Supreme Court Rejects FISA Challenge

Supreme Court Rejects FISA Challenge

By Bruce Levine on Tue, 02/26/2013 - 4:59pm |

URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/us/politics/supreme-court-rejects-challenge-to-fisa-surveillance-law.html?hp

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The decision, by a 5-to-4 vote that divided along ideological lines, probably means the Supreme Court will never rule on the constitutionality of that 2008 law.

I'm no lawyer, but doesn't Obama have more than 3 and a half years to add one more Justice to the bench? Or is it that the likelihood of any of the 5 that matter retiring is so small as to be discounted as unlikely?

by Verified Atheist on Wed, 02/27/2013 - 11:59am

Everything we know about Obama, based on his actions so far, would indicate that he is happy with the outcome of this case. From the article:

The Obama administration defended the law in court, and a Justice Department spokesman said the government was “obviously pleased with the ruling.”

So, if maintaining this outcome was his highest priority, and it does seem to be fairly high one, he would have reason to appoint another Roberts or Scalia, or, Kennedy, or Alito.

by A Guy Called LULU on Wed, 02/27/2013 - 1:01pm

If that were the case, one would think he would've already appointed a Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, or Alito. I won't pretend that Obama's actions on FISA aren't disappointing — they are. However, I'd be hard-pressed to believe that Obama would appoint a Supreme Court Justice solely on how they would vote on FISA. No, I strongly suspect that he'd appoint another Sotomayer or Kagan.

by Verified Atheist on Wed, 02/27/2013 - 1:17pm

The concept of stare decisis prevents a lower court from ruling in a way opposite of a previous finding by a superior court. It means also, if I understand it correctly, that even the Supreme Court has a strong obligation, though not a positive or absolute obligation, to honor previous decisions by previous Supreme Courts. In this case though, the court decided not to hear the case at all based on lack of standing by the complainants. This seems obviously wrong to me in a case such as this. I do not know if that decision to not decide establishes any stare decisis precedent that would prevent another court from hearing the same case with the same standing, or lack of, by the complainants. Maybe a lawyer will weigh in with some clarification.
Anyway, I agree with you on the nature of his probable future Supreme nominees.

by A Guy Called LULU on Wed, 02/27/2013 - 2:07pm

I, too, would be interested in hearing from some of our resident lawyers on this. I'm vaguely aware of stare descisis, but I also have no idea about how it applies to decisions by the Supreme Court not to hear cases. And, of course, as you say it's not absolute. Here's hoping…

by Verified Atheist on Wed, 02/27/2013 - 7:51pm

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