Courts And Politics - Core hss

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courts link to politics

1nc courts link to politics

Courts link to politics
David Kuhn, Real Clear Politics Chief Political Correspondent, 6/29/ 12, The Incredible Polarization and
Politicization of the Supreme Court, www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/the-incrediblepolarization-and-politicization-of-the-supreme-court/259155/
about the Court's apolitical credibility are hardly alleviated. At least two-thirds of the 54 rulings during the Roberts Court have split along ideological lines. Roberts has agreed with the three most
Yet concerns

conservative justices -- Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia -- in at least eight in 10 non-unanimous rulings,
according to calculations by SCOTUSblog. Roberts has also presided over the two most polarized Court years in
American history. In 2006 and 2008, about one in three rulings were decided by a 5-to-4 vote. In the last three years, the
Roberts Court decided slightly less than a fifth of its cases by a one-vote majority. Notably, that's still a few percentage points above
the share of 5-to-4 rulings during Burger and Vinson Courts. The Supreme Court will consider controversial laws next term, including

rulings will remain politicized

the use of affirmative action. If past is prologue, major

. This is also
the most conservative Court since the New Deal. In a widely cited 2009 study, conservative judge and scholar Richard Posner, as
well as his colleague at the University of Chicago law school William Landes, ranked the ideology of 43 Supreme Court justices from
1937 to 2006. Four of the five most conservative judges served on the Court that year. None of the five most liberal judges did. Ruth
Bader Ginsburg was the only current judge to rank among the 10 most liberal justices. Posner and Landes also found that the
more ideologically polarized the Court was , meaning the greater its range from right to left, the greater the number
of cases decided by one vote. It found, critically, that ideology "matters more in the Supreme Court than in the court of
appeals." There have not only been more ideologically sorted rulings in recent decades. The most significant laws are

increasingly decided by the same one-vote margin that undermines the very "supreme" authority of the
Court. The 1966 Miranda decision, which defined police suspects' rights, was an early signal that 5-to-4 rulings were going to
shape this nation like never before. The 2000 Bush v. Gore was decided along the same narrow margin . In the
Roberts Court, 5-to-4 majorities have allowed unlimited corporate and union campaign spending, upheld an
individual's right to gun ownership, limited an employee's ability to file a pay discrimination, decided states
cannot impose mandatory life sentences on juvenile murderers without the possibility of parole, and limited classaction suits as well as decided the constitutionality of the health-care law. This

polarization has not

gone unnoticed . The judiciary remains the most trusted branch of government. Sixty-three percent of Americans
said in autumn 2011 that they have a "great deal" or a "fair amount" of faith in it. Yet that is the lowest share to express
trust in the judicial branch since 1976, when Gallup first asked the question. And the Supreme Court is especially
sullied. Prior to Thursday's decision, about three in four Americans agreed that "personal or political views influence" current Court
decisions, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News Poll. Yet

Court as apolitical

the public has not seen the

since, at least, it became more politically ordered. In 1946, a narrow plurality, four in 10
Americans, told Gallup that they "agree" that "the Supreme Court decides many questions largely on the basis of politics."

2nc courts link to politics

The plans ruling is blamed on Obama
Mr. Mirengoff 10 is an attorney in Washington, D.C. A.B., Dartmouth College J.D., Stanford Law
School, June 23 The Federalist Society Online Debate Series, http://www.fedsoc.org/debates/dbtid.41/default.asp
The other thing I found interesting was the degree to which Democrats used the hearings to attack the "Roberts Court." I don't
recall either party going this much on the offensive in this respect during the last three sets of hearings. What explains this
development? My view is that liberal Democratic politicians (and members of their base) think they lost the
argument during the last three confirmation battles. John Roberts and Samuel Alito "played" well, and

Sonia Sotomayor sounded like a conservative. The resulting frustration probably induced the
Democrats to be more aggressive in general and, in particular, to try to discredit Roberts and Alito by claiming they are
not the jurists they appeared to be when they made such a good impression on the public. I'm pretty sure the strategy didn't
work. First, as I said, these hearings seem not to have attracted much attention. Second, Senate Democrats are unpopular right
now, so their attacks on members of a more popular institution are not likely to resonate . Third, those who watched until

the bitter end saw Ed Whelan, Robert Alt and others persuasively counter the alleged examples of
"judicial activism" by the Roberts Court relied upon by the Democrats -- e.g., the Ledbetter case, which the
Democrats continue grossly to mischaracterize. There's a chance that the Democrats' latest partisan
innovation will come back to haunt them . Justice Sotomayor and soon-to-be Justice Kagan are on record
having articulated a traditional, fairly minimalist view of the role of judges . If a liberal majority
were to emerge -- or even if the liberals prevail in a few high profile cases -- the charge of "deceptive
testimony" could be turned against them. And if Barack Obama is still president at that time, he likely will
receive some of the blame .

