Worst Supreme Court Chief Justice ever:

[11 Bravo]

Poll question: Worst Supreme Court Chief Justice ever:

My rationale for the names on the list:

Taney - Dred Scott
Fuller - Plessy v Ferguson
Rehnquist - Lifetime achievement award
Roberts - Citizens United (so far, I'm afraid he's not done yet)

[tonysam]

1. It's a tough one, to be sure.

I voted for Rehnquist because without Bush v. Gore, there would be no John Roberts.

[11 Bravo]

2. Great point! I hadn't thought of that.

[BarbaRosa]

4. I tend to agree,

but in five or ten years from now the qustion won't need to be asked, Roberts is just getting started.

[glowing]

6. My thoughts exactly.

[blondeatlast]

7. Very good point--and Rehnquist sucks even absent of that! nt

[trotsky]

8. Yup, gotta go with Rehnquist on this one.

What an asswipe.

[otohara]

12. Ain't That The Truth

I'll never get over that ruling - neither will the Iraqi people IMO

[Initech]

31. Bush v. Gore - worst supreme court decision ever.

[Captain Hilts]

3. It was a toss up between Taney and fuller for me. nt

[adamuu]

5. "to speak in warning to all who would betray liberty!"

"Now an emancipated country should make a bust to the author of the Dred Scott decision?" exclaimed the indignant Senator Charles Sumner, "If a man has done evil in his life, he must not be complimented in marble." Instead, Sumner proposed that a vacant spot, not a bust of Taney, be left in the courtroom "to speak in warning to all who would betray liberty!"<10>

[CanonRay]

9. Tie: Clarence Thomas/Antonin Scalia

An idiot and a facist, take your pick.

[11 Bravo]

10. Granted, they both suck, but neither has ever been the Chief Justice.

[Sal Minella]

11. I have to go with Thomas, because he said in an interview

(do not have the link, sorry) that he doesn't much like being a Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States because "you can't make any money at it."

The man simply has no concept of the high honor wasted on his worthless a%%.
Scalia at least has sense enough to realize what a powerful position he's in.

[skorpo]

33. My picks too.

[Bitwit1234]

13. He is a smirking a**wipe.

No wonder cheney instructed bush to appoint him.

[Posteritatis]

14. I'm having trouble thinking of a decision more vile than Dred Scott... (nt)

[Captain Hilts]

16. Me too. That was my vote. nt

[Captain Hilts]

15. I'm stunned how many here are so short-sighted. nt

[Posteritatis]

18. Are you really?

;)

[Captain Hilts]

24. I'm an optimist. I should know better.

Folks here don't have a basic knowledge of the New Deal, JFK, etc.

[Sebastian Doyle]

19. While the Dred Scott decision, historically speaking, may have been the worst ever

I still would go with Opie Roberts and the current "Citizens United" abomination, in terms of our current reality.

[Posteritatis]

21. The poll isn't "worst justice of the current news cycle," even if people are treating it as such. nt

[Sebastian Doyle]

22. You think what that unqualified piece of Chimp shit did was only about the "current news cycle"

Keith Olbermann's estimation that Opie Roberts just let Taney "off the hook" was pretty much correct in my esitmation. For as bad as the Dred Scott case was, it was pretty much nullified by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War. Historically it remains a shitty decision, but it doesn't have any impact on current law.

But how are we going to rid ourselves of the "Dred Roberts" decision? It's got nothing to do with the goddamn news cycle.

[Sebastian Doyle]

17. Opie Roberts

due to his appalling lack of qualification to be on the Supreme Court in ANY capacity, let alone Chief (In)justice.

of course Billy the Pillhead Rehnquist made that possible in the first place by appointing Chimpy pResident.... but Opie Roberts had a lot to do with that whole clusterfuck as well.

[Unvanguard]

20. Taney, definitely--Roberts and Rehnquist have nothing on him. n/t

[Captain Hilts]

23. It shouldn't even be close after Taney and Fuller. nt

[Sebastian Doyle]

25. Rehnquist threw out the entire constitution and appointed a pResident from the same crime family

..who gave him his job in the first place. I'd say that counts for something.

[Unvanguard]

26. He decided an effective electoral tie with some dodgy legal reasoning.

Taney perverted the Constitution and the rule of law in the interest of a profoundly racist slave-owning ideology aimed at abolishing the possibility of blacks anywhere getting legal rights, and in so doing helped precipitate a civil war. The two are not remotely comparable.

[malaise]

32. Well his friends knew about his drug habits

and secrets are powerful weapons.

[TexasObserver]

27. Rehnquist. He made Roberts appear reasonable by comparison.

Rehnquist literally made his bones in the GOP organizing lawyers to challenge black voters in the 1950s and 1960s. He led the destruction of the 1st and 4th amendments by the GOP SC court.

[Kaleva]

28. Hard to top this Justice

James McReynolds

"He would not accept "Jews, drinkers, blacks, women, smokers, married or engaged individuals as law clerks."<9> A blatant anti-Semite,<10><11><12><13> McReynolds refused to speak to Louis Brandeis, the first Jew on the Court, for three years following Brandeis's appointment and, when Brandeis retired in 1939, did not sign the customary dedicatory letter sent to justices on their retirement.<14><12> He habitually left the conference room when Brandeis spoke.<12> When Benjamin Cardozo's appointment was being pressed on Hoover, McReynolds joined with Justices Butler and Van Devanter in urging the White House not to "afflict the Court with another Jew."<15> When news of Cardozo's appointment was announced, McReynolds is claimed to have said "Huh, it seems that the only way you can get on the Supreme Court these days is to be either the son of a criminal or a Jew, or both."<16><17> During Cardozo's swearing-in ceremony, McReynolds pointedly read a newspaper,<18> and would often hold a brief or record in front of his face when Cardozo delivered an opinion from the bench.<19> According to John Frush Knox, McReynolds's law clerk in 1936-37 and the author of a memoir of his service, McReynolds never spoke to Cardozo at all.<9> McReynolds even absented himself from the memorial ceremonies held at the Supreme Court in honor of Cardozo.<20><21><22> He did not attend Felix Frankfurter's swearing-in, exclaiming "My God, another Jew on the Court!".
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clark…

[Posteritatis]

29. Yow. (nt)

[sfpcjock]

30. Although I suspect the worst is Peppermint-Patty Roberts

--so named because he famously played her in a school drama--or Samuel "Elite-o" I would probably say Clarence (Darrow) "Uncle-Tom" Thomas who, ironically got Thurgood Marshall's seat, in spite of Anita Hill, because Congress was afraid it overstepped its authority to confirm in the previous rejection of the Robert Bork nomination 4 years earlier: he never asks questions in court for fear of looking like the fool he is, and votes with Scalia most of the time--major mistake. He's kind of a lawn ornament.

[tigereye]

34. oddly, most court watchers think that Thomas tends to influence Scalia more

than the other way around.


It still horrifies me to think of someone like Thomas in Marshall's "seat," though.



I tend to think the court and the laws that they administer and rule on as so complex, that it really doesn't pay to villify any particular justice, though. I'm not sure it would be right to have only one type of thinker on the court, and there have certainly been times that Rep. presidents have appointed what turned out to be highly liberal justices like Souter. The problem we have now is that Ed Meese and his ilk primed the righ-twing pump with deliberately developed "conservative" justices like Roberts and Alito. I think the polarization of people's views of the courts is the bigger problem, in some ways.