US Politics: Check with a Court before you see your Doctor

[The Marquis de Leech]

I would agree (the damn thing was invented to be humane), but there's the ancient argument as to how long you remain conscious. The current view is that it's somewhere between two and thirteen seconds. Two seconds is hypothetical unconsciousness due to massive drop in air pressure, whereas thirteen seconds is how long the brain can function with just the oxygen in the blood in the head.

So the guillotine is either very quick and painless, or it's thirteen seconds of utter hell.

[Free Northman Reborn]

I would agree (the damn thing was invented to be humane), but there's the ancient argument as to how long you remain conscious. The current view is that it's somewhere between two and thirteen seconds. Two seconds is hypothetical unconsciousness due to massive drop in air pressure, whereas thirteen seconds is how long the brain can function with just the oxygen in the blood in the head.

So the guillotine is either very quick and painless, or it's thirteen seconds of utter hell.

Say again???

Friggin hell. Are you saying that one can potentially still be alive and conscious if your head is detached from your body? As in, you could be looking back at your body, from where your decapitated head has rolled to a standstill?

Jeepers. I never heard that theory before.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Potentially. It's rather hard to get good data on the matter.

[SkynJay]

Now I am confused. If there is a possibility that people remain conscious for 13 seconds from decapitation, wouldn't the same be true of hanging? Don't they both break the spinal column?

[TrueMetis]

Potentially. It's rather hard to get good data on the matter.

Especially as some signs of consciousness can be reflex rather than actually being consciousness.

[awesome possum]

Honestly, I wish we could all drop the pretense that federal judges are not politicians.

I thought that pretense had been fairly thoroughly dropped right around the time Scalia managed to stop a certain recount in Florida that rumors had going against the Republican presidential candidate.

And this guy is one of my new heroes among Democrats by the way to handles one of those insane Fox News parrots.

On C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, a caller from Michigan asked for the Connecticut congressman to try to defend a laundry list of grievances he had with President Barack Obama, including the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, and the IRS scandal.

Himes smiled during much of the statement, during which the caller rattled off a number of complaints, including the claim that the White House and not Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was responsible for the October 2013 government shutdown. He also referenced older issues like his comments about the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and the Justice Department’s Fast and Furious program.

“Any other president would have been laughed out of office by now if he’d have been a Republican,” the caller concluded. “This guy gets away with murder!”

“That was quite a list,” Himes said with a laugh.

“I will try to attend to — actually, I’m not going to,” he said. “Look, with all due respect, Bob, maybe a little more C-SPAN and a little less Fox News. That was the grab bag of everything that Fox News and my friends on the Republican Caucus of the House in particular have tried to hang on the president.”

Listening to that callers little tirade, you want to think, "this guy is just a minority of the Republican party. He's inconsequential." Until you realize that he is pretty much a standard bearer among the GOP now. These beliefs, almost all of which have no basis in reality and have been thoroughly debunked, are absolute truths to a subsection of our country. They do not deal in facts because they just create their own "facts."

[Free Northman Reborn]

Potentially. It's rather hard to get good data on the matter.

I just googled it, out of morbid fascination, and came up with tales from the largest mass experiment with decapitation in history - which was of course the aftermath of the French Revolution.

Apparently executioners picked up the head of one woman who was executed and slapped her cheek, after which her expression turned to one of indignation.

After that, they actually asked the condemned to become participants in a "study " of sorts, by asking them to blink if they could, after the deed was done. Reportedly, some heads kept blinking for as much as 30 seconds after decapitation.

This is beyond creepy, if true.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Now I am confused. If there is a possibility that people remain conscious for 13 seconds from decapitation, wouldn't the same be true of hanging? Don't they both break the spinal column?

I think with (properly carried out) hanging there is unconsciousness due to the force of the drop. I'm not a medical expert though, and the articles I've found on the issue are pretty dated. As in nineteenth century dated.

[The Marquis de Leech]

I just googled it, out of morbid fascination, and came up with tales from the largest mass experiment with decapitation in history - which was of course the aftermath of the French Revolution.

Apparently executioners picked up the head of one woman who was executed and slapped her cheek, after which her expression turned to one of indignation.