Its linked to the President

Harrison 5
Lindsay Harrison, Lecturer in Law at the University of Miami School of Law, 11/18/2005, Does the Court
Act As "Political Cover" for the Other Branches?, http://legaldebate.blogspot.com/2005/11/does-court-actas-political-cover-for.html
Does the Court Act as "Political Cover" for the Other Branches? While the Supreme Court may have
historically been able to act as political cover for the President and/or Congress, that is not true in a world
post-Bush v. Gore. The Court is seen today as a politicized body, and especially now that we are in the
era of the Roberts Court, with a Chief Justice hand picked by the President and approved by the
Congress, it is highly unlikely that Court action will not, at least to some extent, be blamed on and/or

credited to the President and Congress . The Court can still get away with a lot
more than the elected branches since people don't understand the technicalities of legal doctrine like they
understand the actions of the elected branches; this is, in part, because the media does such a poor job
of covering legal news. Nevertheless, it is preposterous to argue that the Court is entirely insulated from
politics, and equally preposterous to argue that Bush and the Congress would not receive at least a large
portion of the blame for a Court ruling that, for whatever reason, received the attention of the public.

Plan galvanizes opposition to Obama

Greenwald 06
Glenn Greenwald, JD, Guardian Journalist who published Snowdens leaks, former GW Debater, , 2006,
Will Hamdan have any effect on the Bush Presidency?,
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_glenngreenwald_archive.html
Additionally, court opinions historically have a political impact as well as legal effects. Despite the
concerted, destructive attacks on the credibility of the Supreme Court by the likes of Mark Levin and Rush
Limbaugh, who hate and wage war on any institution (such as the media) which dares to challenge the
Powers of the President, Americans still retain a respect for the Supreme Court as an important

and credible institution. The Court's proclamation that the President has been acting beyond his
legal and constitutional authority strengthens that argument as a political matter.
It is also likely to further galvanize those in Congress and the media who
have been gradually taking a stand against the Administration. A Supreme Court ruling that is this

never confined to the legal realm, but

profound impact , in the political realm as well.

decisive, on an issue this significant, is virtually

almost always has impact, often

Citizens United proves

Zeleny 10
Jeff Zeleny, staff, NYT, January 21, 2010, Political Fallout From the Supreme Court Ruling,
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/political-fallout-from-the-supreme-court-ruling/

Todays ruling upends the nations campaign finance laws, allowing corporations and labor unions to
spend freely on behalf of political candidates. With less than 11 months before the fall elections, the
floodgates for political contributions will open wide, adding another element of intrigue to the
fight for control of Congress.
At first blush, Republican candidates would seem to benefit from this change in how political campaigns
are conducted in America. The political environment an angry, frustrated electorate seeking change in
Washington was already favoring Republicans. Now corporations, labor unions and a host of other
organizations can weigh in like never before.
But the populist showdown that was already brewing President Obama on Thursday sought to limit
the size of the nations banks will surely only intensify by the Supreme Courts ruling. The

even louder megaphones to

make their voices and viewpoints heard .

development means that both sides will have

Mr. Obama issued a statement a rare instance of a president immediately weighing in on a ruling
from the high court and said his administration would work with Congressional leaders to develop a
forceful response to this decision.
With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest
money in our politics, Mr. Obama said. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health
insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington
to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.
Republicans, of course, hailed the ruling as a victory for the First Amendment.
I am pleased that the Supreme Court has acted to protect the Constitutions First Amendment rights of
free speech and association, said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican
Senatorial Committee. These are the bedrock principles that underpin our system of governance and
strengthen our democracy.
Democrats, not surprisingly, said the ruling would be bad for democracy.
Giving corporate interests an outsized role in our process will only mean citizens get heard less, said
Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
We must look at legislative ways to make sure the ledger is not tipped so far for corporate interests that
citizens voices are drowned out.

at: not blamed on obama

Everything gets blamed on the Executive
Thomas McGarity, Endowed Chair in Administrative Law, University of Texas School of Law, May
2012, ARTICLE: ADMINISTRATIVE LAW AS BLOOD SPORT: POLICY EROSION IN A HIGHLY
PARTISAN AGE, 61 Duke L.J. 1671
In this Article, I raise the possibility that the nation has entered a period in which the population is so
deeply divided about the proper role of government, regulated industries are so willing to spend millions of
dollars to vindicate their interests, and political discourse is so unrestrained that an even more expansive
model of implementation may be warranted, at least in the context of

