
U.S. Supreme Court to hear cases by telephone in May - JumpCrisscross
https://www.axios.com/supreme-court-telephone-cases-trump-financial-records-7b9732fa-edfe-45ff-a3cb-25132ceb4078.html
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strict9
SCOTUS to hear arguments by telephone, but only days ago shut off extended
absentee voting in Wisconsin.

Voters in urban precincts (read: minority voters) were forced to stand in long
crowded lines for hours in the rain with only a handful of voting sites.

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tathougies
SCOTUS did not shut off extended absentee voting. They weren't even asked to
comment on it. They were asked to comment on a decision by a federal judge
that went above and beyond what the initial question to that court was. No one
asked the district court to extend the election date, but they did anyway.
SCOTUS said courts can't do that. They can only extend the date if they had
been asked to do that. No one asked. Please don't twist the truth. SCOTUS
explicitly stated that they're not answering the question of whether or not
the date can be extended.

[https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19a1016_o759.pdf](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19a1016_o759.pdf)

This is good. The powers of the Supreme Court are -- and should remain --
limited. We should not welcome authoritarianism simply at the service of
convenience or even safety.

What should have happened is the Wisconsin state legislature should have met
and extended the ballot. They are the sole entity that is blameworthy in this
fiasco. Their decision would have been unquestionable in front of any court.
We should stop expecting the courts to be able to rule by fiat. That is not
their purpose, rightly so.

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duxup
I think a lot of folks hoping for SCOTUS involvement were thinking more
generally of it as a voting rights type issue.

If that was even an option for them to do is still relevant of course.

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tathougies
> I think a lot of folks hoping for SCOTUS involvement were thinking more
> generally of it as a voting rights type issue.

Then they are asking for exactly the kind of 'answer to a question that was
never asked' that the Supreme Court told all courts to stop giving.

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duxup
Agreed. I can understand folks concerns, but also everyone should understand
why the thing happened.

One doesn't preclude the other.

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jcranmer
For those curious:

There are 20 arguments that were to have been heard in March and April that
were cancelled as a result of the coronavirus. Of these, 10 are now
rescheduled by telephone in May. The other 10 are not rescheduled as of yet.

I've heard speculation in the past month that SCOTUS could simply choose to
decide the easy 9-0 cases solely on the basis of the existing briefs, without
oral argument. Given that the 10 arguments that are now scheduled for May
includes all the "time-sensitive", big, and controversial cases, and the 10
not rescheduled appear to be more boring circuit split cases, this does
increase my belief that they are planning on doing this.

As a side note, the case perhaps most relevant to many people in this site,
Google v Oracle, is one of the ones not rescheduled for argument.

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philwelch
> As a side note, the case perhaps most relevant to many people in this site,
> Google v Oracle, is one of the ones not rescheduled for argument.

Does this imply that it’s one of the easy cases? If so, which way do you think
they’re going to decide?

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BiteCode_dev
I wonder if only seeing the facts, and not seeing the faces or names of the
parties would make for fairer rulings in public courts.

Plus, using remote techs would make organizing the whole thing way easier, and
safer for the victim.

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JMTQp8lwXL
More fair, but voices still signal age and gender, so implicit bias remains.

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JoeAltmaier
And culture, and education.

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MrTortoise
as a fairly well off white dude i resent this attempt to make things less fair
for me!

I like how fair it is atm. I fare pretty good thanks. (this is a joke before
some muppet gets triggered)

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AnimalMuppet
You called?

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duxup
I wonder how they operate as far as tech goes.

I worked at a company where we had an 'executive IT support team' that
basically pushed all the buttons for executives when it came to conference
calls and other technical events.

It was an effective system.

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Endlessly
I have personally done telephonic hearings.

Basically, all the filings (motions & evidence) were handled by mail, clerks
scheduled the call via phone, then on the day of the hearing the clerks got
all the parties on the line — the judge entered the call, heard arguments,
issued an order, dispensed with signatures, had the clerks right up the order,
judge signed the order, clerks filed the order, and mail copies to both
parties.

Tech wise, it was dead simple.

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Endlessly
For context, vast majority of US courts as a results of the virus are moving
to telephonic hearings where needed or moving hearings to later dates as
possible.

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baybal2
US supreme court justices are very old people, with all except one having some
heath issue.

If they get infected, the chance of a lot of them being incapacitated or dying
is high.

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vowelless
And probably unprecedented.

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Balanceinfinity
Not surprised they are moving from in-person, but i am surprised they aren't
moving to a video system; so much of communications are visual.

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vowelless
What marginal value does video provide over telephone?

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mythrwy
To see if they are still awake?

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vowelless
Seems like a lot of work and bandwidth for something that could be simply
addressed with “are you there?”

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MrTortoise
does anyone still use telephone for important decisions?

its all f2f or video isnt it?

Expect more not less

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3fe9a03ccd14ca5
This is going to drive the “Is RBG actually dead?” conspiracy people crazy.

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jdhn
Doesn't she ask a lot of questions? I suppose some people who are prone to
QAnon type conspiracy theories will say that it's a deep fake synthesizer, but
unless she goes radio silent I think they'll probably not act up.

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r00fus
No amount of factual evidence actually deters the CT.

