Explained: Justice Roberts decision not to take Trump's immigration case

A comment found elsewhere, made by a woman recalling three earlier comments that she read by yet another member, a retired lawyer.

Ristvan, a retired lawyer, comments at CTH. I consider him wise and logical. He offered more insight (from yesterday’s SC thread)on Robert’s siding with the “liberal” judges. While I don’t like Roberts, I think Ristvan is correct. For your perusal:

December 21, 2018 at 5:17 pm
“Lurking Lawyer here. This ruling is both misunderstood and mischaracterized. And as an aside, Robert’s Obamacare decision will be what kills it when it reaches SCOTUS again based on part 2 not 3 of his masterful opinion, of which part four is most important for the future.

This ruling is not on the merits, proven by lack of an accompanying written opinion. It is procedural: whether to grant expedited certiorari, skipping the appeals court. IMO Chief Justice Roberts can ‘correctly’ side with the liberal faction on that narrow process question.
For those interested, expedited cert is governed by SCOTUS Rule 11. It is seldom granted, and those few cases establish a firm precedent not easily met in this specific asylum seeker case. Wiki has a decent layman’s discussion of the issue for those wishing to further educate themselves rather than just vent spleen about Roberts.”

December 21, 2018 at 6:28 pm
“Nope, neither said nor implied. You see black nd white, so apparently do not understand greyscale issues.
Rule 11 is a matter of SCOTUS judgement on ‘emergency’ fact questions, which otherwise they never get, NOT a Constitutional interpretation. There is no right or wrong.
The four conservatives wanted to be more aggressive concerning Rule 11 than precedent suggests. That would indicate to Dems and MSM a PDJT bias if they succeeded.

Roberts is chief. His biggest job is maintaining the exaulted ‘impartial final arbiter’ status of SCOTUS, hard won over more than two centuries starting with Marbury v. Madison—-which established that SCOTUS could review the constitutionality of Acts of Congress—while declining to do in that case (Marshall was then as clever as Roberts newish Obamacare opinion). (FYI, the alternative reading of the Constitution is that since Congress is also sworn to uphold the Constitution, their ‘decisions’ are NOT judicially reviewable (A1§8 and by negative inference §9— go reread foundational constitutional law Marbury v. Madison!!!).

So IMO Roberts knows a lot of PDJT stuff is coming to SCOTUS. He knows the Dems already hate that PDJT has two new justices, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. His best optics. move is not to have SCOTUS seem to now always favor PDJT. And he can do that via Rule 11 prededent without tipping his constitutional hand. So he does. Smart move.”

December 21, 2018 at 10:28 pm
“B, with all due respect, you still misconstrue. The issue is NOT whether the 9th Circuit judge was correct. The issue is whether the resulting situation is so grave that SCOTUS should nullify normal (9th Circuit) appelate court processes and take the case directly on appeal. That has major present political implications even tho in theory it should not.

Precedent argues not. Political wisdom argues not. So the 9th eventually screws up again and is eventually reversed with Roberts in the majority. Optics matter just now.

Meanwhile, nothing important happens since US and Mexico have a newly announced deal to keep asylum appellants in Mexico pending US asylum adjudication.

Suggestion: lose the righteous indignation. Learn how to fight and win only the necessary fights, not every diversionary skirmisch—where you will lose many.”