And see Prof. Rakove in the current Washington Monthly:
“The Supreme Court defaulted on its responsibility. Its duty was not to fret over future presidential prosecution but to deal with the facts at hand so that the electorate would be fully informed before November 5. By stifling the proceedings in Judge Tanya Chutkun’s courtroom, the Court made its unique and potentially lethal contribution to our failing Constitution.
In our fractious polity, fresh insults to constitutional norms and settled practices of governance occur daily. That is why the phrase constitutional crisis no longer describes our situation. The Constitution has failed, and we no longer know which institution will rescue it.”
Jack Rakove is the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor of political science and (by courtesy) law, emeritus, at Stanford University.
Given the title of this post, I was hoping to come away at least somewhat less despairing than I have increasingly become over the last years, but I did not. I think it has to do with the way you are casting the work of the court as playing a particular type of game and within particular types of bounds, using football and playing between the 30 yard lines as the metaphor. I’m not convinced that this is true. I think the better, because clearer, metaphor is chess.
In chess, of course one plays within the bounds. That is always the case. But there are many ways in which one can build towards the outcome one wants by developing one’s position in unprecedented and unexpected ways, making bold exchanges and sacrificing pieces and positions, etc.
But I think the even better metaphor is warfare. In warfare one is not engaging in a game designed to exercise the mind or one’s physical strength. It is designed so that one can build up positions and attack the opponent(s) in ways that — at the extremes — are designed to decimate the opposition and to impose a new regime.
This seems to me and many others exactly what SCOTUS is doing and that Mitch McConnell and many others made it clear that this was why the were chosen — to fight and win the battle against liberalism.
The SCOTUS majority is not ‘playing ball.’ They’re playing ‘for keeps.’ And they are doing so by stacking the deck so that Trump and Trumpism holds all the cards. Or, to use the football metaphor, they are the league leadership and have fired of all the refs and have replaced them with the consiglieri of a criminal syndicate who are passing knives to one of the team’s players . . .
And see Prof. Rakove in the current Washington Monthly:
“The Supreme Court defaulted on its responsibility. Its duty was not to fret over future presidential prosecution but to deal with the facts at hand so that the electorate would be fully informed before November 5. By stifling the proceedings in Judge Tanya Chutkun’s courtroom, the Court made its unique and potentially lethal contribution to our failing Constitution.
In our fractious polity, fresh insults to constitutional norms and settled practices of governance occur daily. That is why the phrase constitutional crisis no longer describes our situation. The Constitution has failed, and we no longer know which institution will rescue it.”
Jack Rakove is the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor of political science and (by courtesy) law, emeritus, at Stanford University.
Given the title of this post, I was hoping to come away at least somewhat less despairing than I have increasingly become over the last years, but I did not. I think it has to do with the way you are casting the work of the court as playing a particular type of game and within particular types of bounds, using football and playing between the 30 yard lines as the metaphor. I’m not convinced that this is true. I think the better, because clearer, metaphor is chess.
In chess, of course one plays within the bounds. That is always the case. But there are many ways in which one can build towards the outcome one wants by developing one’s position in unprecedented and unexpected ways, making bold exchanges and sacrificing pieces and positions, etc.
But I think the even better metaphor is warfare. In warfare one is not engaging in a game designed to exercise the mind or one’s physical strength. It is designed so that one can build up positions and attack the opponent(s) in ways that — at the extremes — are designed to decimate the opposition and to impose a new regime.
This seems to me and many others exactly what SCOTUS is doing and that Mitch McConnell and many others made it clear that this was why the were chosen — to fight and win the battle against liberalism.
The SCOTUS majority is not ‘playing ball.’ They’re playing ‘for keeps.’ And they are doing so by stacking the deck so that Trump and Trumpism holds all the cards. Or, to use the football metaphor, they are the league leadership and have fired of all the refs and have replaced them with the consiglieri of a criminal syndicate who are passing knives to one of the team’s players . . .
See Prof. Steve Vladeck: https://open.substack.com/pub/stevevladeck/p/163-a-new-kind-of-judicial-supremacy?r=mrvx1&utm_medium=ios