Senior Correspondent, Vox. I blame James Madison. Author of The Agenda: How a Republican Supreme Court is Reshaping America
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Jul 5, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Ok, time for me to get on a soapbox. Martin-Quinn scores are crap. They should not be used by journalists to measure SCOTUS ideology. Nor should they be used by scholars who don't understand their limits.
MQ scores look at one thing -- whether a justice voted to affirm or reverse in each case that they heard -- it then assigns these votes a "liberal" value or "conservative" value. So, for example, a justice who voted in the majority in Moore v. Harper gets a point for liberalism.
Mar 15, 2023 • 8 tweets • 1 min read
So in the likely event that Trump Judge Matty Kascmaryk bans mifepristone, here’s what we can expect next:
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DOJ will seek an emergency stay from the Fifth Circuit as fast as it can review Matty’s opinion and draft a motion. They will likely lose. The Fifth Circuit is dominated by highly-partisan Republicans like Kyle Duncan.
Mar 9, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
So, obviously Leonard Leo did unimaginable harm to the United States through the Federalist Society. But I am skeptical he will be successful with this effort to expand the FedSoc model outside of the legal profession.
The reason why the FedSoc is so powerful is because the pool of people who are plausible candidates for a Supreme Court seat is vanishingly small. Every single justice either graduated from Harvard or Yale law school, clerked on SCOTUS, or both.
