How exactly was it only a 5-4 ruling to allow states to charge sales tax on Internet sales? States can charge tax on brick and mortar stores, but web commerce is somehow exempt just because it's processed electronically? I'd really like to know what dumb thought process was going through the heads of the FOUR dissenting justices. No doubt some "omg taxes are bad for consumers!!1" or "omg this will hurt my overlord, Jeff Bezos!!1" crap.
@rbe_expert The thinking going through their mind was likely "overturning precedent just because we think it was a bad precedent is a dangerous, slippery slope."
However you may feel about their decisions (and heaven knows I have feelings about their decisions) they do mostly try to adhere to the concept of stare decisis.
I recommend checking out the Supreme Court liveblog of the case; the case is more complex than you're presenting it to be.
@eleanor While I agree that cases CAN be more complicated than they first appear, I can't imagine what could be complicated about this case. What is the difference between buying from a store directly and buying from a store via a wire? Legal precedent is not a good excuse to preserve overcomplication and, especially, loss of important tax funds needed to pay for government.
@rbe_expert I would like you to pause for a moment and imagine a world in which the judicial system uses "judgment" instead of "legal precedent" to make decisions.
If you're curious how messy this can get, Rejected Princesses has a pretty good, pretty basic primer on what tends to happen: civil war.
It's a fun read.
@eleanor @rbe_expert sorry to butt in here but i thought this was a super enlightening explanation - thanks!
it seems like there are a lot of high profile 5-4 cases that fall along party lines, which seems to indicate "judgment" does still play a big role. do you have any thoughts on that? (totally understand if you want to be done with this though)
Um. One thing to note is that "party lines" in terms of the Judicial system are NOT partisan in the way we generally mean it; whatever the parties might WANT from the people they appoint, yes judges usually fall into two categories, but those categories are not typically (nothing about this administration has been typical) GOP/DEM but rather the divisions are more like:
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1. "originalist" / "contextualist" (think Scalia and the 'Gun Control' cases -- and the fact that Mass. had gun control laws on the books in 1775)
2. "willing to legislate from the bench" / "our job is not to legislate." (often comes up in equality cases)
3. "what they said" / "what they obviously meant" (typically happens when they're faced with interpreting a particularly stupid Congressional decision; sometimes they go back to Congressional records to figure it out).
This truism is pretty important to remember: "Hard cases make bad law."
It's not the Supreme Court's job to think about the CASE. It's their job to think about the LAW.
That's what people weren't seeing with the most recent GLBT rights bakery case -- the Supreme Court DOES NOT DARE focus on the immediate implications for the case they are considering, most of the time. Their job is bigger -- and more heartbreaking -- than that. The implications impact our whole society.
@valrus Does that answer your question? I don't mind explaining -- it's my summer break, so I have time, and I think it's important that people be able to understand the systems that make up our government, since, you know, #democracy
Caveat: I'm not an expert, but there's probably a level of imposter syndrome there -- I did pass the bar and I do enjoy explaining things. I'm just not literally a constitutional lawyer though I worked for one my 1L summer.
@eleanor Yes, very informative. Thanks!