high-stakes

rulemaking initiatives . n23 First, the implementation game has spread to arenas that are
far less structured and far more political than the agency hearing rooms and appellate courtrooms of the
past. Second, the roster of players has expanded beyond agency and OIRA
staffs, advocates for the regulated industry and beneficiary groups, and congressional aides to include
individuals and organizations with broad policy agendas, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, think
tanks, grassroots organizations, media pundits , and Internet bloggers. Third, because many
parties play the implementation game in multiple arenas, the game has become far more strategic and
the range of allowable tactics has widened rather dramatically. Finally, in this deeply divided political
economy, the players in the implementation game no longer make a pretense of separation between
the domains of politics and administrative law, and they are far less restrained in the
rhetoric they employ to influence agency policymaking. n24
In this new milieu, "winning" can mean more than compelling unreasonable delays in agency action,
invoking APA procedures to impede the policymaking process, or persuading the agency to accept a
particular position on the relevant law and facts. Winning can consist of extracting promises from
nominees during the confirmation process, preventing the confirmation of disfavored nominees, or
preventing the confirmation of any agency leaders until the administration has agreed to change the
agency's decisionmaking structure. Winning can also mean incapacitating the agency by reducing its
annual appropriation, repealing the agency's organic act, or whittling away its regulatory authority through
rifle-shot riders attached to must-pass legislation. n25 The players are less reluctant to attack agencies
and the statutes those agencies administer head on. The players launch their attacks much earlier in the
evolution of regulatory programs, and they feel free to go beyond attacks on the agencies as institutions
to launch ad hominem attacks on agency decisionmakers.
In short, I raise the possibility that, for some high-stakes rulemaking initiatives in some areas of
regulation, implementation is not so much "politics by other means" as it is " politics as usual ."
And because politics is so very different from the deliberative, lawyer-dominated domain of traditional
administrative law, the word "law" may no longer be an accurate descriptor. Former U.S. [*1681]
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Arthur Levitt referred in 2010 to federal regulation
as a "kind of a blood sport" in which the regulated industries attempt "to make the particular agency"
promulgating an unwelcome regulation "look stupid or inept or venal." n27 If the implementation of
regulatory statutes has become a blood sport in important contexts, and if the goal of
administrative law extends beyond ensuring procedural regularity to a concern about the effective
implementation of legislation, then it would behoove administrative-law scholars to pay attention to the
larger setting in which informal rulemaking now takes place and to begin thinking about the implications of
these developments for the field.

at: visibility
Plans controversial ruling is perceived and causes
Congressional backlash
Uribe et al 2013 Alicia, Lecturer in Political Science University of Illinois, PhD University of
Washington St. Louis, The Influence of Congressional Preferences on Legislative Overrides of Supreme
Court Decisions, Law & Society Review,
http://faculty.ucmerced.edu/thansford/Articles/congress_reaction_to_court.pdf
Conclusion Congress and the Supreme Court interact in a separation-of-powers framework as each
attempts to shape policy. While the broader congressional politics literature provides convincing empirical
evidence that legislative preferences have a significant effect on Members votes and the passage of
legislation (e.g., Poole and Rosenthal 2007), no systematic evidence demonstrates legislative overrides
of Supreme Court opinions result from congressional preferences. This lack of empirical support exists
despite the widespread application of a spatial modeling approach to understand Congress-Court
relations, which assumes overrides occur when Court decisions are ideologically distant from Congress.

Our first goal was to show, consistent with existing spatial models in the literature, that
Congress is more likely to pass laws overriding Supreme Court decisions the further
ideologically removed a decision is from the legislative gridlock interval. Our statistical results,
for the first time, demonstrate Congress overrides Court decisions the

further ideologically removed it is from them . A two standard deviation

shift around the mean of the ideological distance of Congress from a Court decision increases the
Congress takes notice of the
policy import of a Court decision and is more likely to reject
those it dislikes on ideological grounds . We therefore provide evidence in

likelihood of an override by 66.4%. This result indicates

support of a core part of SOP models, showing Congress does indeed respond to Court
decisions based on its preferences. This result is important because it confirms a fundamental
component of nearly all SOP explanations of the relationship between Congress and the Court. Future
studies can now be confident that their assertion that legislative preferences influence overrides
is on a strong empirical footing. We further demonstrate Congress does not act strategically by
avoiding legislative overrides when the Court is likely to reject them. The implication is

that Congress is motivated by position-taking goals rather than the

ultimate effect of its policy actions and the separation-ofpowers. That is, our data suggest
Congress cares more about the short-term gains from overriding legislation (e.g., passing the
legislation for electoral purposes) than the ultimate shape of the policies it chooses to override.
This result suggests the Court may, at least when it concerns the ultimate effect of override legislation,
have greater influence on the ultimate location of public policy. Of course, this conclusion is tempered by
the fact that Congress and the Court rarely disagree about whether the status quo should be altered;
Congress wishes to override a Court decision preferred by the Court only 2.5% of the time in our data. As
Dahl (1957) famously declared, the Court is not often out-of-step with the elected branches, and as a
result Congress and the Court tend to agree on the desirability of previously decided Court cases. Finally,
we show the effect of ideological distance matters for all types of Court decisions, including constitutional

attempt to
insulate its decisions from congressional override by using
constitutional interpretation, it appears this tactic does not
work . When Congress is ideologically distant from a Court
decision , regardless of whether the decision is based on constitutional, statutory or common law

ones. Thus, while the Court may, as some suggest (e.g., King 2007),

interpretation, it is more likely to override it . This result is new to the literature, and it
means subsequent studies cannot exclusively focus on statutory cases.

courts avoid politics

2ac courts avoid politics

Courts shield
Keith E. Whittington 5, Cromwell Professor of Politics Princeton University, Interpose Your
Friendly Hand: Political Supports for the Exercise of Judicial Review by the United States Supreme
Court, American Political Science Review, 99(4), November, p. 585, 591-592

