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Precedent is, "how a law has been interpreted in the past".

Making a new law shoots down that ambiguity. Best the court can do is say, "This law violates the Constitution." They cannot just make up new laws.

It's a fine line that I'm failing to impart...

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I think it means any idea not coming from corporate media or official government.

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What’s your stance on where Atlantis is?

Yeah, okay. But what do we do when this group just says 'lol we don't care' and rules in favor?

Just because they're expected to present an opinion doesn't mean it actually needs to be logical or reasonable. They're ultimately able to rule however they want. Yeah?

For those of us with no faith in these schmuks, what's the next step when they ruin democracy? Can their ruling be challenged at all, is there any check against it?

In other words, will they do the job they swore an oath to do, or the job they were installed for?

But what would stop a partisan SCOTUS from simply quashing those laws? This court doesn't seem to respect precident. So what's to stop them from reaching the conclusion that this is illegal or unconstitutional, then working backwards to find support for that conclusion?

Typically I wouldn't be concerned about the court behaving in such a fashion. But this court has already shown they're capable of behaving that way.

> That puts any of the justices interested in the ISLT in a tough spot

Does it though? They have lifetime appointments and impeachment is a political tool, not a legal/ethical one. What's stopping five of the six conservative justices from embracing ISLT and saying "lol, because we feel like it?"

Should people in these positions have to prove their intent and resolve?

What conspiracy theory (if any) do YOU believe, or at least believe that there may be some truth to?

How do you define a conspiracy theory?

At the end of the day, even if the justices want to embrace the ISLT, they’re going to have to write an opinion explaining why. Considering that the kind of reasoning they’d use--text, history, tradition, precedent--cuts against the theory, they would have an awfully tough time writing that opinion. (In fact, one of the major pieces of history that the supporters of the ISLT try to invoke–the so-called Pinckney Plan–is fraudulent!) That puts any of the justices interested in the ISLT in a tough spot–-and it makes it more likely that a majority will form to reject the theory. -- Ethan

Co-sign Eliza on the importance of checks and balances. I'd rather have that than the ISLT's completely awful proposed system where state legislators alone decide what the rules for federal elections look like, so I'm against the ISLT.

My favorite case was a lawsuit we launched in 2020 to stop the Trump administration from shutting the census down early. Made me proud to be able to be a public interest attorney. -- Tom

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>But do you have any evidence that the Supreme Court actually cares about any of those things and instead uses those as a cover to be partisan hacks? And that they wouldn't hesitate to throw those things out the window to continue to be partisan hacks?

Scalia was actually a master at doing exactly that.

>That said, any Supreme Court Justice who tries to write a credible opinion supporting the ISLT is going to struggle mightily to deliver.

This question is more honest and genuine than it's going to sound: Do you think any justice on the right wing of the Court other than Roberts actually cares much about credibility? Between Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Gorsuch, is there worry that they'll just band together and craft some B.S. to further their policy goals and not really care much about the actual legal merits?

By the way NC just put two more Republicans on our state supreme court so we'll never have fair elections again in my lifetime.

The most important point to take away from Moore is that the independent state legislature theory is wrong as a matter of text, history, practice, and precedent; the theory, if adopted, would remove critical checks and balances on state legislatures in a way that will create chaos in our elections and could thwart your vote.

A rejection of the ISLT by the Supreme Court should largely stem the tide of litigants seeking to push the issue. The clearer and more unequivocal the Court’s repudiation of the theory, the less likely we are to see actors trying to advance the theory in other contexts in lower courts.

Speaking only for myself, my favorite case to have worked on was a challenge to Florida’s pay-to-vote system for people with felony convictions. We won after an 8-day trial in federal district court, but unfortunately the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed. That hasn’t stopped me or the Brennan Center from continuing to fight for returning citizens in Florida!

- Eliza

Oh, that's a tricky one! In general, my feeling is that the bigger a conspiracy theory is, the harder it is to prove and thus the less likely it is to be true. So, re: Area 51, etc., I have a hard time with that because it seems like there has to be a whole lot of people--janitorial staff, busboys, cooks, administrative assistants--keeping that place running who have no incentive to keep their mouths shut. The bigger the thing is, the more people it takes, the more likely there is to be leaks. So, personally, I find the most convincing stories are the ones that are the most nebulous, the most vague, the ones that don't really posit a whole worked out theory so much as just some unexplained thing. In The Unidentified, my last book, I tried to do as much of a survey of postwar UFO and alien sightings as I could, and the one that I came back to time and time again without a clear explanation is the Socorro, NM sighting by Lonnie Zamora. Precisely because it was weird and inexplicable....

What is the most convincing material you've ever come across that proves the existence of ETs?

OK, thanks. Follow-up, though: What actually gives any of us the confidence that SCOTUS has any sort of internal integrity as an institution? We've watched the current court tie itself into knots to reach the conclusions that it wants -- why will this be different?

A lot! For one, during the colonial period and the American Revolution, there were plenty of conspiracy theories that the British and/or the French (depending on who you talked to) were secretly infiltrating American politics and perverting events. But probably the most commonly held conspiracy theory that has more or less (but not entirely) fallen by the wayside is the fear of Catholics... This was widespread by American Protestants, who felt that Catholics were taking orders directly from the Pope or their priests and that they were infiltrating American culture with an eye towards domination. This persisted well into the twentieth century (JFK had to give a speech saying he wouldn't listen to the Pope if elected president!), though within the last 50 years Protestants on the American right have aligned with Catholics over social issues (abortion, school prayer, etc.) and have largely abandoned that conspiracy theory. (This is something I follow a great deal in my forthcoming book, Under the Eye of Power, that follows the history of American conspiracy theories surrounding secret societies.)