The Supreme Court’s Silent Failure on Immigration by Linda Greenhouse

[elleng]

'THE Supreme Court has never won medals for transparency. After a case is argued, it vanishes into a black box, often for months, until an opinion emerges one morning without prior warning. The justices reject thousands of appeals every year without a word of explanation beyond “denied.”

And yet I’ve regularly proposed to critics of its secret ways another, more generous understanding of the court. In sharp distinction from its neighbor on Capitol Hill, where entire agendas can disappear without a fingerprint, the justices take ownership of their work. They sign their opinions. They explain how they reached their conclusions. It’s essential: Having bestowed upon this handful of life-tenured individuals such enormous, even anomalous, power, in a democracy, the American people should expect at the very least that the justices are willing to stand up and be counted.

And then came last week’s deadlock in the immigration case, a 4-to-4 tie announced in a single sentence — “The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided court” — without identifying the justices on either side or their competing views. Since a tie vote automatically affirms the lower court’s ruling, the result in this case, United States v. Texas, was to bar more than four million people, unauthorized immigrants who are the parents of United States citizens or legal residents, from the benefit of deferred deportation that President Barack Obama intended to confer on them.

“Seldom have so many hopes been crushed by so few words,” Walter Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general, wrote on Slate.'>>>

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opinion/sunday/the-supreme-courts-silent-failure-on-immigration.html?

[Igel]

1. No, the result was that presidential authority is again found to be constrained.

Implications are many, but the immediate implication is that the status quo remains and Obama cannot indefinitely a priori defer deportation. He can still defer their deportation simply by gaming the system to avoid deportation.

However, since they're still under deportation it means he can't (easly) on just his own authority extend permission to stay, and with that permission grant other privileges. Imperial presidencies should not exist. Most of DU recognized this when Bush II was the imperialist. Self-reflection is good. It often produces a reduction in tension and and increase in both empathy and good will, and we all could use more of that..

[awoke_in_2003]

2. The biggest issue is that republicans in the senate

Decided that an Obama presidency counted as 3/5, and the democrats put up the meekest of whimpers. They should be raising hell about Obama's SC picks, but that requires spine and work. Harry Reid again shows why he is weak sauce.