Political leaders in such a situation will have reason to support or, at minimum, tolerate the active
exercise of judicial review. In the American context, the presidency is a particularly useful site for
locating such behavior. The Constitution gives the president a powerful role in selecting and speaking to
federal judges. As national party leaders, presidents and presidential candidates are both conscious of
the fragmented nature of American political parties and sensitive to policy goals that will not be shared
by all of the presidents putative partisan allies in Congress. We would expect political support for
judicial review to make itself apparent in any of four fields of activity: (1) in the selection of activist
judges, (2) in the encouragement of specific judicial action consistent with the political needs of coalition
leaders, (3) in the congenial reception of judicial action after it has been taken, and (4)
in the public expression of generalized support for judicial supremacy in the articulation of constitutional
commitments. Although it might sometimes be the case that judges and elected officials
more-or-less

act in

explicit concert to shift the politically appropriate decisions into the judicial

arena for resolution, it is also the case that judges might act independently of elected officials but
nonetheless in ways that elected officials find congenial to their own interests and are willing
and able to accommodate . Although Attorney General Richard Olney and perhaps President
Grover Cleveland thought the 1894 federal income tax was politically unwise and socially unjust, they did
not necessarily therefore think judicial intervention was appropriate in the case considered in more detail
later (Eggert 1974, 101 14). If a majority of the justices and Cleveland-allies in and around the
administration had more serious doubts about the constitutionality of the tax, however, the White House
would hardly feel aggrieved. We should be equally interested in how judges might exploit the political

space open to them to render controversial decisions and in how elected officials might
anticipate the utility of future acts of judicial review to their own interests. [CONTINUES] There are some
issues that politicians cannot easily handle. For individual legislators, their constituents may be sharply
divided on a given issue or overwhelmingly hostile to a policy that the legislator would nonetheless like to
see adopted. Party leaders, including presidents and legislative leaders, must similarly sometimes
manage deeply divided or cross-pressured coalitions. When faced with such issues, elected officials may

actively seek to turn over controversial political questions to the courts so as to

circumvent a paralyzed legislature and avoid the political fallout
that would come with taking direct action themselves. As Mark Graber (1993) has detailed in cases
such as slavery and abortion, elected officials may prefer judicial resolution of disruptive political
issues to direct legislative action, especially when the courts are believed to be sympathetic to the
politicians own substantive preferences but even when the attitude of the courts is uncertain or
unfavorable (see also, Lovell 2003). Even when politicians do not invite judicial intervention, strategically
minded courts will take into account not only the policy preferences of well-positioned policymakers but
also the willingness of those potential policymakers to act if doing so means that they must assume
responsibility for policy outcomes. For cross-pressured politicians and coalition leaders,

shifting

blame for controversial decisions to the Court and obscuring their own relationship to those
decisions may preserve electoral support and coalition unity without threatening active judicial review
(Arnold 1990; Fiorina 1986; Weaver 1986). The conditions for the exercise of judicial review may be
relatively favorable when judicial invalidations of legislative policy can be managed to the electoral benefit
of most legislators. In the cases considered previously, fractious coalitions produced legislation that

presidents and party leaders deplored but were unwilling to block. Divisions within the governing coalition
can also prevent legislative action that political leaders want taken, as illustrated in the following case.

1ar courts avoid politics

Obama will deflect blame studies prove
Alison M. MARTENS, Political Science at University of Louisville, 7 [Reconsidering Judicial
Supremacy: From the Counter-Majoritarian Difficulty to Constitutional Transformations, Perspectives on
Politics, 2007, Vol. 5, Issue 3, p. 447-459]
The outline of this revised research agenda, begins by looking at a 1993 article written by Mark Graber challenging the
countermajoritarian difficulty paradigm. Graber's observations point to the importance of studying systemic transformations, such as
the evolution of judicial supremacy. Using historical case studies on abortion, the Dred Scott controversy,

and anti-trust issues to study perceived incidents of judicial independence, he contends that scholars who
seek to justify independent judicial policymaking, even in the face of believed democratic deficiencies, misunderstand and
inaccurately represent the relationships between justices and elected officials. By looking at the dialogues between these parties it
becomes apparent that judicial independence, when it actually occurs, is often exercised at the invitation of

elected officials, and in the absence of any expressed majoritarian choice, in order to resolve political

controversies that elected officials cannot or do not want to resolve

themselves . Hence the counter-majoritarian difficulty can be more appropriately characterized as the non-majoritarian
difficulty.33
According to Graber, where crosscutting issues

divide a lawmaking majority an invitation is often tacitly but

consciously issued to the Court by political elites to resolve the political controversy that they
themselves are unwilling or unable to address, thereby foisting

