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   Blake E. Reid 🍍🍕🥫🏁 (blakereid@mastodon.lawprofs.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Jul-2024 00:31:58 JST Blake E. Reid 🍍🍕🥫🏁

   Judge Cannon’s ruling is disturbing and alarming. But it should not be surprising. That it is suggests a lack of awareness of what is happening. Here it is: there is a sizable chunk of the American judiciary scattered across the trial and appellate courts (particularly the 5th Circuit) and a majority of Supreme Court Justices that are overtly willing to depart the rule of law toward overtly partisan ends in cases involving President Trump and radiating outward to other partisan priorities. 1/

   • Paul Cantrell and Bill repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Blake E. Reid 🍍🍕🥫🏁 (blakereid@mastodon.lawprofs.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Jul-2024 00:44:39 JST Blake E. Reid 🍍🍕🥫🏁

     in reply to

     It is important for lawyers, academics, journalists, and other commentators to understand that these cases do not represent some faithful, learned, good-faith, balls-and-strikes interpretation of primary legal materials applied to the facts at hand. They are an exercise of political power. And they need to be understood as such. 2/

     Bill repeated this.
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     Blake E. Reid 🍍🍕🥫🏁 (blakereid@mastodon.lawprofs.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Jul-2024 00:57:13 JST Blake E. Reid 🍍🍕🥫🏁

     in reply to

     It is critical to understand that this dramatically shifts the role and power of lawyers. There is no amount of carefully crafted legal argumentation or strategy that can lead to different results in these cases. That does not mean that lawyers do not have important work to do in bringing forth good-faith arguments and bearing witness to the derogation of of the rule of law. (That’s part of the oath lawyers in most (all?) states take to support the Constitution.) 3/

   • Embed this notice
     Donald Ball (donaldball@triangletoot.party)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Jul-2024 01:00:58 JST Donald Ball

     in reply to

     @blakereid @inthehands It’s important to recognize, I think, that this is very much a return to how the courts often functioned throughout the bulk of American history; political instruments of the ruling caste. Perhaps not so much a departure as a regression.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Jul-2024 01:10:55 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Donald Ball

     @donaldball @blakereid
     The tensions has always been there, surely, and the pendulum has swung far both ways. I’d be curious to hear legal historian speak on this.