After that, they actually asked the condemned to become participants in a "study " of sorts, by asking them to blink if they could, after the deed was done. Reportedly, some heads kept blinking for as much as 30 seconds after decapitation.

This is beyond creepy, if true.

Also explainable due to nerve reflex.

[TrackerNeil]

Oh, it's worse than that. The US Supreme Court are politicians who serve for as long as they want, with no accountability to anyone for their decisions. Reagan still influences policy from beyond the grave via Scalia, and there is nothing anyone can (realistically) do about it.

Yeah, it's disturbing to think of legal interpretations being made by a guy whose view of life calcified sometime in the 1970s. A good argument for term limits for SCOTUS.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

Honestly, I wish we could all drop the pretense that federal judges are not politicians. First, you don't get on a short list for nomination unless you have the favor of the party in the White House, and you get there by...being a politician. Second, judges influence policy and that's the job of...a politician. Admittedly, a Supreme Court judge is not equivalent to a US senator, but they are both involved in party politics and in setting and revising policy. It's time we all stopped pretending otherwise.

This is mostly crazy talk. Between the two options generally used for selecting Judges in the US, which are (1) popular election for specific periods of service and (2) nomination by the executive branch with confirmation by the legislature for "life terms" (sometimes subject to mandatory retirement age), the latter does far, far more to insulate Judges from political pressures than the alternative. In fact, the alternative, literally turns Judges into politicians because they are forced to campaign for office based upon their political beliefs! The latter does not.

While it's true that federal Judges are generally "politically connected" - truly, a vague term that encompasses a multitude of relationships to politicians and political parties - that is not at all the same thing as "being a politician." Most people that are politically connected are not politicians and just because one is politically connected doesn't mean one has engaged in "politics" as it's generally understood. Further, the benefit of lifetime tenure that federal judges have is that once they're elected - they are no longer beholden to the politicians that nominated or approved them (most Judges are confirmed with bipartisan majorities anyway).

Finally, to suggest that someone is a "politician" because they "influence policy" is inane. To say someone "influences" something doesn't say anything at all. The vast majority of federal trial court judges don't even really "influence" policy. They do what state trial court judges do - they apply the facts of the cases in front of them to the law that exists. Most of what federal appellate Court judges do is police the factual findings and application of the law made by the trial court judges. Resolving conflicts of statutory interpretation, or even novel constitutional issues - are an absurdly tiny portion of what these judges do on a regular basis. And even in those cases, resolving an issue of conflicting statutory interpretation is not, in and of itself, "politics" by any meaningful use of the word.

[Shryke]

Yeah, it's not like there's many better alternatives.

The problem is less the process and more the culture. The US has a highly politicized judiciary. Whatever reason you choose to blame for that, it exists. It's really strange from an outsider perspective frankly.

[TrackerNeil]

This is mostly crazy talk. Between the two options generally used for selecting Judges in the US, which are (1) popular election for specific periods of service and (2) nomination by the executive branch with confirmation by the legislature for "life terms" (sometimes subject to mandatory retirement age), the latter does far, far more to insulate Judges from political pressures than the alternative. In fact, the alternative, literally turns Judges into politicians because they are forced to campaign for office based upon their political beliefs! The latter does not.

While it's true that federal Judges are generally "politically connected" - truly, a vague term that encompasses a multitude of relationships to politicians and political parties - that is not at all the same thing as "being a politician." Most people that are politically connected are not politicians and just because one is politically connected doesn't mean one has engaged in "politics" as it's generally understood. Further, the benefit of lifetime tenure that federal judges have is that once they're elected - they are no longer beholden to the politicians that nominated or approved them (most Judges are confirmed with bipartisan majorities anyway).

Finally, to suggest that someone is a "politician" because they "influence policy" is inane. To say someone "influences" something doesn't say anything at all. The vast majority of federal trial court judges don't even really "influence" policy. They do what state trial court judges do - they apply the facts of the cases in front of them to the law that exists. Most of what federal appellate Court judges do is police the factual findings and application of the law made by the trial court judges. Resolving conflicts of statutory interpretation, or even novel constitutional issues - are an absurdly tiny portion of what these judges do on a regular basis. And even in those cases, resolving an issue of conflicting statutory interpretation is not, in and of itself, "politics" by any meaningful use of the word.