disruptive political debates of on the Supreme Court .34 Graber writes

that elected officials encourage or tacitly support judicial policymaking both as a
means of avoiding political responsibility for making tough decisions and as a
means of pursuing controversial policy goals that they cannot publicly advance through open
legislative and electoral politics. 35 Furthermore, political and electoral advantages can accrue by ducking these tough
questions and sending them on to be settled by the Court. Graber explains that elites (including the executive) can
benefit from passing the political buck to the Court in multiple ways. Party activists can be redirected to
focus on legal action in the courts, thereby reducing pressure on mainstream politicians who wish
to maintain a more politically viable moderate stance. Voters can be redirected to focus any ire they might
have over policy outcomes on the Court. Politicians can take responsive positions on judicial
decisions that may make for a good sound bite but really require no politically
accountable action on their part. Finally, political compromise between the legislature and the executive might be had
under the table of Court policymaking. 36 This is an impressive set of political benefits that can stem from a practice of judicial
supremacy that creates a Court equipped with the interpretive authority and legitimacy to make controversial public policies.
Graber's article, then, highlights the perversion of political accountability that can possibly occur where everyone in the system, the
public included, accepts and expects interpretive authority to reside with the courts.

Court action preserves PC

Mark TUSHNET, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, 8 [Book Review:
The Obama Presidency and The Roberts Court: Some Hints from Political Science, Constitutional
Commentary, Summer 2008, 25 Const. Commentary 343, Lexis]
What can the courts do for a resilient regime? Presidents

and Congress have limited time and political

energy. They will spend them on what they regard as central issues. But at any time there will be
"outliers" - geographic regions as yet uncommitted to the regime's constitutional understandings, or
substantive areas that plainly require change if those understandings are to become deeply implanted in society, yet politically
too touchy [*347] or relatively unimportant to Congress. "For the affiliated leader, enhancing judicial authority to
define and enforce constitutional meaning provides an efficient mechanism for supervising and

correcting those who might fail to adhere to the politically preferred constitutional vision" (pp. 105-06).
The courts can serve as a convenient but essentially administrative mechanism for bringing these
outliers into the constitutional order. n16
In addition, the courts may have rhetorical resources unavailable to presidents. Their obligation to
explain their decisions, and the fact that they make decision after decision, means that they
have an opportunity to develop a reasonably general account of the resilient regime's
constitutional understandings. In Whittington's words, "It is the classic task of judges within the Anglo-American
tradition ... to render new decisions and lay down new rules that can be explicated as a mere working out of previously established
legal principles" (p. 84). Presidents, in contrast, only sporadically make speeches illuminating those understandings.
More boldly, affiliated

presidents may try to use the courts to "overcomee

gridlock" (p. 124) caused by the strategic positions recalcitrant opponents of the new constitutional regime
may occupy. And, if not "use the courts," at least rely on the courts to take the
initiative , because "the Court can sometimes move forward on the constitutional agenda
where other political officials cannot" (p. 125). "Coalition leaders might be constrained by the needs of coalition
maintenance," but "judges have a relatively free hand" (p. 125). This "use" of the courts, though, poses risks. The
courts may push the regime's constitutional principles further and faster than is politically wise, and the regime's political leaders
may find themselves on the defensive. Indeed, in this way the courts can contribute to making a resilient regime vulnerable, which
may be part of the story about the Warren Court and the demise of the New Deal/Great Society regime. n17
[*348] Preemptive presidents face a special strategic problem. Sometimes they take office because they manage to persuade
the public that they remain committed to a resilient regime's constitutional vision even if in their hearts they want to transform the
regime. n18 At other times they take office as a regime becomes vulnerable, but do not themselves have the program, vision, or
charisma to be reconstructive presidents themselves. n19 They are likely to face opposition in Congress and to some
degree in the courts. But

they can turn divided government to their advantage by seeking judicial

confirmation of executive prerogative. The judges in place might be sympathetic to such claims for doctrinal and
political reasons. They will have "inherited from affiliated administrations" (p. 169) doctrines supporting executive authority. And,
though Whittington doesn't make this point explicitly, they may see the preemptive president as an accident, soon to be replaced by
an affiliated one whose exercises of presidential power they will want to endorse. Finally, preemptive presidents need to

get their authority from somewhere when they face congressional opposition, as they will. They don't
have much of their own, but they can try "to borrow from the authority of the courts in order to hold off
their political adversaries" (p. 195).
One final point before I move to some speculations about the future of judicial supremacy. Whittington emphasizes the growth of
judicial supremacy during the twentieth century, both in terms of the judges' self-understanding and, perhaps more importantly, in
terms of the degree of political commitment to judicial supremacy (p. 25). He suggests that politicians have had

increasingly strong reasons to support the Supreme Court. The reconstructive presidency of Ronald Reagan
was less ambitious than that of Franklin Roosevelt (p. 232), assuring the American people that Reagan's policies would strengthen
rather than destroy the social safety nets that Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson's regimes had created. Even a reconstructive
president could hope that the Supreme Court would assist in articulating regime principles in the way the Court ordinarily does for
affiliated presidents. Further, drawing again on Skowronek's account of the [*349] ways in which regimes leave a residue even after
they have been displaced, Whittington describes the doctrinal thickening that occurred during the twentieth century with respect to
essentially every possible ideological and political commitment a President could have (p. 283). Doctrinal thickening means that
every member of a ruling coalition will have some basis in constitutional law for its assertions that the Constitution requires
satisfaction of its policy preferences, and that the Court cannot possibly satisfy all the demands on it. n20 So, for the future, we
might expect Presidents to have increasingly ambivalent views about the Supreme Court. In the twenty-first century, the

Supreme Court will be useful and annoying to every President - useful because the Court can serve to
articulate regime principles and can do some policy work that Presidents would rather not

expend time and political capital on

, and annoying because the Court's failure to satisfy all

the demands emanating from a President's political supporters will put pressure on the President to do something about the Court.

