2024 SCOTUS Rulings Thread

[UNI88]

[UNI88]

[UNI88]

I’m a Seasoned Litigator. Sam Alito’s Recent Questions Have Made Me Cringe.

Alito’s performance during the argument in U.S. v. Skrmetti was a case in point. For the Supreme Court—the highest appellate court—to engage in sustained and aggressive questioning of an attorney about factual data outside the record that was never subjected to the crucible of litigation is a violation of the most basic rules that define the roles and boundaries of our three-tiered federal court system. The record developed at trial in a case is bound by the evidence accepted and the findings made by the district court judge. Appellate judges can only dislodge the trial court’s factual findings if they are clearly erroneous—a high and mostly unreachable standard. In no instances can appellate courts add evidence to the record. They are limited to remanding a case back to a trial court to receive additional evidence. But that is not what Justice Alito was doing. And it wasn’t a one-off question by Alito.

Justice Alito’s reliance on the cautious approach followed recently by European countries in setting boundaries for the provision of gender-affirming care to minors was in and of itself a revealing and shameless reversal of his long-standing public and adamant insistence that “we should look to our own laws and traditions” rather than that of other countries in deciding questions related to individual rights. Chief Justice John Roberts, for his part, seemed unbothered by Justice Alito’s invocation of new laws in Britain restricting access to puberty blockers for minors. This is the same Chief Justice Roberts who in in 2005 famously disparaged the use of foreign law in U.S. judicial decision-making by saying that “looking at foreign law for support is like looking out over a crowd and picking out your friends. You will find them.” This time, Roberts’ concern was limited to one of judicial competence: “Should we follow the United Kingdom’s position from three years ago? Or the United Kingdom’s position now?”

Originalists, smoriginalists, we'll use whatever legal precedent we can find or make up to justify prioritizing ideology and creating new law (I thought that was the legislature's job) that we agree with.

Would love to have Ivy or Joes thoughts on this one.