DoubtingThomas wrote:
The Supreme Court interprets laws written by Congress to determine whether they are constitutional. Right?
Partly right. Actually, the Supreme Court does its best to avoid any ruling on the Constitution if there is another basis for ruling on the case. That's why it ruled on a procedural ground in the wedding cake case rather than say whether the baker was exempt from Colorado's Civil Rights law.
But one of the most important things to understand about the Supreme Court is that, with narrow exceptions, it cannot decide the facts of a case. Factual findings take place at the trial court level. If there are two experts that offer conflicting opinions, and the trial court finds one more credible than the other, the Supreme Court can't simply disagree and agree with the other expert. Its only oversight on determinations of fact is to rule whether there is evidence in the court record that supports the trial court's finding of fact. If expert testimony is needed on a factual issue, trial court judges can (and do) sometimes bring in their own experts to help them understand the issues. But an appellate court makes its decision based on what is in the record and cannot independently determine what is true and what is false.
Now, that's in theory and the Justices are human. They can and do make mistakes and overreach. But I don't think that can be avoided.
Doubting Thomas wrote:But it is my opinion that new US laws should be made based on available data. The US Supreme Court should stop bad laws.
Courts don't make laws. That's the legislative branch, and I agree that they should at least rely on available data. But there is no Constitutional requirement that they do so. And there is no basis for Supreme Court to hold a law invalid on the ground that it wasn't. Under our system, whether a law is good or bad is decided by the legislators and the people who elect them. The notion that a small number of unelected judges should independently determine whether laws are good or bad is antithetical to democracy. The Court's limited role is to determine whether the laws meet certain Constitutional standards -- the wisdom of the laws is left to the political process.
Doubting Thomas wrote:The New York times reports
None of the justices has any serious training in statistics, and the clerks who assist them are almost all recent law school graduates, who rarely have any formal statistical background. Empirical facts are central to what the court does, but its members lack expertise
I disagree that statistical analysis is required in most cases before the Court. And, in any case, the Court is not supposed to re-decide the facts of the case. It is up to the parties at the trial court level to provide sufficient evidence in the record to let the Court determine whether factual conclusions are supported by the evidence. And if it isn't clear, the appellate court's job is to remand the case to the trial court for additional evidence and fact finding.
Now, the one area where I think the Court does get tripped up is Amicus Briefs. When a case is before the Court, parties can file these "friend of the court" briefs that are not strictly limited to facts in the record. The purpose of these briefs is generally to show the broader policy implications of the case before the court. But it is too easy for the Justices to take, say, a study or statistics referenced in one of these briefs and not fully understand it. I would not be opposed to the Court making use of a statistician or other expert to help analyze new material presented in the Amicus briefs -- but not to engage in new fact finding based on the evidence in the record.
DoubtingThomas wrote:You told me "the average Supreme Court Justice is smarter than the average scientist." Please tell me how do you know?
I made the statement for the same reason I'd state that the average Nobel Prize winner is smarter than the average scientist. Both science and law screen for "smartness." I think it's reasonable to expect that the scientists recognized as the best at what they do are almost certain to be smarter than the average. Supreme Court Justices are similar to Nobel Prize winners. They aren't going to come from the pool of below average lawyers. If we take the average of all scientists, we have to include the below average scientists in the calculation. I'd feel equally confident in saying that the average Nobel Prize winner is smarter than the average lawyer.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
damned Jesus.