Justice stresses need to defer to supreme court rulings in spite of his own disregard in overturning right to abortion

Summary

Clarence Thomas criticized the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals for ignoring Supreme Court precedent in a case involving David Smith, convicted of attempted murder, whose sentence was overturned due to procedural concerns.

Thomas argued the court violated the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act by re-evaluating evidence rather than deferring to previous rulings.

Critics highlighted Thomas’s hypocrisy, noting his role in overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, disregarding decades of precedent and leading to abortion bans in over 20 states.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    20·
    2 days ago

    Thomas’s hypocrisy

    looks at article

    He’s talking about a lower court not following a Supreme Court precedent.

    The Supreme Court is able to overrule Supreme Court precedent in later cases. It happens only rarely, but it does happen. There’s a list of such rulings somewhere I remember on Wikipedia, several pages. Roe v. Wade was one such example.

    But lower courts are not supposed to do that.

    goes looking for Wikipedia page

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_overruled_United_States_Supreme_Court_decisions

    This is a list of decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States that have been explicitly overruled, in part or in whole, by a subsequent decision of the Court. It does not include decisions that have been abrogated by subsequent constitutional amendment or by subsequent amending statutes.

    As of 2018, the Supreme Court had overruled more than 300 of its own cases.[1]

    • Serinus@lemmy.world
      10·
      2 days ago

      It’s nuance that doesn’t matter.

      The fact is that this Supreme Court is a joke, and why should anyone respect it in any way?

      He is the one who destroyed the credibility of the court. The precedent that the SC has set is that precedent doesn’t matter. The judge should do what he thinks is fair. He shouldn’t be bound by rules that very clearly don’t bind anyone else, including the fifth district court.

    • wjrii@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Yeah, as deliciously ironic as it is that it was Thomas who was tasked with this, lower courts are supposed to rule based on precedent, and if anybody is going to overturn that precedent, it needs to be SCOTUS. Now, back in the day that would be done to overturn bullshit like Dred Scott v Sandford or Pace v Alabama once people finally got their heads far enough out of their assholes.

      This court? Not so much.