Well, I may be "crazy" and "inane", but I think that an organization that can change the way a law affects millions of people is indeed a policy-making organization. But then I'm crazy.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

Well, I may be "crazy" and "inane", but I think that an organization that can change the way a law affects millions of people is indeed a policy-making organization. But then I'm crazy.

The goal posts! How they've shifted!

**Edited to add: I deserve a better response than that. I gave you an argument. All you do is pick out a few bits of colorful language and pretend that's the argument and I'm just making accusations against you. That's not what's happening, and it's disingenuous on your part. If you have an argument, make your argument.

[Shryke]

Uh, no it's not. His initial post says:

Second, judges influence policy and that's the job of...a politician. Admittedly, a Supreme Court judge is not equivalent to a US senator, but they are both involved in party politics and in setting and revising policy.

Of course, the SCOTUS does more then influence policy. It basically creates policy. That's the power of judicial review really.

[TrackerNeil]

The goal posts! How they've shifted!

I'm a little tired of being called names by you -- and this isn't the first time it's happened -- so I'm going to drop out of the discussion.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

Yeah, it's not like there's many better alternatives.

The problem is less the process and more the culture. The US has a highly politicized judiciary. Whatever reason you choose to blame for that, it exists. It's really strange from an outsider perspective frankly.

Indeed, it's not necessarily an amazing system, but it may be the best system available. I'm not sure the alternatives are any better, and they come with their own issues.

I will not deny that political and personal beliefs play a role in judicial decision-making. I would expect that they do because Judges are people and it's easy to imagine that when someone makes a decision there are a lot of factors, both conscious and subconscious, that go into making that decision. I do, however, object to the notion that politics and political beliefs are the overriding concern in judicial decision-making, because I don't believe there is nearly enough evidence available to make that conclusion, and in fact, there is a significant amount of evidence running in the other direction.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Yeah, the basic objection is the way judicial review is applied, and the political undertones that are associated with that. Perhaps it's the fact that the US invented the concept as it applies to modern law (though everyone else in the last half century has shifted at least some way in that direction), but the US judiciary has generally been far more enthusiastic about it than most. And leaving aside judicial review, everyone remembers Bush v. Gore too.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

I'm a little tired of being called names by you -- and this isn't the first time it's happened -- so I'm going to drop out of the discussion.

I didn't call you names. I levied those accusations against your argument, not you personally.

Frankly, this is your go-to evasive technique. Whenever someone challenges something you say, you cry personal attacks and bow out so that you aren't ever forced to respond in a meaningful manner.

Ironically, you are one of the worst offenders when it comes to openly insulting your political opponents in these politics threads.

[Shryke]

Indeed, it's not necessarily an amazing system, but it may be the best system available. I'm not sure the alternatives are any better, and they come with their own issues.

I will not deny that political and personal beliefs play a role in judicial decision-making. I would expect that they do because Judges are people and it's easy to imagine that when someone makes a decision there are a lot of factors, both conscious and subconscious, that go into making that decision. I do, however, object to the notion that politics and political beliefs are the overriding concern in judicial decision-making, because I don't believe there is nearly enough evidence available to make that conclusion, and in fact, there is a significant amount of evidence running in the other direction.

It depends on the decision. The truth is most decisions are as close to purely judicial in nature as you can get*, the big ones with big policy implications are very politically charged and very frequently politically motivated. Like, the decision that is being discussed at the start of this thread is being ruled on almost entirely based on party affiliation. When you can predict how most of these cases go by referring to the party of the judges in question, you've got a system making rulings based on political beliefs. That's why you can line up a list of SCOTUS justices based on the political leanings of their decisions and see the court split, even with the names removed.

So yeah, on most issues you are gonna get the judiciary doing it's job like everyone thinks they should. But when you hit big political issues, the court frequently gets very political.

*they are never purely so though, not in aggregate anyway, because we know the beliefs of the people involved in the judicial process have a large influence on outcomes (see - race stats)