Sure, but there's a case to be made that the reason we are where we are today is due to the dissents written by Thomas and, before him, Scalia. Justices have to strategize with the tools they have.
No, that's assuming that the rulings are based on law. They don't "have" to do anything. They decide what they want and then write a ruling provide retroactive justification.
I mean, they need cases and they need at least 5. The dissents set up the cases part. The entire conservative wing is sending signals to ADF to tee up the cases the wing wants.
I know this court no longer cares about standing or stare. But such courts have been beat back before, otherwise my family couldn't have come here and I couldn't be married. There's a lot that could be done politically. But I'm also all for dissents that articulate an affirmative vision of justice
You seem to have lawyer-brain about this. Practically, the only reason you think dissents set up a vision of justice is because you believe—without evidence—that laws must and will be followed. The right wing of this country is saying loudly and repeatedly that they don’t agree with us about that.
I am not a lawyer. But the notion that articulating an *alternative vision of justice* is useless is not something I can get behind. I'm a child of immigrants in an interracial marriage. Dissents laid the groundwork for my life being possible! They weren't enough! But they were necessary!
Courts are inherently conservative. They're not going to lead the way. But if you believe the right didn't spend decades buying dissents to lay the groundwork for what they're doing now, you're being ahistorical.
the issue is you think dissents laid the groundwork, and not changing politics and activism. the supreme court is not an instrument of justice, it's an instrument of politics, and that is all it responds to
All right. What I’m suggesting is that the law will not protect most of us. And so a written dissent in the face of threatening—I’ll say it—evil is very lame to the point of being offensive.
