In today's Post, Gene Weingarten writes a takes us on a tour of the US Supreme Court:
[M]ost Americans today do not even know who the justices of the Supreme Court are. This is a shocking abandonment of your civic duties. So I thought, as a savvy Washington journalist, I would help you out with a sophisticated guide to the eight current members of the court.
For those of you needing a score card, the eight members are:
Re:Except
pudge on 2005-08-17T19:30:23
Oh, and a side note: 10 years ago, when I worked in NJ, we'd play a trivia game at lunch, and sometimes get the wait(er|tress) involved. One of our favorite questions was: name all nine Supreme Court justices. Only now is the answer to that question going to change! So weird.
Re:Except
ziggy on 2005-08-17T19:45:52
Ooh! Ooh! Can I play?What do I win?
- Bashful
- Doc
- Dopey
- Grumpy
- Happy
- Sleepy
- Sneezy
- Sleazy
- Grouchy
Re:Except
pudge on 2005-08-17T19:54:32
If you can accurately match them all to actual justice names, my admiration.:-) Re:Except
GAVollink on 2005-08-22T19:52:34
The mere fact that, in all this time, nobody has bothered to google, and simply post them here - tells volumes about our indifference.I only just read this journal, but from my own memory:
Skalia
Wm Renquist (Chf Just - sick, expected to retire)
Clarence Thomas (the black guy)...that lady's name is on the tip of my tounge, and she only just announced her retirement, and my wife would kill me for not remembering.
sad... that's all I honestly remember.Re:Except
pudge on 2005-08-22T20:01:24
Heh. O'Connor. Others, from right to left: Thomas, Scalia, Rehnquist, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer, Stevens, Ginsburg. Soon to be Roberts. We've had the same justices for more than 10 years now: I think if someone needs Google to get more than seven of them, then they shouldn't have much of an opinion on the Supreme Court.:-)
Re:Except
GAVollink on 2005-08-23T11:54:31
I don't think I've seen many people with commentary about the court itself, most just complain about the opinions (without reading them).The worst part - I know more names than anyone that I know "in real life", and as you saw - that's not much.
Re:Except
pudge on 2005-08-23T14:55:27
Yeah, but even the opinions are often non-obviously wrong. For my money, the eminent domain decision was obviously wrong, but the marijuana decision was far more subtle.
It's funny that with both of those decisions, most people I know immediately thought "those damned conservatives" voted the "wrong" way, when in fact in the eminent domain case the liberals (in this case, perhaps "statists" is more appropriate) voted in favor of taking private land for private use, and in the marijuana case, it was the liberals plus one conservative (Scalia), which forces us to ask: why did Scalia, who is viewed as being in favor of states rights, vote with the majority to give the federal government the power to effectively invalidate state drug laws?
And the answer is not because he is in favor of the federal drug laws, or against the state laws. Hell, O'Connor basically said she is against the state laws, but voted that they be upheld regardless. This case wasn't about drugs, and it wasn't even really about states rights, per se: it was about what the Constitution says are the enumerated and implied powers of the federal government, and what that means when those powers come into conflict with the state.
But as you say, most people don't get that at all. They just see "medical marijuana" and don't realize that the case really had virtually nothing to do with medical marijuana.
Re:Except
GAVollink on 2005-08-23T19:04:13
With eminent domain, IIRC, that case was more about whether to force a federal appeals court to take jurisdiction that had been declined.In any case, SDO herself said something along the lines of hoping the attention would get the states to enact laws against this sort of thing happening.
Re:Except
pudge on 2005-08-23T19:29:49
No, the Supreme Court actually ruled on whether the taking violated the Fifth Amendment.
Though yes, the state governments can enact laws that give more protections than the Supreme Court has determined are provided by the Constitution.
Similarly, many people (I don't recall if any of the justices in this case, but I seem to think so) have noted that in regard to the "medical marijuana" case, the federal government can enact medical marijuana legislation, as it was not about medical marijuana, but about the supremacy of federal law in this limited circumstance.
