The US Supreme Court

[Joe]

I wonder what Mitch will say this time.

Justice Stephen Breyer, an influential liberal on the Supreme Court, to retire

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring after serving more than two decades on the nation's highest court, Supreme Court and Biden administration sources tell NPR.

Breyer — professorial, practical, and moderately liberal — wrote many of the court's legally important but less glamorous decisions and sought, behind the scenes, to build consensus for centrist decisions on a conservative court.

Breyer's retirement gives President Biden his first opportunity to name a new justice to the court. During the 2020 campaign, he pledged to name an African American woman if he got the chance. The two leading contenders are said to be federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was on President Obama's shortlist for the court in 2016, and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger, who served as assistant, and then deputy solicitor general in both Democratic and Republican administrations prior to her nomination to California's highest court.

Both women are young, in terms of Supreme Court appointment. And both have stellar legal credentials.

[Tero]

McConnel will stop the approval. With Sinema and Manchin.

[Tero]

[Joe]

[Sean Hayden]

[JimC]

What about when Venus transits through Uranus?

[Svartalf]

Preferably pushing a lit dynamite stick, so you better behave or the match will stay lit.

[Tero]

CNN —
The Supreme Court left in place Monday an opinion by Pennsylvania’s highest court that overturned comedian Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction, rejecting a bid from Pennsylvania prosecutors to review the decision.

Cosby was convicted of aggravated indecent assault in 2018 for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in his Pennsylvania home in 2004. He was sentenced to three to 10 years in a state prison.

He was released from prison in June after the state’s Supreme Court overturned his sexual assault conviction on the grounds that his due process rights had been violated. The Pennsylvania state Supreme Court justices said in their opinion that a former Montgomery County district attorney’s decision to not prosecute Cosby in 2005 in return for his deposition in a civil case was ultimately used against him at trial.

[laklak]

Correct decision, unfortunately.

[Svartalf]

Really?

[Hermit]

Really?

Yes.

Due process has been the cornerstone of justice since 1215. It balances the power of the law with the rights of the accused. Clause 39 of the Magna Carta states:

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

This was rephrased in the 1354 edition of the Magna Carta, which was shortened, so that clause 39 became clause 29:

No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law.

You may object to various aspects of what has been determined to be 'due process of law', and you may campaign to change whatever you object to. What you can not do, is to override or ignore due process as it stands when applied to a court case. The unfortunate part is that sometimes a guilty person is set free. This is preferable to the powers that be convicting people without following the due process of law, for without doing so we'd have no justice. We'd finish up with misuse of the law by the powerful, the prevention of which is precisely the raison d'être of the Magna Carta.

[macdoc]

nice in theory and correct ,,,practice in some countries under English Common Law leaves a lot to be desired...in the main access to the courts. Still a rich person's game.
Then of course there are elected judges, sheriffs ...etc

If it was in Quebec it would be different for Cosby's civil suits ...it's the only province with a civil code, which is based on the French Code Napoléon (Napoleonic Code) ...very different. The rest of Canada uses English Common Law tho Quebec uses Common Law for criminal matters to be in synch with the rest of Canada.

Canada's system has some disctinct differences from the US.
https://www.mondaq.com/canada/constitut ... al-systems

[Hermit]

Still a rich person's game.

Yes. The Magna Carta was a contract chiefly (pun intended) applicable to one king and about two dozen robber barons. Applicability has broadened somewhat over the next 800 years, though it remains true that money grants access to better lawyers and social status to better character references.

Then of course there are elected judges, sheriffs ...etc

In the US

Canada's system has some disctinct differences from the US.

You may find distinct difference between many different countries.

My point was that due process makes for justice. It is probably why one thing so many countries do share is the insistence on due process of law. That's despite the unfortunate fact that a guilty person is occasionally set free.

[Sean Hayden]

[L'Emmerdeur]

The US Supreme Court 'conservatives' may bleat about not wanting the court to appear partisan, but decisions like this give the lie to their protestations.

'Critics Blast "Absolutely Shocking" Supreme Court Decision on Wisconsin Voting Maps'

In a move that shocked progressive political observers, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected Wisconsin legislative districts drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and sent the case back to the state's highest court, which previously approved the voting maps.

...

Denouncing the majority decision as "lawless," Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.)—who supports expanding the high court—tweeted that "the far-right Supreme Court is so hostile to Black political power that it reversed its own precedent from earlier this year to overturn Wisconsin maps creating a new majority-minority district."

Jones was referencing earlier cases that relied on the 2006 case Purcell v. Gonzalez—which, as legal experts explained at SCOTUSblog, established the principle that "courts should not change election rules during the period of time just prior to an election because doing so could confuse voters and create problems for officials administering the election."

Mark Joseph Stern, who covers U.S. courts for Slate, also referenced Purcell in a series of tweets responding to Wednesday's ruling.

"This is an absolutely shocking decision," Stern said. "The maps were adopted by a Republican justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This appeal was considered a Hail Mary, and it prevailed. I am stunned by this ruling."

"If anything, Sotomayor's dissent undersells just how 'unprecedented' this decision is," he continued. "It appears to dramatically alter the law of redistricting to make it much harder for states to draw majority-Black districts—all through a cryptic shadow docket ruling."

Stern noted that "there is literally no discussion of the Purcell principle in the unsigned majority opinion—even though the majority has repeatedly used Purcell to prevent federal courts from altering election laws shortly before an election. Which is what the majority just did."