Legal Commentary

In case you missed them:

Everyone: "We know how awful, inane, and particularly vacuous the hearings were last year. We plan on doing better this year, because then-Professor Kagan told that we, and she, should be more substantive. So we will be more substantive this year. Of course, we think being substantive means throwing around empty terms and questioning the legitimacy of opinions and justices with which we disagree."

Democrats: "The conservative justices are activists who decide cases based on their personal policy preferences; look at McDonald and Citizens United. Roberts and Alito were untruthful in their hearings when they said they respected stare decisis; they overturned a 100-year-old precedent in Citizens United (actually only 20 years). Conservative justices are results-oriented in protecting corporate interests. Someone has to help the little guys against big corporate special interests. Brown and Loving good; Citizens United bad"

Republicans: "The liberal justices are activists who decide cases based on their personal policy preferences; look at the dissenters in McDonald. Sotomayor was untruthful in her hearings when she said she would mechanically apply perfectly plain law to facts; look at how often she voted her personal policy preferences this term (in those opinions with which I disagreed). Justices must be ready to do something for the American people about a growing and expanding government, but Justices cannot promote an activist agenda that the People did not vote for. Thurgood Marshall was a great lawyer, but he was an unapologetically liberal activist and thus not a good model for a justice."

I will be commenting on the hearings (hopefully a bit more substantively, assuming there is anything substantive to talk about) here and at the ACSBlog.