewise was.

This is not to argue that those are really fully analogous examples, and certainly not admirable ones.  Franco and Petain were definitely anti democratic, where as the American conservatives most definitely are pro democratic.  As noted, it's ironically the American left that tends to be somewhat anti democratic with that impulse existing even somewhat in the mainstream, although recently the hard alt right has flirted with being anti democratic as well.  Rather, the point is American conservatism has always limited its efforts to argument, in the mainstream.****Indeed, American conservatives have not argued for jurisprudentially conservative justices at any point, and don't even seem to know what that would mean.

So the question now becomes, in the short term, how society might deal with increased legislative activity being licensed and licensed at the local level, something that reverses a 90 year trend.  And the added question is how American liberalism, which even in conservative administrations has basically been either been in the driver's seat or right besides the driver with a hand on the wheel, reacts when this is no longer true.  Conservatives in most places are used to the idea of being "strangers in a strange land", i.e., at least somewhat outside of their own societies.  Liberals are not.

Added to that we're just beginning to see the very first reactions of the Cosmo Girl meeting the Twitter Girl.  That may seem to be superficial, but seeing what's gong on out there shows its not.  One hip, young, cool female Twitter figure defines herself as:

real. raw. bold. brave. Marian devotion to apocalyptic proportions. in the pursuit of corn juice.

No hip, cool, Boomer, when young, or ever, defined herself that way.

Changings of the guard are only smooth transitions in organizations that are designed for that.  Cultures, don't design for that.  And as we've noted before, cultures are sticky, yet plastic.  The times, turly, are a changin'

___________________________________________________________________________________

*Markey's South Boston unit contained at least two other then young future notable political figures and his two brothers.  Service in the Guard and Reserve was an honorable Vietnam War option and I'm not claiming the opposite.

**One of the weird ironies of the Me Too movement is that men should have been acting like Christian gentlemen, even though the movement has been grounded in a camp and industry that declared its animosity towards Christian values eons ago.  

This doesn't endorse male wolfish behavior, but so far none of the real backers of the movement have been able to state why men shouldn't act the way that they've been complaining about, even though everyone knows why they shouldn't.  Be that as it may, a society that was raised on a diet of the evolved products of Playboy and Cosmopolitan has taught the very horrific lessons that brought about the behavior now complained of.  In seeking to revive the old standard, in the guise of it being the new woke one, some argument has to be created to back it.  Just "you shouldn't" is an anemic argument and fails on its face.  Nobody makes the argument, however, as "you shouldn't" as it wrong, and its wrong because. . . well nobody wants to go there and discuss what else might be wrong.

***She was oddly accused of racism for adopting orphans from Haiti and criticized simply for having a large family, the latter an example of prejudice of varying types, some religious, but some generational.  The new woman, as viewed from the 60s and 70s, isn't supposed to have a large family.  The problem is, that some of the younger ones now do, as we noted yesterday.

****In the American South, however, this isn't always true by any means.  And there's no denying that Southern conservatism backed racism and went beyond arguments to back it.

“Like playing with Michael Jordan”: Three former Ginsburg clerks talk about what it was like working for the justice

“Like playing with Michael Jordan”: Three former Ginsburg clerks talk about what it was like working for the justice

Lex Anteinternet: The First Supreme Court. Who were they, and how ma...

Lex Anteinternet: The First Supreme Court. Who were they, and how ma...: There were only six.  That number was set by the 1789 act establishing the Court. The original Supreme Court heard very very few cases and m...

Lex Anteinternet: Notes On Nominations. Replacing Justice Ginsburg

Lex Anteinternet: Notes On Nominations. Replacing Justice Ginsburg: As we noted two days ago in an entry here, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away this week. Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 1933-2020 Ginsburg was a ...

Lex Anteinternet: Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 1933-2020

Lex Anteinternet: Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 1933-2020:

Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 1933-2020

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away today, September 18, 2020.

In a year of seemingly endless oddities, difficulties and drama, the death of Justice Ginsburg comes at such a time as to seem to fit into the story of the year at a Cosmic level.  Now, added to all of the other drama of the final stages of the Presidential Campaign of 2020, we will have a Supreme Court Justice nomination, and confirmation.

Justice Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Flatbush.  Born to Jewish parents, her father was a Ukrainian immigrant.  She attended Cornell, meeting Martin Ginsburg, the man she would marry, at age 17.  After marrying she worked a variety of jobs while her husband served as an Army officer, having been commissioned following his university graduation through a ROTC commission.  In 1956 she entered Harvard Law School, transferring later to Columbia when her husband took a job in New York.  She thereby became the first woman to publish in Columbia's and Harvard's law reviews.

Following law school she had difficulty finding employment due to her gender. The prejudice against female lawyers was strong at the time, and indeed would be for decades thereafter.  She went on to be a civil rights litigator with the ACLU. Her work lead her to be appointed to the United States Appeals Court for the District of Columbia in 1980, as one of Jimmy Carter's appointments.  She advanced to the Supreme Court in 1993 when nominated by Bill Clinton.

