It is ironic that because the Supreme Court is the court of last resort on everything, they are the final deciders in cases involving their own ethics. And yes, Scalia’s son really does work as an employment lawyer for Wal-Mart, and Clarence Thomas really did take money (and fail to report much of it) from people involved in cases he later judged. You can’t make stuff like this up.
UPDATE: Speaking of stuff you can’t make up … read this about Clarence Thomas and you will never ever again vote for a conservative Republican for president, just to make sure that more people like this don’t get appointed to the Supreme Court. All of the following are from solo dissenting opinions issued for the Supreme Court (where none of the other justices agree with Thomas, not even his fellow conservatives): that states have the right to establish an official religion; prisoners have no constitutional right to be protected from beatings by guards; teenagers and students have no free-speech rights at all; a school official strip searching a 13-year-old girl to look for two extra-strength ibuprofen (Advil) pills was “reasonable and justified”; and that the Bush administration has the right to hold an American citizen without charges or trial as an “enemy combatant”.
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Wow! Talk about being in a supreme position. If I understand all of this correctly, members of the ultra conservative Roberts court can interpret the law, break the law, and then decide whether or not they should be held accountable. What kind of strange mushrooms were our forefathers eating? They wanted money out of politics. The horse was already out of the barn before they ever penned their last sentence to the Constitution.
Well here was this comment, in the same tradition.
“The Supreme Court today issued an opinion in which they found parts of the first amendment to be unconstitutional.
Speaking for a 5 to 4 majority, Justice Scalia said that first amendment rights guaranteeing free speech did not mean free speech for those disagreeing with Conservative proposals. “Allowing such speech”, he said, “placed an undue burden on Conservatives to defend positions which are in many cases indefensible and thus the first amendment supresses speech”.
Scalia also said that while authority for the opinion was not in the Constitution, and in fact violated the Constitution he was certain his opinion was what the Founders meant.
Justice Thomas, who was part of the majority wrote that he didn’t understand any of this but that Scalia had told him it was ok, and that was good enough for him.”
http://dismalpoliticaleconomist.blogspot.com/2011/06/republicans-want-to-tax-unemployment.html
Took a Supreme Court class this past semester, where we had to act as trial lawyers before a supreme court, also comprised of our peers. It was a dream team of sorts, consisting of various justices throughout history, and the twist was they had to actually ACT like their justice, otherwise they lost points.
On our case on student free speech (I was laywer for the two boys wronged by the school), we had Scalia, Roberts, Harlan jr, Rehnquist, Sotomayor, Thomas and three others who didn’t really make enough of an impact on me to remember.
What I DO remember, however, was listening to Scalia constantly interrupt my legitimate points (which is no surprise if you listen to any supreme court transcript) and Thomas errantly nodding every time I was cut off.
AND WE STILL WON THE CASE 5-4 SUCK ON THAT SCALIA AND THOMAS.