The us supreme court - an establishment deus ex machina

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THE US SUPREME COURT - AN ESTABLISHMENT DEUS EX MACHINA
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The founders created the Supreme Court as a deus ex machina

that would perpetuate and prevent substantial changes in the constitution
and that would protect the establishment it perpetuates.

For example,
the US Constitution, though hailed as a liberal document for its time,
was so employed by the US Supreme Court
that the freeing of the slaves, an important civil war goal,
was not completed until the middle of the last century---

Convinced of its own supremacy,
without any constitutional check upon its power,
and without fear of the executive, the congress or the people,
the court has recently declared that
"money is speech"
and
"corporations are people",

decisions that enable the ruling establishment
to enable foreign and big money interests to drown out the voice of the people
and thus deny to the people
the right of the people
to play a role
in their own governance

 

[waltky]

Supreme Court cases may be even more heated this term...

Supreme Court faces another momentous term
Thursday, September 27, 2012 - It would be hard to top the historic significance of the term that just ended, but Supreme Court watchers say the justices will confront some momentous questions once again when their next term officially begins Monday.

Among the cases confirmed on the docket: a closely watched test of racial preferences in college admissions, whether a single sniff by a police dog constitutes a “home search” and a major business case testing whether corporations can be penalized in U.S. courts for human rights violations committed abroad. After tackling immigration and the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care law in the final days of its past term, the high court also is likely to take up the charged issues of gay marriage and voter rights before adjourning next summer, legal analysts say.

“If we weren’t just coming off of health care, we’d be calling this the term of the decade,” Tom Goldstein, veteran Supreme Court lawyer and co-founder of SCOTUSblog, said in a telephone interview. While the cases the court has agreed to hear are impressive, the lineup in time could rate as one of the court’s most significant legally and politically.

Arguably the most controversial case on the docket deals with affirmative action in college-admissions programs, in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, brought by a rejected white applicant to the Texas school who says she was a victim of racial discrimination. The court last took up the question of such preferences in college admissions nine years ago, and both sides say the more conservative court could use the case this year to rewrite the principles for admission at selective colleges and universities across the country.

In the arguments set for Oct. 10, the court will decide whether considering race in school admissions violates equal protection. “There’s really no question that [these] Supreme Court justices are the most conservative in our lifetime,” Louis Michael Seidman, constitutional law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said at a recent news briefing hosted by the Supreme Court Institute. “There is a question as to what kind of conservatives they are. Are they the kind of conservatives who want to tear up everything and start over again or conserve where we are, but not extend where we are? This case really poses that question.”

Business caseload

See also:

Supreme Court may limit use of race in college admissions
— More than a half-century after the Supreme Court ordered the University of Texas to admit a black man to its law school, the sprawling live-oak-and-limestone campus is again the site of a monumental battle over the use of race in university admissions.

But this time the challenge comes from a white woman. Abigail Fisher says the color of her skin cost her a spot in the 2008 freshman class at the university she had longed to attend since she was a child. Under the banner of racial diversity, Fisher contends, the UT admissions process — which considers race as a factor in choosing one-quarter of its students — unfairly favors African Americans and Hispanics at the expense of whites and Asian Americans.

“If any state action should respect racial equality, it is university admission,” Fisher said in her brief to the Supreme Court. “Selecting those who will benefit from the limited places available at universities has enormous consequences.” Enormous, too, could be the consequences of Fisher’s case for the nation’s selective universities, public and private. If the court rules broadly, college administrators could be barred from considering race in admissions.

Arguments in the case are scheduled for next month, and the decision could be one of the most important and revealing of the Supreme Court’s term that begins Monday. The court since 1978 has recognized that promoting diversity on the nation’s campuses allows a limited consideration of race that normally the Constitution would not countenance. It has imposed restrictions — no quotas, no racial balancing to match demographics, no automatic boost for an applicant because of minority status. But as recently as 2003, the justices reaffirmed the view that “student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions.”

But the court has changed dramatically since then, with a conservative majority now highly skeptical of — even hostile to — racial preferences. The justice most likely to decide the case for the divided court — Anthony M. Kennedy — has agreed in principle that diversity is important but has never voted to approve an affirmative-action plan. At the same time, the national appeal of “diversity” — the goal of producing a legion of future leaders that matches the nation’s changing complexion — has become so ingrained that more than 70 amicus briefs have been filed on UT’s behalf.

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