> I've found helpful to read the official opinion of opinions I disagree with. Start to finish, including the dissent. With respect to modern rulings, I have yet to walk away finding the arguments abysmal. In almost every case, I disagree with the law, not the court.
My impressions from the podcasts of actual law professors and lawyers is that there are various interpretations of the law that trend towards liberal or conservative values, and the strategic dressing of how the law is read is itself a political strategy to legitimize a political reasoning as an apolitical law analysis.
For example, the choice of a judge to read only the text and law as it is written (textualism) without caring about the general context as to why it exists or the effects of the law in modern day can often be used to ignore the actual injustice occurring as a result of a law that doesn't actually produce just outcomes even when the supposed intention is such. It's arguably pedantry.
But when the same purely text-based reading is applied for progressive arguments, as in the hearings for sex-based discrimination, the conservative justices have abruptly shifted their questions to be concerned about the societal effects (bathrooms) or the original intention of the law (originalism). This sort of flip-flopping of evaluation strategies is often used as a basis of argument that while there are multiple reading frameworks of law, the actual frameworks used are often for political/personal purposes and judges are proposed based off their conservative or liberal bent in analysis.
I don't think the subjectivity of a politicized situation is evidence of politically motivated subjectivity. I think it is adequately explained by the inherent subjectivity involved with human interpretation.
To illustrate: nearly everyone varies their frameworks for justification, even when the situation is clearly apolitical.
e.g. Even a mother raising a child will use these justifications frameworks interchangeably as needed. I can hear my mother now:
* "Why? Because I said so" (textualism)
* "Be nice and share with your sister" (societal effects)
You have to consider as well that SCOTUS justices are lifetime political appointees. There is definitely a trend in their opinions toward the same end of the spectrum as the President who nominated them. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_leanings_of_United...
SCOTUS being constructed out of political motivation does not, in itself, make the members of SCOTUS themselves motivated by politics. Having a belief system is inherent to human nature, and SCOTUS does not select their own members. The political motivation is exclusively a part of the selection process.
And you are missing mine. Given that they are political appointees, and their ideology reflects that of the appointing president, it is reasonable to suspect that they, in fact, are politically motivated.
I suppose if we wanted to figure this out, we could just ask the Federalist Society what they think.
It is reasonable to suspect SCOTUS hopefuls are politically motivated before appointment.
After appointment, there is nothing to be motivated for. They hold the highest possible position in their career path and political support or approval no longer bears any utility.
It doesn't matter what they say -- evidence demonstrates that SCOTUS members throughout history have been consistently observed to vote with their established ideological preferences.
That's correct. they vote to advance their own political agendas. Those agendas also correspond to those of the appointing President's party. That's literally the definition of "politically motivated." The available evidence thus points toward individual Justices being politically motivated. Occam's razor suggests the burden of proof falls more strongly on the opposite position.
The available evidence, and scholarly consensus, shows they vote based on their established personal ideologies. If you are claiming it is more complicated than this, Occam's Razor is on you.
They get more liberal overtime as well. The court is partisan. Even the current. You can look at 5-4 and majority decisions and there are tons of flip flopping by different justices.
That's correct. The court is partisan and the general trend for each justice is toward the more liberal. Note, however, that in the diagrams contained in the linked wiki article, no justice who starts above 0 (the "conservative" area) ever dips below 0 into liberal territory. Conservatives stay conservative and liberals get more liberal.
Having an ideological preference is not the same thing as being partisan, nor is it evidence thereof. These are different things.
Someone can be partisan and not have an ideological preference. (eg. party employees, pandering politicians)
Someone can have an ideological preference and not be partisan. (eg. religious leaders, philosophers)
If you want to demonstrate that SCOTUS members are partisan, you need demonstrate they voted for the a party's preferences instead of their own ideological preference. If you are instead demonstrating that they voted in line with their own ideological preference, you are simply pointing out that humans have belief systems.
That is perhaps my largest issue with science. On controversial topics, the level of criticism is not equally applied.
It is even worse when we talk about what science filters down to the average voter, as even in cases where the scientists may be fair in their criticism, the public eye is still selective and given unequal weight to certain criticisms.
I thought they do, but they result in spawning new areas of mathematics. Though more often than disagreements, it is questions are are unanswered and either proven unanswerable, or have failed all attempts to achieve an answer. For example, math has been developed for both the outcome that the Riemann hypothesis is true and that it is false. There is sometimes even the fun possibility of these questions being unsolvable and the implications it has if we assume it will eventually be proven a question cannot be answered yes or no (though I can't recall if there are any significant results from assuming such).
My memory is a bit poor on the matter, and my knowledge limited, but I think I've even read of people disagreeing with fundamental concepts in mathematics and attempting to see what happens when you do so. Does it result in a field of math that behaves the same? Does it make working certain problems easier and others harder?
I don't particularly think it's surprising that results from the study of structure end up applying to other disciplines. The wonder of the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" is really that we've managed to find those bits that line up the best between mathematics and other fields.
Yes. They are monitoring it and reacting appropriately. If it doesn’t work they will pull back and try again.
But their actions are not being dictated by the situation in Italy or France. Likewise, Montana should not take action based on what is going on in New York.
Except that "pull back and try again" is a lot worse than just keeping the lockdown in the first place. Both economically and from a disease prevalence POV.
It looks like it’s several times more deadly than the flu if a hospital can provide optimal treatment. Should we go ahead and rapidly infect everyone the death toll will go to Italy. Additionally, I would suspect that the cost of rapidly developing herd immunity, the subsequent uptick in deaths due to 1 in 5 or so people needing the hospital and unable to receive assistance because the hospital cannot take 1 in 5 people at once would probably crater the economy much harder and longer... Every economist I’ve looked at has said this?
