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Comment by ComputerGuru | Hacker News Reader

PDF of the ruling: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf

As usual, it’s more nuanced than the headline.

Nobody in the comments is saying that the Supreme Court is wrong in the sense that the logic doesn’t follow. Of course it’s nuanced and up to interpretation, that’s why most decisions are split — and usually split on “conservative (do what I say) and liberal (do what I mean).

The reason people are mad is because the court is relitigating long settled cases which breaks the main principle of the court which is don’t break userspace without damn good reason. We know they think the decisions were made incorrectly but the bar of “this is crucially important we fix” I don’t think it is being met. Instead it’s at best tone deaf to the real life effects of their decisions and more likely motivated to achieve specific partisan legislative outcomes.

>The reason people are mad is because the court is relitigating long settled cases which breaks the main principle of the court

A bad decision is a bad decision no matter how long it's been in effect. If anything, following "precedent" is what got us into this mess in the first place. We could have ripped the bandaid off decades ago on abortion and fixed it then. Now it's going to be much more messy.

> A bad decision is a bad decision no matter how long it's been in effect. If anything, following "precedent" is what got us into this mess in the first place. We could have ripped the bandaid off decades ago on abortion and fixed it then. Now it's going to be much more messy.

IMHO, what actually got us in this mess was the Supreme Court putting itself into a situation where it's regularly making momentous political decisions, rather that resolving finer points of law, resolving little corner cases, etc. It might be expedient to use its power to set social and economic policy, but that doesn't mean it's right.

It seems like they are trying to step back with this (and force the regulators to have law as well).

Given the horrifically vitriolic hate-filled partisan crap-fest we are in - it is much too late for that.

Most decisions are actually not split. It's just that the controversial ones get all the press. No one is gonna get fired up about 9-0 or 8-1 decisions.

This is incorrect – most cases are split. The most common outcome is 9-0 (about a third of cases), but the second most common split is 5-4.

This shouldn't be surprising – controversial cases are more likely to end up before the Supreme Court than mundane ones.

[1] http://supremecourtdatabase.org/analysisFrequencies.php?sid=...

This is one of the most reasonable comments I’ve read today, and yet it’s grayed out. That’s not acceptable. HN is being taken over by bullies and I’m tired of not even have my basic comment voting rights.

> The reason people are mad is because the court is relitigating long settled cases

How many of those same people were mad about Obergefell, which did just that?

I'm curious about this "do what I say" vs "do what I mean" partisan split. I can see how this particular case clearly applies, but you have any other examples?

I truly wish more people were legally literate, and considering how much intellectual overlap there is between software engineering and legal writing I would have expected better from the HN crowd, but so far all I see is a lot of talking point parroting about partisanship from those who clearly haven't even tried to read the rulings.

Given the quality of the conversation on Reddit (top-voted memes calling Justice Barrett a handmaiden and so forth), HN is still a cut above :)

Reddit is beyond toxic at the moment.

This place is more unfriendly, to be honest, as we get more knives in the back than frontal assaults, which are fairly easy to fend off or disconnect from. I can at least up and down vote comments on Reddit. Here I just get greyed out and can’t hit back

I think its quite fair for people to be upset about multiple justices lying about Roe being settled law.

Seriously, if just a fraction of "intellectuals" in other fields took some time to read the past 50-odd years worth of Supreme Court rulings, there wouldn't be all this pointless bickering over basic facts. If anything, the Warren/Burger courts were egregious in making up constitutional rights out of thin air based on their moral beliefs, and not the letter of the law. It's a shame that it takes a far-right Supreme Court for people to finally understand that it's Congress's job to pass new laws, not the judiciary branch.

You clearly have a political bias.

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