Right, and the Prop 8 decision was procedural rather than ideological.
It was justified on procedural grounds rather than on the merits, but to interpret procedurally-based decisions as "not ideological" and cases decided on the merits as "ideological" is unjustified.
Why would ideology be any less influential in a closely-contested vote on whether a high-profile case procedurally warranted decision; if you assume justices are outcome-seeking based on ideology, then there is no reason that procedural justifications for a preferred outcome would be treated any differently than any other justification.
But the procedural precedent will stick. This isn't the first time a voter initiative was declared unconstitutional because the state government wanted it declared unconstitutional, and it won't be the last.
It was justified on procedural grounds rather than on the merits, but to interpret procedurally-based decisions as "not ideological" and cases decided on the merits as "ideological" is unjustified.
I disagree because justices habitually take the point of view that the principle established is more important than the result achieved. Therefore a variety of ideologies can result in a procedural decision that rules for a side that the justice may or may not personally agree with.
Take this case. Everyone knows that, no matter what happened in the court, California is going to have gay marriage soon. Popular support is running in that direction and it is just a question of time. So whether that happens now or in 3 years is not that important. Thus a justice who does not like gay marriage would not lose much overturning proposition 8.
But what do they gain? The result of their decision is that states which allow voters to pass propositions that the state government does not like, now have an approved legal trick to undo those propositions. Namely try to get sued, then fail to defend the proposition adequately. The court overturns it, and the proposition dies.
If you're a justice who thinks that voter propositions tend to be bad, providing that precedent could be more important to you than the outcome. But since that's a fairly esoteric legal issue, there is little correlation between your feelings about that, and how conservative or liberal you are.
Thus I would not be surprised if one or two of the justices who decided on that procedural ground actually are personally against gay marriage.
But, you say, why wouldn't they avoid that in a high profile case? The answer is because cases become high profile based on what the justices can do. After they act, they can make them unimportant. In this case they could have declared gay marriage legal throughout the entire country on constitutional grounds. (The case was brought in hope of that exact outcome.) Instead a technicality was established, and California got the result that would have happened anyways inside of 5 years.
That's the difference between the front page story on the NY Times and being buried as a couple of sentences in an article about a more important decision that was handed down at the same time.
You don't actually seem to be disagreeing with me, in that you don't seem to be making an argument that procedural decisions are less ideological than merits decisions. You just seem to pointing to an alternative ideological goal to the immediate policy goal, and pointing out that it is possible for ideology to be focussed on something other than what the media headlines of a case are about (which is a point I don't disagree with, though for simplicity in the context of the post I was responding to isn't one I wanted to raise.)
My disagreement was with the following part of what you said earlier:
...if you assume justices are outcome-seeking based on ideology, then there is no reason that procedural justifications for a preferred outcome would be treated any differently than any other justification.
My point is that the connection between the specific outcome of the case, and the outcomes that the justices care about, tends to be weaker for procedural decisions than merits decisions. Therefore we should treat procedural decisions differently from merits decisions. In particular, we should be more cautious about assuming that the underlying ideology matches the obvious headline.
(IANAL) Because a procedural justification doesn't set the right kind of precedent. It says that the means to get to the court weren't right, but you can try again. A decision based on the merits of the case sets much more powerful precedent by saying that this case and any case that follows with similar merits must be decided by lower courts according to the SCOTUS ruling.
Because a procedural justification doesn't set the right kind of precedent.
Right, so its a weaker outcome. But if we assume that justices have ideological concerns with policy outcome, there is no reason that the selection to make a procedural decision would be any less a subject to those concerns than the selection to make a merits decision. In fact, the fact that it is a weaker outcome (on the subject addressed by the substance of the case) than a merits decision with similar effect in the immediate case would in some cases be the motivation for pursuing it for an outcome-oriented justice.
Comments
It was justified on procedural grounds rather than on the merits, but to interpret procedurally-based decisions as "not ideological" and cases decided on the merits as "ideological" is unjustified.
Why would ideology be any less influential in a closely-contested vote on whether a high-profile case procedurally warranted decision; if you assume justices are outcome-seeking based on ideology, then there is no reason that procedural justifications for a preferred outcome would be treated any differently than any other justification.
But the procedural precedent will stick. This isn't the first time a voter initiative was declared unconstitutional because the state government wanted it declared unconstitutional, and it won't be the last.
It was justified on procedural grounds rather than on the merits, but to interpret procedurally-based decisions as "not ideological" and cases decided on the merits as "ideological" is unjustified.
I disagree because justices habitually take the point of view that the principle established is more important than the result achieved. Therefore a variety of ideologies can result in a procedural decision that rules for a side that the justice may or may not personally agree with.
Take this case. Everyone knows that, no matter what happened in the court, California is going to have gay marriage soon. Popular support is running in that direction and it is just a question of time. So whether that happens now or in 3 years is not that important. Thus a justice who does not like gay marriage would not lose much overturning proposition 8.
But what do they gain? The result of their decision is that states which allow voters to pass propositions that the state government does not like, now have an approved legal trick to undo those propositions. Namely try to get sued, then fail to defend the proposition adequately. The court overturns it, and the proposition dies.
If you're a justice who thinks that voter propositions tend to be bad, providing that precedent could be more important to you than the outcome. But since that's a fairly esoteric legal issue, there is little correlation between your feelings about that, and how conservative or liberal you are.
Thus I would not be surprised if one or two of the justices who decided on that procedural ground actually are personally against gay marriage.
But, you say, why wouldn't they avoid that in a high profile case? The answer is because cases become high profile based on what the justices can do. After they act, they can make them unimportant. In this case they could have declared gay marriage legal throughout the entire country on constitutional grounds. (The case was brought in hope of that exact outcome.) Instead a technicality was established, and California got the result that would have happened anyways inside of 5 years.
That's the difference between the front page story on the NY Times and being buried as a couple of sentences in an article about a more important decision that was handed down at the same time.
You don't actually seem to be disagreeing with me, in that you don't seem to be making an argument that procedural decisions are less ideological than merits decisions. You just seem to pointing to an alternative ideological goal to the immediate policy goal, and pointing out that it is possible for ideology to be focussed on something other than what the media headlines of a case are about (which is a point I don't disagree with, though for simplicity in the context of the post I was responding to isn't one I wanted to raise.)
My disagreement was with the following part of what you said earlier:
...if you assume justices are outcome-seeking based on ideology, then there is no reason that procedural justifications for a preferred outcome would be treated any differently than any other justification.
My point is that the connection between the specific outcome of the case, and the outcomes that the justices care about, tends to be weaker for procedural decisions than merits decisions. Therefore we should treat procedural decisions differently from merits decisions. In particular, we should be more cautious about assuming that the underlying ideology matches the obvious headline.
(IANAL) Because a procedural justification doesn't set the right kind of precedent. It says that the means to get to the court weren't right, but you can try again. A decision based on the merits of the case sets much more powerful precedent by saying that this case and any case that follows with similar merits must be decided by lower courts according to the SCOTUS ruling.
Right, so its a weaker outcome. But if we assume that justices have ideological concerns with policy outcome, there is no reason that the selection to make a procedural decision would be any less a subject to those concerns than the selection to make a merits decision. In fact, the fact that it is a weaker outcome (on the subject addressed by the substance of the case) than a merits decision with similar effect in the immediate case would in some cases be the motivation for pursuing it for an outcome-oriented justice.