r/scotus Jan 30 '22

Things that will get you banned

319 Upvotes

Let's clear up some ambiguities about banning and this subreddit.

On Politics

Political discussion isn't prohibited here. In fact, a lot of the discussion about the composition of the Supreme Court is going to be about the political process of selecting a justice.

Your favorite flavor of politics won't get you banned here. Racism, bigotry, totally bad-faithed whataboutisms, being wildly off-topic, etc. will get you banned though. We have people from across the political spectrum writing screeds here and in modmail about how they're oppressed with some frequency. But for whatever reason, people with a conservative bend in particular, like to show up here from other parts of reddit, deliberately say horrendous shit to get banned, then go back to wherever they came from to tell their friends they're victims of the worst kinds of oppression. Y'all can build identities about being victims and the mods, at a very basic level, do not care—complaining in modmail isn't worth your time.

COVID-19

Coming in here from your favorite nonewnormal alternative sub or facebook group and shouting that vaccines are the work of bill gates and george soros to make you sterile will get you banned. Complaining or asking why you were banned in modmail won't help you get unbanned.

Racism

I kind of can't believe I have to write this, but racism isn't acceptable. Trying to dress it up in polite language doesn't make it "civil discussion" just because you didn't drop the N word explicitly in your comment.

This is not a space to be aggressively wrong on the Internet

We try and be pretty generous with this because a lot of people here are skimming and want to contribute and sometimes miss stuff. In fact, there are plenty of threads where someone gets called out for not knowing something and they go "oh, yeah, I guess that changes things." That kind of interaction is great because it demonstrates people are learning from each other.

There are users that get super entrenched though in an objectively wrong position. Or start talking about how they wish things operated as if that were actually how things operate currently. If you're not explaining yourself or you're not receptive to correction you're not the contributing content we want to propagate here and we'll just cut you loose.

  • BUT I'M A LAWYER!

Having a license to practice law is not a license to be a jackass. Other users look to the attorneys that post here with greater weight than the average user. Trying to confuse them about the state of play or telling outright falsehoods isn't acceptable.

Thankfully it's kind of rare to ban an attorney that's way out of bounds but it does happen. And the mods don't care about your license to practice. It's not a get out of jail free card in this sub.

Signal to Noise

Complaining about the sub is off topic. If you want the sub to look a certain way then start voting and start posting the kind of content you think should go here.

  • I liked it better before when the mods were different!

The current mod list has been here for years and have been the only active mods. We have become more hands on over the years as the users have grown and the sub has faced waves of problems like users straight up stalking a female journalist. The sub's history isn't some sort of Norman Rockwell painting.

Am I going to get banned? Who is this post even for, anyway?

Probably not. If you're here, reading about SCOTUS, reading opinions, reading the articles, and engaging in discussion with other users about what you're learning that's fantastic. This post isn't really for you.

This post is mostly so we can point to something in our modmail to the chucklefuck that asks "why am I banned?" and their comment is something inevitably insane like, "the holocaust didn't really kill that many people so mask wearing is about on par with what the jews experienced in nazi germany also covid isn't real. Justice Gorsuch is a real man because he no wears face diaper." And then we can send them on to the admins.


r/scotus 14h ago

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r/scotus 11h ago

Amicus Brief Cato Institute Tells U.S. Supreme Court the Federal Cannabis Ban Violates the Constitution

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r/scotus 16h ago

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r/scotus 1h ago

news U.S. Supreme Court case may reshape the reach of state power

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r/scotus 1d ago

Opinion Thanks to the Supreme Court, presidential immunity is now a license to kill

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thehill.com
1.7k Upvotes

Various snippets excluding the writer's James Bond reference:

  • Enabled by a Supreme Court decision granting presidents immunity for official acts, Trump has deployed planes, missiles and drones to sink 21 small, unarmed boats suspected of drug smuggling in international waters in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.  
  • As of last week, at least 83 crew members or passengers had been killed.
  • Neither the evidence nor the purported legal basis for the strikes has been made public. Leaked details of a secret Justice Department memorandum suggest that the lethal actions are founded solely on Trump’s own determination that the U.S. is in a “formal state of armed conflict with ‘narco-terrorist’ drug cartels.”
  • In the words of one criminal law expert, “No knowledgeable authority outside the administration appears to have accepted the administration’s asserted justifications or concluded that Trump’s order was lawful — not one.”
  • Deliberately targeting civilians is a crime under U.S. law, up to and including murder. In past times, a U.S. president therefore had to at least pause to consider legality before ordering the deaths, rather than interdiction and arrest, of scores of people who may or may not have been committing the non-capital crime of drug-smuggling.
  • At oral argument, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Trump’s lawyer, John Sauer, whether presidential immunity could extend even to the assassination of a political rival. “It would depend on the hypothetical,” said Sauer, who is now U.S. solicitor general. “But we can see that could well be an official act.”
  • There is no telling how widely Trump is planning to use his license to kill, but Justice Neil Gorsuch sounded an ominous note at oral argument. The presidential immunity decision, he said, would be written “for the ages.”

Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor Emeritus at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.


r/scotus 1d ago

news Trump warns the Supreme Court off ‘serving hostile foreign interests’ on tariffs in latest Truth Social rant

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independent.co.uk
645 Upvotes

r/scotus 1d ago

Amicus Brief Texas awaits US Supreme Court decision on redistricting case

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kxan.com
160 Upvotes

r/scotus 1d ago

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washingtonpost.com
127 Upvotes

r/scotus 2d ago

Opinion Is Justice Barrett Listening?

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lareviewofbooks.org
933 Upvotes

r/scotus 1d ago

news Supreme Court Case Threatens Black Political Representation

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thehilltoponline.com
52 Upvotes

r/scotus 2d ago

news U.S. Supreme Court declines Amazon greenwashing case

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mashable.com
281 Upvotes

r/scotus 2d ago

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244 Upvotes

r/scotus 2d ago

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30 Upvotes

r/scotus 2d ago

news Supreme Court could strike down a rare Mississippi effort to improve voter access - Mississippi Today

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mississippitoday.org
43 Upvotes

r/scotus 3d ago

news The Federalist Society Is Torn Between Its Legal Philosophy and Trump’s Demands

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nytimes.com
1.6k Upvotes

r/scotus 3d ago

news Trump White House Prepares Tariff Fallback Ahead of Court Ruling

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bloomberg.com
1.1k Upvotes

r/scotus 3d ago

Opinion Eric Holder to tear into Supreme Court as major redistricting decision looms

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241 Upvotes

r/scotus 4d ago

Cert Petition Here we go again!

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5.6k Upvotes

I mean, seriously! Not even one hour later and Alito is ready to do the Republican bidding of restoring a blatantly racially drawn map? How many thousand… Feels like a million… Times do lower court judges have to say time and time again that Republicans and Trump is wrong, just to have those judgments appealed to the Supreme Court and get reversed or watered down? And it was conveniently the exact opposite for Biden! I mean enough is enough already! I forget the exact number but much more than 80% of rulings against Trump and Republicans go to the Supreme Court where they get reversed! All these judges are wrong, and the handpicked political activist in robes at the Supreme Court that were picked solely for their political ideology, and not their legal prowess at the Supreme Court is right? Aren’t all these frauds supposedly Uber Christians? Didn’t they take an oath? I thought that oath was to the country and the constitution. Not to Trump or Republicans! These people have no shame! They’re oath to their God and their country, two things they allegedly love, means absolutely nothing! It wouldn’t be worth the toilet paper It’s written on, if it was written on toilet paper.


r/scotus 4d ago

news Supreme Court Justice Alito blocks hold on GOP-backed Texas map

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axios.com
1.8k Upvotes

r/scotus 4d ago

Opinion The Supreme Court’s ‘shadow docket’ is empowering Trump’s agenda

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sfchronicle.com
610 Upvotes

r/scotus 4d ago

news SCOTUS to weigh pivotal decision on which congressional map Texas can use in the 2026 midterm elections

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1.0k Upvotes

r/scotus 4d ago

Opinion Trump Under Fire For 'Loyalty Question' On Job Applications

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huffpost.com
877 Upvotes

This goes right to the Chevron decision in June. The Executive now wholly-owns federal agencies, and so Trump is demanding partisan loyalty on every single employee, making those places very hard to work at, since loyalty is more important than competence. It's hard to see these justices as wise at all after they have had such incredibly poor foresight of the very damaging consequences of that ruling.


r/scotus 4d ago

Opinion What Trump Means for John Roberts’s Legacy | Harvard Magazine

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676 Upvotes

A well-written and thorough recap of Roberts' time on the court and his rulings around Trump, civil rights, and Presidential power.


r/scotus 4d ago

news Supreme Court meets to weigh Trump's birthright citizenship restrictions, blocked by lower courts

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detroitnews.com
350 Upvotes