Friday Feedback

Supreme Court Lessons

There are people who spend a lifetime learning how to predict what the Supreme Court is going to do. The short answer?

They get it wrong almost as often as us amateurs.

There are many moving parts involved with court cases. What is allowed and what is not allowed.

In general, the Court prefers to take cases that are important to the country or which the federal government wants them to take.

There are things that reduce the chances of a case being granted certiorari, the biggest being a case that is still in an interlocutory state. Interlocutory means that the fact finding part of the case has not completed. A final judgment has not been reached and all other means of redress have not been exhausted.

Four justices must vote to grant certiorari. Just because one side or the other has a majority, that might not be enough to get a case seen by the Court.

The question then becomes, what makes a case important to the country, in the eyes of the Court?

One of the big ones is a circuit split. The country is broken into circuits. Each court of appeals handles one circuit.

The famous circuit courts are the Ninth, Seventh, Fifth, and Second. If you want a good court for business law, the Second Circuit is the place to go. They deal with it constantly, being based out of New York City.

The Fifth circuit covers Texas and can be trusted to do the right thing most of the time. The Seventh Circuit is out of Chicago, and there isn’t an infringement they haven’t found constitutional. The Ninth en banc is currently around 250 to 0 for the state and against The People in Second Amendment cases.

To have a circuit split, different circuits must come to different conclusions given the same fact pattern. In this, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, and 9th Circuits have all been presented the same fact pattern regarding magazine bans and assault weapon bans. They have all agreed that such laws are constitutional.

The Fifth has not issued an opinion on that fact pattern because they don’t have any magazine ban or assault weapon ban challenges.

This means no circuit split.

The next thing the Court seems to be looking at is correcting past errors. We can look at the history of Roe v. Wade and Chevron and a host of other cases where the Supreme Court started walking back their original opinion shortly after it came out.

This happens when the inferior courts decide to apply the new case law in ways the Court did not intend. The Court will then take cases that touch on the original issue to “refine” their opinion. In general, the inferior courts seem to ignore this.

In the end, the Court will issue a new opinion declaring their old opinion revoked, and they will explain why. The Dobbs opinion, overturning Roe v. Way is an example of this. The Court had been limiting the extent of Roe v. Wade for a few decades before Dobbs.

Chief Justice Roberts prefers this incremental approach over more substantive changes.

This takes us to the “important for the country” cases.

Heller was a good example of this. After 8 decades, the Court heard a Second Amendment case. The purpose of the case was to reset the inferior courts.

The holding in Heller was that the Second Amendment was an individual right. In the process, the Court set up the rules on how Second Amendment cases should be adjudicated in the future. They defined almost every word of the Second Amendment, established the “plain text and historical tradition of firearm regulations”, and established the dangerous and unusual test for banning arms.

This last is sometimes stated as “in common use.”

If an arm is in common use for lawful purposes, then it is not unusual. Since an arm can only be banned if it is both “extra” dangerous AND and unusual, this means that an arm in common use cannot be banned.

When we look at Snope it was a slam dunk. Why? Because it was a repeat of Heller. There is nothing new in it.

The Supreme Court knows that repeating a past opinion will not change the inferior courts in a positive way.

To put it differently, if a case is granted certiorari, and then the lower court’s opinion is vacated, and the cases is remanded back to the inferior court to redo in light of some other published opinion and the inferior court reaches the same opinion, doing a full opinion isn’t going to make a difference.

When we were breaking up with a partner family, the other family came to the negotiation table with an offer of $16,000. They explained how they got that number.

I used their numbers to show that $16k wasn’t the correct answer.

The next meeting, they again offered $16k. The justification reason and numbers were different, the result was the same.

Again, I used their numbers to show that $16k wasn’t the correct answer.

The next meeting the offered the same $16k with still another justification and set of numbers.

“Your sister only gave you $16k to buy us out, right?”

“Uhhhhh, yes”

The rogue inferior courts keep coming up with the same answer with the same fact pattern with different justifications, every time. See the Fourth Circuit court’s handling of Bianchi v Brown, now known as Snope.

There are several Second Amendment cases that are currently seeking cert or that will file a petition for a writ of certiorari soon. One of those is Duncan v. Bonta.

This is a magazine ban case. Unlike Ocean State Tactical, this case is not in an interlocutory state. It should be ripe for taking.

I do not believe the Supreme Court will take it. It is not the slam dunk of an arms ban. It has too much extra baggage with it, regarding “is it an arm or is it an accessory.” The Court is more likely to take an arms ban because that is a slam dunk, and they can explain that accessories, such as magazines, are arms under the Second Amendment.

This leaves us some cases regarding the NFA, sensitive places, licensing requirements, and Second Amendment rights following you across state lines.

All of these cases will advance Second Amendment jurisprudence.

It Will Cost

My truck is 15 years old. It has a new frame and the motor appears to be strong.

Unfortunately, after 15 years, it is showing some of its age.

Yesterday I got the bad news: New pads and rotors in the front. New calibers on both sides for the front, new wheel bearings for both sides of the front. Replace brake hose crimp in rear right. Two broken brackets that need to be replaced, and a half dozen other things.

R and R for the wheel bearings is over $700 each.

The local parts store has everything in stock for me to do the break and bearing work. At over $1000 in parts.

Rockauto had all the parts available for $450 with $69 in shipping.

On the 21st I’ll be working on the truck to do all the work I can in the front. The only issue I really see is I might have to replace a short section of hard line.

Who wants to bet it will be raining that day?

Website Design and Coding

Tuesday I arrived at the next step in my museum website project. After three days of frustration, attempting to decide what I wanted to do, I took a step back, went and implemented the shopping cart.

Things just got simple in the backend. Simple in the front end. Just a small bit of coding before I find my next roadblock.

Question of the Week

What preparations are you taking for the “No Kings”, nationwide, mostly peaceful protests? It is taking place tomorrow, June 14th.