1ar empirics
Empirics conservatives backlash against Roberts for the ACA
ruling not Obama
Robert Shrum, The Daily Beast, 7/2/12, "The Right-Wing Backlash Against John Roberts,"
www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/02/the-right-wing-backlash-against-john-roberts-overobamacare.html
In that spirit, conservatives spun out an explanation, a sinister one, for what Roberts did. In a Washington
Post article on second-guessing the ruling, some commentators contended that Roberts switched
sides after originally intending to vote against health-care reform. Their proof? The wording of the
opinions. Fox News happily propagated the theory, citing the fact that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgs
concurrence was referred to as a dissent in the dissentwhich, therefore, must have been the majority
opinion before Roberts apostatized .
In fact, in her concurrence, Ginsburg also was dissenting from the chief justices ruling that the Affordable
Care Act could not be upheld under the congressional power to regulate commerce. That ruling, for which
there was a five-person majority, may have laid the rationale for blocking future progressive measures.
Robertss opinion was genuinely conservative; as John OQuinn, an official in the Bush Justice
Department, said, I read the opinion ... and realized that it was filled with thoughtful reasoning.
This weekend, CBS reported an unprecedented leak, presumably from sore losers inside the court
where else could it come from?that Roberts had switched his vote a month ago. The right appears
ready to shred any institution and promote any myth to assure its success or explain its failures. But the
conspiracy theory that the chief justice changed or capitulated, as The Wall Street Journal alleged, is
confounded by the reality, too little noticed at the time, that he previewed the guiding principle of his
decision during the oral arguments in March. He told a counsel for the plaintiffs challenging the law: The
idea that the [individual] mandate is something separate from whether you want to call it a penalty or a tax
doesnt seem to make much sense. Thats exactly the grounds on which he validated health-care reform
the clearly constitutional authority of Congress to levy a tax, in this case on those who dont purchase
health-care coverage.
As the

right wing backlash

raged, Roberts, who was preparing to leave for a meeting in

Malta, joked to a conference of judges and lawyers that he was headed for an

island fortress. It

impregnable

seemed like a good idea. The rest of America is left to contend with a
Republican Party whose attitude seems to be my way or it was highway robbery, a party that sees
intrigue in every issue and a plot in every Obama policy, or even in his mere presence in the White
House.

1ar no spill over

Decision controversy doesnt spill over
Richard L. Pacelle, Prof-Political Science-Georgia Southern, 02
(The Role of the Supreme Court in American Politics: The Least Dangerous Branch? 2002 p 175-6)
The limitations on the Court are not as significant as they once seemed. They constrain the Court, but the
boundaries of those constraints are very broad. Justiciability is self-imposed and seems to be a function
of the composition of the Court, rather than a philosophical position. Checks and balances are seldom
successfully invoked against the judiciary, in part because the Court has positive institutional
resources to justify its decisions. The Supreme Court has a relatively high level of diffuse support that
comes, in part, from a general lack of knowledge by the public and that contributes to its legitimacy.[6]

The cloak of the Constitution and the symbolism attendant to the marble palace and the law
contribute as well. As a result, presidents and Congress should pause before striking at the Court or
refusing to follow its directives. Indeed, presidents and members of Congress can often use

unpopular Court decisions as political cover. They cite the need to

enforce or support such decisions even though they disagree with them. In the end, the
institutional limitations do not mandate judicial restraint, but turn the focus to judicial capacity, the subject
of the next chapter.

Plan is shielded from political pressure

Ward 09 (Artemus Ward, Professor at NIU, Political Foundations of Judicial Supremacy, Congress and
The Presidency, pg. 119)
After the old order has collapse the once- united, new-regime coalition begins to fracture as original
commitments are extended to new issues. In chapter 3 Whittington combines Skowronek's articulation
and disjunctive categories into the overarching "affiliated" presidencies as both seek to elaborate the
regime begun under reconstructive leaders. By this point in the ascendant regime, Bourts are staffed by
justices from the dominant ruling coalition via the appointment process - and Whittington spends time on
appointment politics here and more fully in chapter 4. Perhaps counter-intuitively, affiliated political

actors - including presidents - encourage Courts to exercise vetoes and operate in issue areas
of relatively low political salience. Of course, this "activism" is never used against the affiliated president
per se. Instead, affiliated Courts correct for the overreaching of those who operate outside the preferred
constitutional vision, which are often state and local governments who need to be brought into line with
nationally dominant constitutional commitments. Whittington explains why it is easier for affilitated

judges, rather than affiliated presidents, to rein in outliers and conduct constitutional
maintenance. The latter are saddled with controlling opposition political figures, satisfying shortterm political demands, and navigating intraregime gridlock and political thickets. Furthermore,
because of their electoral accountability, politicians engage in position-taking, credit-claiming, and
blame-avoidance behavior. By contrast, their judicial counterparts are relatively sheltered from
political pressures and have more straightforward decisional processes. Activist Courts can
take the blame for advancing and legitimizing constitutional commitments that might
have electoral costs. In short, a division of labor exists between politicians and judges affiliated with the
dominant regime.

