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> 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.

As a scientist, this is how scientists also behave when there is disagreement. Humans will be human.

As long as courts remain within reasonable bounds of "filling in the holes", that is good enough. And we can think about improving the process.

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.

We are lucky that fundamental disagreements, for the most part, don’t happen in pure mathematics.

Yes. But I think this is because, any area of study in which such disagreements can happen are, are by definition excluded from pure mathematics.

What is surprising is that what remains to be studied is vast and beautiful and highly effective when borrowed by other disciplines.

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.

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?

And then you get the fun stuff like this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_excluded_middle#Critici...

But alas, I have too little education to be more than a confused spectator of such debates.

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 know what I meant" (originalism)

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...

Of course. POTUS is a political position, and the process of choosing their appointees is politically motivated decision.

But political motivation does not necessarily follow the transitive property, which is part of the reason why a lifetime appointment is a good idea.

> ...political motivation does not necessarily follow the transitive property....

No, it doesn't necessarily, but there is evidence that it does in practice. That is my point.

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.

That's my point.

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.

And, what do you think the Federalist Society would say about that?

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.

>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.

I personally find my strongest disagreements are in cases the court refuses to hear to even give a ruling.

>will have a degree of unpredictability to them.

But that also means a degree of bias and even bigotry. And the large scale bias is strong enough right now that given the option of as it is or parsing like code, I would choose the latter.

> With respect to modern rulings, I have yet to walk away finding the arguments abysmal.

Windsor?

I read all the opinions (the majority and all three dissents) and they were all terrible law.

The majority ends up with a convoluted rationale for why the Court should even be here, since Windsor already got what she claimed relief for. A court's purpose is to serve justice, but very clearly the Supreme Court doesn't need to even take Windsor in service of justice, instead it serves a political end.

The dissents are no better. Scalia for example rightly points out what the majority are up to, and, sensing which way the wind is blowing but apparently not inclined to learn anything from that - he guesses this will be back, as it indeed was in Obergefell, but is apparently oblivious that he's doing the same exact thing he accuses them of.

There's a decision by Judge Posner on related topics which is much better law, Baskin v Bogan. Posner may or may not have an opinion about whether gay marriage is a good idea, we don't learn one way or another. But he is clear that it isn't logically consistent to say your state only marries people for the purpose of raising kids, then also have a law which says people who biologically cannot, or genetically should not have kids may get married. As a result the prohibitions on gay marriage fail. That's what I want to see in my legal decisions.

I wish Posner had gotten appointed to the Supreme Court. His decisions always seem to follow an elegant logic that I find appealing.

> ...and thus courts--will have a degree of unpredictability to them.

If courts were predictable, we wouldn't need them at all. (this is an agreement with parent's argument)