• justastranger@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

    The US Justice System was recently handicapped by banning Federal appeals court rulings from being applied nationwide. As a result, the compromised and corrupt Supreme Court is the one and only court in the entire nation that’s allowed to make a nationwide ruling.

    • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      This is a misleading characterization of what actually happened.

      The Supreme Court did not ban federal appeals courts from issuing rulings that apply throughout their circuits, nor did it declare that only the Supreme Court can make decisions with broad legal effect.

      What the Court addressed was the use of nationwide (universal) injunctions, where a single district judge blocks a federal policy across the entire country before the case has fully worked its way through the courts. Those are not the same thing as appellate court precedents.

      The practical effect is that different circuits may reach different conclusions until the Supreme Court resolves the conflict. That’s how the federal judicial system has traditionally functioned. Appeals court decisions are still binding within their own circuits and continue to shape the law.

      If you want to argue that limiting nationwide injunctions is a bad policy, that’s a legitimate position. But saying the decision “banned federal appeals court rulings from being applied nationwide” or made the Supreme Court “the only court allowed to make nationwide rulings” is inaccurate. It conflates two different legal concepts to support a broader political narrative.

      • someone@lemmy.today
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        8 days ago

        This grossly mischaracterizes things.

        The defining feature of the US Court system is how slow it is. We are talking about federal policies that are corrupt, racist, and unconstitutional.

        The legal concepts of no injunctions and no legal power are effectively the same when discussing this issue because without nationwide injunctions, there is no mechanism to stop corrupt federal executive policy.

        The Supreme Court declines to hear most cases, they cherry pick what they want to review to create the illusion of a fair system, and occasionally when there is a large clear conflict between circuits then it means the Supreme Court may decide to hear the case in a year while harm is ongoing.

        You’re saying appeals courts are still binding on their own circuits, but we are talking about federal nationwide policy and executive branch that just ignores rulings unless there is enforcement.

        The correct way for this to have proceeded previously was for a federal appellate court to rule it’s unconstitutional to randomly harass people on the street because it violates the 4th Amendment without probable cause, rule it’s an ongoing pattern and they keep ignoring the law and so a simple legal instruction is insufficient, and the instruct the federal marshals to seize ice infrastructure, their computers and phones in DC, and destroy them, and then to stay the order while it gets an emergency appeal, forcing the Supreme Court to rule on this.

        But the Supreme Court doesn’t even have to rule on these issues now. The federal courts are powerless to do anything and the Supreme Court declines to hear it. Also, the Supreme Court held racism was a valid reason for detaining people, so ICE agents are fully allowed to randomly harass, detain, threaten and subdue people who are not white or not black, because that’s what these racist MAGA hicks want: they want a reduction in brown people, and they know they can’t easily harass and kill black people anymore, so they are just going after brown people instead.

        Let’s just call it what it is: racist white people don’t like so many Latinos and other brown skinned people, they have noticed that white people are a smaller portion of the USA and white people are having fewer children, so they have enacted racist policies and elected a corrupt Supreme Court and selected a racist government in power to find ways to change this.

        To pretend that the federal courts still have some sort of power in this situation is intellectually dishonest and mischaracterizes what is going on. In theory, decisions are binding on lower courts still. But what does it matter? Does a court matter if no one listens to it and then its power is taken away?

        The racist MAGA hicks made a calculation that they could come into power, enact laws that would have previously been deemed illegal, pack the courts with conservatives, and start a campaign to reduce the brown population of the USA and also that liberals and brown people would not take up arms and try to physically stop them. And that calculation was right. Liberals are notoriously anti-gun, anti-gun ownership, and for extreme gun regulations; they are also the party of civility. So… MAGA was right.

        What happens when things change and liberals come into power? Will there be hearings? A tribunal? The Supreme Court has sanctioned all of this under racist, intellectually dishonest language and so on what grounds can people be punished for evil? There are no grounds unless there’s a Constitutional amendment. It won’t happen. Even today, eminent domain is being used to seize land for data centers while black people never got their 40 acres or their mule. The horrible truth is MAGA got away with it and will get away with it. Liberals do not have the audacity and courage, nor the voting numbers, to do anything of substance.

        • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          What you’re saying isn’t necessarily wrong. You’re just piling a bunch of unrelated issues on top of what I said, gerrymandering, racism, politics, public policy, what the law should be, and so on.

          None of that was the question. Those are separate discussions.

          What I object to are blanket statements wrapped in propaganda. The original claim was grossly inaccurate. Federal appeals courts still make binding decisions within their own circuits. That’s how the federal judiciary has always functioned.

          As I said, whether the Supreme Court made the right decision in the first place is an entirely different debate.

          Honestly, I don’t understand what any of the points you raised have to do with what I was actually saying. My comment was narrowly focused on correcting a factual claim.

          This is exactly what frustrates me about social media. People make wildly inaccurate statements based on ignorance, and they get repeated as if they’re true. That’s why I commented, to clarify the issue.

