Donald Trump and the limits of legal realism lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/11/the-li…
While the attitudinal model is a useful first approximation, the best way to think about appellate judicial behavior if Michael Klarman's two continua: legal texts range from determinate to indeterminate, policy preferences from weak to strong lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/02/think-…
The attitudinal model works quite well for Supreme Court decisonmaking because the interesting cases disproportionately cluster at the right end of both continua. At he circuit court level, judges often have less discretion.
In this case, Trump is asking judges to be ENTIRELY lawless, and to do so in a case that wouldn't even directly hand Trump the presidency. That was always going to be a very, very, very tough lift.
Another position that was always going to be a tough sell is the Trump/McConnell claim that the presidential election was completely fraudulent but amazingly this didn't affect downballot races at all. Courts tend to notice stuff like this
"Here, the Campaign’s request fails as both inequitable and futile"
"These claims cannot succeed"
Rudy can be sanctioned and disbarred

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More from @LemieuxLGM

28 Nov
Pelosi passed a second $3 trillion relief package in May you bootlicking hack
And yes what a mystery why a relief bill isn't passing with Biden as the president-elect I wonder what could explain it
Needless to say, if Democrats took McConnell's feeble corporate immunity-for-almost-nothing offer he would be screaming about how they're neoliberal sellouts.
Read 6 tweets
27 Nov
This, exactly. Basically, "best concert films ever" is just TLW, Stop Making Sense, and The T.A.M.I. Show staring down at all else from Mt. Kilimanjaro.
And yes Gimmie Shelter is on the summit if it counts
I lot of people are mentioning Woodstock, but it falls well short of the summit because the performances aren't good enough. First in terms of artists: no Beatles/Stones/Dylan/Joni/Led Zep at all, no Band/CCR/Dead in the movie. It's mostly minor artists in uneven performances
Read 6 tweets
27 Nov
Doing my usual Thanksgiving screening of The Last Waltz and it remains striking the extent to which Levon is the star even if he hated Robbie/Scorsese too much to know it
I ultimately like the movie more than she does but @thehighsign's piece is brilliant on the general personal dynamics in play slate.com/culture/2012/0…
And ultimately there can be no better historical tribute to Rick Danko that on "It Makes No Difference" he is able to stand toe-to-toe with some absolute vocal titans (most notably Muddy, Van, and Joni)
Read 8 tweets
26 Nov
For the COVID Barrett Court, there is only one material question: will the libs be owned? lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/11/person…
To be clear, nobody is claiming that a public health emergency suspends the free exercise clause. Cuomo's order is constitutional because orders that treat religious institutions *more favorably* than comparable secular ones very obviously do not violate the First Amendment.
The claim that Andrew Cuomo's public health orders were motivated by anti-Catholic animus is too stupid to receive even a minute's consideration and yet got five votes from the Supreme Court of the United States
Read 4 tweets
26 Nov
As Sotomayor says, the majority's argument that places of worship are being singled out for unfair treatment requires treating highly dissimilar things as similar.
Gorsuch's concurrence typifies the tendency of too many people -- across the political spectrum -- to base restrictions based on moral institution rather than epidemiological dangers. Going to church is more moral than going to the liquor store, so it must be at least as safe.
Read 9 tweets
25 Nov
How Republicans learned to stop worrying and go full MAGA lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/11/arsoni…
Pure cynical opportunism is hard to sustain over the long haul. A lot of elite Republicans were either going to just to full Trump or see Trumpism as a higher truth that justifies anything irrespective of whether particular claims are factual lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/11/darkne…
Lindsey Graham's conduct after securing another term isn't the behavior of someone putting on a performance, it's the behavior of someone who has fully convinced himself that Trump's racist conspiracy theories are true in some sense because the cognitive dissonance was too much
Read 4 tweets

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