(EDIT: also from what I’ve seen it is entirely possible that infection results in long term reduction in health like lung capacity. That’s super fucked if we infect everyone in that case!)
There is currently no proof that antibody testing is detecting antibodies greater than the false positive rate except in New York, which itself has biases in its study (only testing people who are already out in public, and that's only 1 in 5). Additionally there is no proof that the levels of antibody detected result in immunity or for that the levels of antibody will remain at immunity-levels long term.
I read that too but actually the case augmentation is not statistically significant yet (comparing d1 and d2 after the reopening is not enough). You'll have to wait until at least d4 to have a better idea and i think they can manage to wait until week two to decide to either go for herd immunity (at R0 ~ 1 this is viable, deadly but viable for healthcare workers) or lock their country for a month again.
I doubt that you can measure this already, it has only been two days (also when the lockdown started it took over a week until the effect was visible). That's why at least some countries want to take it slow, after each small step you need at least two weeks to judge the effects.
I think, unfortunately, the definition of decent in this case is viewed as luxury. Most specifically the concept that everyone should be able to own a house within a reasonable commute of work in a desirable location. This cannot happen while also respecting the idea of properties as investments, the wealthy wanting to be able to purchase disproportionately large places in multiple desirable locations, and the idea that so many people may desire to live in a city that the city cannot possibly take them all.
>This cannot happen while also respecting the idea of properties as investments, the wealthy wanting to be able to purchase disproportionately large places in multiple desirable locations
I'm not convinced that these are values worth respecting.
> I think, unfortunately, the definition of decent in this case is viewed as luxury. Most specifically the concept that everyone should be able to own a house within a reasonable commute of work in a desirable location.
A house or a place to live? There's not enough physical land adjacent to places of business for each person who wants one to own a single-family home. They're an awfully inefficient use of space -- see the entire western half of San Francisco.
> This cannot happen while also respecting the idea of properties as investments...
Property can't be affordable and a good investment. Those two are mutually exclusive. An investment goes up relative to inflation. Affordability by definition goes down relative to inflation. You can't have something that goes up as it goes down.
> ...the wealthy wanting to be able to purchase disproportionately large places in multiple desirable locations...
You can, if you do something along the lines of what Singapore does with the HDB. Some 90% of Singaporeans live in government homes built by the HDB, and the remaining 10% is available to the wealthy to play.
> ...and the idea that so many people may desire to live in a city that the city cannot possibly take them all.
They city can absolutely take them all if you allow building up. There's no excuse for down-town San Francisco north of market limiting buildings to 6 stories when downtown Hong Kong has 118 story buildings.
There are definitely personal details that are dangerous for you to talk about with your co workers. It is still legal to fire someone for being gay or trans in a significant minority of states. There are two Supreme Court cases right now purely because of workplace bigotry.
I also don’t know how safe it would be to disclose having a disability or chronic condition in the workplace.
A business is supposed to be responsible to avoid hiring people into hazards they didn’t sign up for when they were hired, but now cannot leave for risk of being jobless in the worst downturn since the Great Depression.
The issue is, should they regulate the particular behavior of a corporation, by dictating their business practices? No. Other things they could have done:
Rule that businesses have to protect their employees in certain ways (masks, sanitization etc)
Rule that employees density must be reduced (fewer per building etc)
Rule that testing should be done to detect issues quickly
Instead, they decided to make lists of what should be shipped. Which backfired, since Amazon can't keep the doors open on a tiny list of products. And further, the list was wrong. Who says I don't need 6 yards of plastic sheeting, to separate my house into separate zones and reduce infection from quarantined individuals? What about small plastic bottles to dole out hand sanitizer to family members that are essential personnel not being supported by their institution? What about 100 products the French never thought of, that can help?
It was a small-minded wrong-headed decision, just ripe for unintended consequences and disaster. Which they got.
Those folks will be jobless soon, but now it's because of the French decision.
I wouldn't assume that more specific instructions weren't given or implicit, even if the article doesn't mention them: the ruling came after unions' complaints, that surely were specific.
Also the list of what can be shipped is not based in what's useful, but in what would cause more trouble to stop than to allow, considering that both put lives in danger.
Maybe the court didn't think stopping non-essential goods was a way to reduce the risk. Maybe they thought that essential goods are worth the risk, but non-essential goods aren't. That seems like it might be closer to the business of the French legal system.
Essential businesses are open, and nonessential businesses are closed for safety reasons, and if a business is partially essential and not safe enough then...
My impressions from the podcasts of actual law professors and lawyers is that there are various interpretations of the law that trend towards liberal or conservative values, and the strategic dressing of how the law is read is itself a political strategy to legitimize a political reasoning as an apolitical law analysis.
For example, the choice of a judge to read only the text and law as it is written (textualism) without caring about the general context as to why it exists or the effects of the law in modern day can often be used to ignore the actual injustice occurring as a result of a law that doesn't actually produce just outcomes even when the supposed intention is such. It's arguably pedantry.
But when the same purely text-based reading is applied for progressive arguments, as in the hearings for sex-based discrimination, the conservative justices have abruptly shifted their questions to be concerned about the societal effects (bathrooms) or the original intention of the law (originalism). This sort of flip-flopping of evaluation strategies is often used as a basis of argument that while there are multiple reading frameworks of law, the actual frameworks used are often for political/personal purposes and judges are proposed based off their conservative or liberal bent in analysis.