Ginsburg was a formidable intellect and will go down as one of the Court's titans.  Her position on the court can be regarded as having been on the center left.  In recent years she became the focus of the future direction of the Court as, after the resignation of Anthony Kennedy, she appeared to be the most likely justice to step down, due to age or health, or be removed by death.  Now the latter has happened.  It is well known that Ginsburg herself was carrying on in hopes of making it to the next Presidential term in anticipation of being replaced by a Democratic President.

Now she'll probably be replaced by a nominee named by President Trump.  It's clear that the Senate is highly likely to take this up rapidly under Mitch McConnell, but less clear that Republican Senators who are facing difficulties holding on to the Senate will be willing to stake their political fortunes to an act which will be hugely unpopular with Democrats and which will become a focus of the remainder of President Trump's term.  Indeed, to at least some extent, a rapid process on the part of Mitch McConnell, assuming a quick nomination by President Trump, will have a certain appearance of throwing Trump, and perhaps some Republican Senators, under the bus, as the act is likely to be so unpopular with Democrats.  That would also be a concession on McConnell's part, a concession which has already been made as a practical matter, that in the 21st Century United States the Supreme Court is the most important branch of the government.

At any rate, Ginsburg, agree with her positions or not, was a legal giant. Only Anthony Scalia, her friend outside of the court and opposite on the court, rivaled her in that regard.

Experts tout proposals for Supreme Court term limits

 Experts tout proposals for Supreme Court term limits

Doorway Into the Past: Liberty County Courthouse

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Doorway Into the Past: Caldwell County Courthouse, Lockhart Texas

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Doorway Into the Past: Kerr County Courthouse

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Fallon County Courthouse, Baker Montana

This is the Fallon County Courthouse, which also houses the county and city offices and the county library, in Fallon County Montana. The building is located in the county seat of Baker.

I was obviously there in the middle of winter, and on a cold day at that.

An American Legion dedicated flag pole is in front of the courthouse, dedicated to the veterans of all wars.

Blog Mirror. Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, January 29, 1919. Inns At Court

I'm posting this here, even though it's way off topic, due to the interesting photograph of the Inns At Court in a surprising use.

Hors de combat.

Wednesday, January 29, 1919. Colonies in issue, Secret Treaties Exposed, Immigration to be halted, State Prohibition Bill Advances as 18th Amendment Certified, Mexican Rebels reported defeated again, and Yanks can Marry By Mail.

English Inns at Court being used as an American Navy rest barracks, Red Cross supplies being unloaded.  January 29, 1919.

There was a lot to report on on this Wednesday, January 19, 1919.

The Peace Treaty was struggling on what to do with the colonies of the defeated.  Giving them nation status, unless they were European, seemed out of the question, so League of Nation mandates were being argued about instead.

The 18th Amendment was certified by Congress as ratified, but the State was still going to pass a prohibition bill anyhow, showing that the desire to act on the already acted upon purposelessly already existed. There was no reason to pass any Prohibition bill in Wyoming, but the Legislature was going to do it anyway.

And American soldiers could marry their sweethearts by mail, it was decided, exchanging vows by correspondence, apparently.  The validity of that in certain faiths, it might be noted, would be questionable.

As, in most cases, would be the purpose.  Separated by an ocean, the couples were not going to reunite until Johnny Came Marching Home anyhow.  And if he was going to instead find the Belle de France in la belle France. . . well that was probably going to happen anyhow as well.  About the only reason to do this would be to resolve questions of impending legitimacy, which perhaps would have been a concern in some instances.

And the economy was tanking while there were vast numbers of Europeans who were refugees, which no doubt put focus on immigration and which was accordingly being addressed in Congress.

Among the refugees were the Armenians.  Their plight was well known but it had not been addressed.

Apparently, to my huge surprise, leaving for Florida in the winter was already a thing.  I would not have guessed that at all, once again showing the application of Holscher's First Law of History.

Elsewhere, Mexican rebels were reported as defeated, once again.

New counties were a hot issue in the Legislature as well.

And a Laramie policeman was compelled to draw his pistol when in s scuffle with somebody who was thought to be speaking German.

Laramie, fwiw, had a German language church early on and, I think, at this time, so a Laramie resident who could speak German wouldn't be that odd.  Let alone that its a university town where, presumably, some people were still learning the language.

Lex Anteinternet: As we pass 700,000 views, the State of the Blog(s)...

Lex Anteinternet: As we pass 700,000 views, the State of the Blog(s)...: Lex Anteinternet Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter. ...

Platte County Courthouse, Wheatland Wyoming

Courthouse decorated for Memorial Day, 2014.

This is the Platte County Courthouse located in Platte County's seat, Wheatland Wyoming. The courthouse, in addition to housing the county court for Platte County, also houses one of the four courtrooms of Wyoming's 8th Judicial District, with the others being located in Douglas, Lusk and Torrington. The courthouse was built in 1917, and somewhat uniquely it has a monument dedicated to farmers called "The Irrigator". The Statute of Liberty is a monument for Platte County World War Two servicemen.

I've photographed this courthouse and its features at least three times. The first time was on a dreary July day in 2011.  I did it again in May 2014.  These most recent photographs are from November 2018.

A difference over this period of time is that a plaque commemorating the 100th anniversary of the founding of Platte County, which was in 1911, was put in. Additionally, a nice sidewalk clock was added on the walkway to the entrance of the courthouse.