yes announced now

2nc yes announced now

The af should have to defend immediate implementation
a) Infinitely regressive anything other than immediacy is
arbitrary allowing the 2AC to choose when their plan is
implemented kills 1NC strategy
b) Kills neg ground every disad has temporally sensitive
uniqueness allowing them to delay plan implementation lets
them spike out of everything. Immediate action is the only
basis for predictable research and preparation. The alternative
makes any link highly probabilistic at best.
They can start announcing in the fall
SCOTUS 12 (Supreme Court of the United States, 7/25/2012 The Court and Its Procedures,
http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/procedures.aspx)
A Term of the Supreme Court begins, by statute, on the first Monday in October . Usually Court
sessions continue until late June or early July. The Term is divided between "sittings," when the Justices
hear cases and deliver opinions, and intervening "recesses," when they consider the business before the
Court and write opinions. Sittings and recesses alternate at approximately two-week intervals.

The plan is two actions a Court ruling and a change to

relevant surveillance laws if the ruling is announced in June,
it takes out all of their Court blame shifting arguments which
magnifies the link to the plan.

at: decide now, announce later

Plan is not a secret decision by the Justices it is a ruling on
US surveillance laws. If the ruling is not made immediately
then the plan is not immediate.
Their model Court decisions is unrealistic and anti-educational
Peters 14
J. Peters, American Legal Encyclopedia, August 24, 2014, Supreme Court of the United States: Writing
Opinions, http://lawi.us/court-writing-opinions/

Justices may take weeks or even months to complete their opinions, and votes may change
during this period. The justices circulate drafts of the opinions and sometimes write memos to
explain their views. Dissenting justices sometimes decide to go along with the majority, and
justices initially in the majority may decide to support the dissenting view. In some cases enough
justices change their votes that an opinion that began as the Court's majority opinion becomes a
dissenting opinion. Because the justices can and often do change their votes right up until the
moment the decision is publicly announced, there is often a considerable amount of discussion
and negotiation to shape the direction, tone, and analysis of the Court's opinion.

not announced now

2ac not announced now
Normal means is courts will announce their decision at the end
of the term
Mondak 92 [Jeffery J., assistant professor of political science @ the University of Pittsburgh.
Institutional legitimacy, policy legitimacy, and the Supreme Court. American Politics Quarterly, Vol. 20,
No. 4, Lexis]
The process described by the political capital hypothesis acts as expected in the laboratory, and the logic
of the link between institutional and policy legitimacy has thus gained strong empirical corroboration.
However, the dynamic's pervasiveness defies precise estimation due to the limitations of available public
opinion data. Still, the results reported here are provocative. First, this view of legitimation may apply to
institutions beyond the Supreme Court. Consequently, efforts to use this theory in the study of other
institutions may yield evidence supportive of a general process. A second concern is how the Court
responds to its institutional limits. Specifically, strategy within the Court can be considered from the
context of legitimacy. For example, what tactics may the Court employ to reduce the erosion of
political capital? By releasing controversial rulings at the end of a term, for instance, the Court
may afford itself a healing period, a time to repair damaged credibility prior to the next round of
efforts at conferring policy legitimacy. This suggests a third issue, the manner in which institutional
approval is replenished. Does institutional support return to some equilibrium once dispute surrounding a
particular ruling fades, or must the Court release popular edicts to offset the effects of its controversial
actions?

Its not a delay the plan immediately rules [X] but its not
announced publicly until later
Thats the most realistic and predictable way to interpret the
plan the negs interpretation has no basis in the literature
and skews education about the Court

1ar not announced now

Its the only reasonable way to interpret the plan
The Hill 13 (6/9, Staffwriter Sam Baker Decision on gay marriage highlights Supreme Courts term
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/304225-decision-on-gay-marriage-highlights-supreme-courts-summerterm#ixzz2gJR8Vkpt)
The marriage rulings will likely be the last ones released before the justices leave town for summer
vacations and teaching positions, although the specific timing is hard to predict. The court doesnt
announce when specific decisions are coming, or even set a fixed end date by which all decisions will be
released. But the last rulings, which are usually the most controversial , tend to come out at the end of
June. (The courts ruling on ObamaCare, for example, was released June 28.)

Their link proves it!