          Some of what you said contains a kernel of truth, but it’s mixed with a lot of ideological framing that only muddies the discussion. It doesn’t address my point, and it makes an already complicated topic even more confusing.

          • someone@lemmy.today
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            2 days ago

            I was saying even if you were technically correct, the original poster was implying that now the supreme court is the only one who can make nationwide policy on stopping illegal nationwide federal actions and your reply implied normal legitimacy and remedy powers, as though it’s not that bad.

            and if you only meant to provide a narrow technical correction, then you shouldn’t consider my reply as criticism, but rather my perspective on the broader perspective.

            i wasn’t calling you racist, or disagreeing on ideological grounds, i was saying that your limited technical answer so grossly missed the larger situation that it undercut the actual legitimacy crisis that does and should exist for this branch. it is not business as usual, some of the conditions for these detainees are terrible and reminiscent of nazi-regime treatment of others, and the fact that nothing can be done about it at any federal level except at 1 court that refuses to hear most things and is extremely slow to hear matters means that it’s not the same situation as it once was

            this is not ideological framing that muddies the waters. your narrow technical analysis nit-picking at the literal meaning and missing the implication is unintentionally or intentionally implying there’s still some legitimate functional system that is working correctly instead of something completely broken.

            it’s not muddying the discussion to point on the bigger perspective. Your thinking is similar to a statement like “Many black people frequently broke Jim Crow laws and thus were criminals.” Yes, that might be technically true, but saying it like that with no contextualization unintentionally suggests things in a problematic manner. A literal denotative view of words and their meaning and a technical analysis that misses things does not mean someone pointing out the larger perspective is clouding the situation and there is a risk in someone using erudition to distract from the fact of how horrible things are, and that’s what you were doing, possibly unintentionally. I can tell you’re smart, but a technical correction of something like that risks implying there’s no crisis of legitimacy.

            • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              The original comment insinuated that only the Supreme Court has influence over national policy. Once again, that is factually incorrect.

              Every federal court has authority within its own jurisdiction. If a federal court rules against an executive policy, that ruling has legal effect within that jurisdiction. Those decisions can also serve as persuasive precedent in other jurisdictions, even though they are not binding outside their circuit.

              The difference is that Supreme Court decisions are binding nationwide. That is part of the separation of powers and serves as a check on the executive and legislative branches.

              The other examples you’re bringing up are unrelated to what I was actually saying. They don’t address the point I made.

              I’m fully aware of the current state of the country and the ways the Supreme Court has shaped policy over the years.

              I have no idea what the Jim Crow example was supposed to demonstrate, because it has nothing to do with the point under discussion.

              The Supreme Court does not simply make policy on a whim. It decides cases based on the law, including the Constitution, federal statutes, and other applicable legal authority. When those decisions invalidate or uphold executive actions, they can have nationwide policy consequences.

              I understand the implications of that. Those consequences can be beneficial or detrimental.

              I’m not downplaying the current state of the country. I understand the concerns being raised.

              What I corrected was a factually incorrect claim. There was no emotional context, political bias, or ideological argument in my comment. I simply corrected an inaccurate statement.

              You’re adding a number of unrelated examples and arguments that don’t address my original point. I understand what you’re trying to say, and on some level I even agree with you. But it still has nothing to do with what I originally said.

              • someone@lemmy.today
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                15 hours ago

                I don’t know the answer to the following:

                Is the current state of the law that a federal appellate judge can say “Okay, for this area of the country, I am issuing an injunction that ICE can no longer operate until they submit a report to a court monitor explaining corrective actions they will take and if anyone violates that order I will have us marshals arrest them?”

                because i am under the impression that the new decision is they can’t do that. that it would be challenged immediately, the sc would against say you can’t issue blanket injunctions that impact federal policy, and nothing would occur.

                i believe my unrelated examples were related, so we disagree. this isn’t a court briefing, this is the internet: unemotional and narrow language has no place here.

                • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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                  15 hours ago

                  You’re arguing a different issue than I am.

                  First, your hypothetical has very little to do with how federal appellate courts actually function or the kinds of injunctions they issue. If you’re going to discuss the scope of judicial authority, it helps to use examples that reflect how the courts actually operate.

                  Second, precision is the foundation of legal discussion. The fact that this is the internet doesn’t somehow make factual accuracy or precise language irrelevant. My comment was a narrow factual correction to an incorrect statement about the judiciary. Nothing more.

                  Third, I’m not interested in taking the conversation where you’re trying to take it. You seem to want a broad, emotionally charged debate about nationwide immigration policy. That’s a perfectly separate discussion, but it isn’t the one I was having.

                  Finally, I have no issue with emotion. Passion has its place. What it doesn’t do is change how the law works. If the discussion is about the legal authority of federal courts, then the answer depends on legal precision, not rhetorical intensity.

        • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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          8 days ago

          We have the numbers (of humans), but not the voting power, because they gerrymandered and under represented it away from us.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        But all SCOTUS has to do is simply decline to hear a case in order to prevent nationwide injunctions on clearly-illegal activities.