US Courts 13 (United States Courts, U.S. Supreme Court Procedures, Accessed
2/18/2013,
http://www.uscourts.gov/EducationalResources/ConstitutionResources/SeparationOfPowers/US
SupremeCourtProcedures.aspx)
All opinions of the Court are, typically, be handed down by the last day of the Court's term (the day in

late June/early July

when the Court recesses for the summer). With the exception of this
deadline, there are no rules concerning when decisions must be released. Typically, decisions that are
unanimous are released sooner than those that have concurring and dissenting opinions. While some

controversial
opinions , even if heard in October, may not be handed down until the last day of the
term . A majority of Justices must agree to all of the contents of the Court's opinion before it is publicly

unanimous decisions are handed down as early as December, some

delivered. Justices do this by "signing onto" the opinion. The Justice in charge of writing the opinion must
be careful to take into consideration the comments and concerns of the others who voted in the majority.
If this does not happen, there may not be enough Justices to maintain the majority. On rare occasions in
close cases, a dissenting opinion later becomes the majority opinion because one or more Justices
switches their votes after reading the drafts of the majority and dissenting opinions. No opinion is
considered the official opinion of the Court until it is delivered in open Court (or at least made available to
the public). On days when the Court is hearing oral arguments, decisions may be handed down before
the arguments are heard. During the months of May and June , the Court meets
at 10 a.m. every Monday to release opinions. During the last week of the term, additional days may
be designated as "opinion days."

at: can announce now

Announcements dont even begin until May
Ward 10 (Jake, Bilski Decision Tomorrow (Thursday, June 17th)? Maybe?, Anticipate This! (Patent
and Trademark Law Blog), 6-17, http://anticipatethis.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/bilski-decision-tomorrowthursday-june-17th-maybe/)

In mid-May until the end of June, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) releases
orders and opinions. SCOTUS has yet to issue a number of decisions this term, however, and it
is rapidly moving toward summer recess. Most notable from a patent law perspective is that the
decision in Bilski v. Kappos, which was argued in November 2009, has yet to be decided.

fisa links to politics

fisa action links to politics

Highly visible
Levy 13
Pema Levy, staff writer, IB Times, July 17, 2013, NSA FISA Controversy: Congress Looks To Reform
Secret Court, http://www.ibtimes.com/nsa-fisa-controversy-congress-looks-reform-secret-court-1348875

Since former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the government is
collecting a significant amount of data from American citizens, members of Congress have begun to
look seriously at the secret court approving these surveillance activities.
Beginning last month, numerous bills have been put forward to make the court more transparent
and trustworthy. On Wednesday, a House Judiciary Hearing will examine how the federal government is
running programs that were approved by the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court. Though
some lawmakers have been sounding alarm bells about the court for a few years, current

bipartisan interest in the courts activities put the FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) at

the center of possible congressional responses to Snowdens leaks.

I think the public is extremely concerned about the metadata that is being collected, said Rep. Steve
Cohen, D-Tenn., who has put forward a proposal to reform the secret court. I think because of that
massive concern, that because the Snowden situation has maintained itself in the news,
questions about the court have not been as front-burner as they are now, Cohen said.

Civil liberties advocates also feel that the FISA court is where they are most likely to win
reforms, particularly when it comes to increasing transparency. "In terms of issues that have
bipartisan support and are more likely than others to go forward, I would agree that this is one of those
issues, said Sharon Bradford Franklin, a senior counsel at the Constitution Project, a nonpartisan legal
research and advocacy group.
In response to abuses of the governments spying powers, Congress created the FISC in the 1978
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to approve warrant applications for surveillance activities related to
national security. For years, the court appeared to function just as Congress had intended, even though
the process is one-sided: the government seeks approval for an operation, and there is no pushback from
a counterparty to argue that the operation is overreaching. But in light of the recently leaked documents
detailing the vast scope of the National Security Agencys surveillance programs, members of Congress
are beginning to question whether the secret court is acting as an effective check on the governments
spying operations. In fact, recent revelations show that the scope and functions of the court have

vastly expanded in recent years.

Saps focus
Greenemeier 14
Larry Greenemeier, associate editor of technology coverage for Scientific American Online, Scientific
American, January 16, 2014, Obama to Speak on NSA Surveillance Controversy,
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/obama-to-speak-out-on-nsa-surveillance-controversy/
The recommendations, and Obamas response to them, also raise several questions over any
changes a chief executive can implement on his own versus those that will require changes to
existing laws. Almost anything that involves turning off programs, he can do on his own, says
Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow and research director in public law at The Brookings Institution. The
president doesnt have the authority to make changes to data-collection programs such as Section 215
that are codified in a law. This would include requiring telecom companies to retain customer metadata
that the NSA could later request via a court order.
That also means theres no quick fix for the headaches caused by Snowdens revelations. For starters
theres not broad agreement in Congress about the direction the surveillance work should go

the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence sees the need for only minor changes, whereas the Senate
Judiciary Committee and much of the House have taken the position that the Section 215 program end
entirely, Wittes says.
Regardless of the recommendations that Obama accepts or rejects, the timing of his speech is
notable for at least two reasons: Apparently, the surveillance backlash has

distracted the

Obama administration to such an extent that the president is devoting a separate speech to the
issue rather than including it in his January 28 State of the Union Address. Yet the White House has
scheduled Obama to address these issues just before a holiday weekend, a time slot that government
organizations and companies often use to release news theyd rather not see get a lot of attention.