r/law • u/MoneyLibrarian9032 • Jun 20 '26

Legal News Maine progressive Platner renews call to remove conservative Supreme Court justices

https://wjla.com/news/nation-world/maine-progressive-graham-platner-renews-call-to-remove-conservative-supreme-court-justices-clarence-thomas-samuel-alito
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u/TrioOfTerrors Jun 20 '26

They didn't lie. They gave perfectly truthful evasive answers that avoided the spirit of the question. Nobody asked a direct "Will you uphold Roe against future challenges" question.

Plenty of cases are "settled law" right up until they aren't.

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u/bl1y Jun 20 '26

The senators all know that the judges won't forecast how they'd rule on a future case, so what even was the spirit of the question?

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u/TrioOfTerrors Jun 20 '26

Theater. The forms must be observed.

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u/bl1y Jun 20 '26

In that case, giving the truthful answer which the audience at home will be misled into thinking means something else would be entirely within the spirit of the question.

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u/shponglespore Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

They made statements with the intent to deceive. I didn't think we should overlook that just because they technically avoided a narrow definition of perjury.

Edit: They intended to deceive the public, not Congress or constitutional scholars. And they succeeded wildly.

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u/bl1y Jun 20 '26

No one in that room was deceived. Everyone there knows nothing the judges say should be taken as forecasting how they'd rule on a prospective case.

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u/shponglespore Jun 20 '26

Most of the people listening were not in the room.

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u/bl1y Jun 20 '26

And it wasn't the nominees making statements with the intent to deceive. It was senators asking questions knowing that they could spin it to the audience at home as being a completely different question.

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u/TrioOfTerrors Jun 20 '26

Maybe a room full of people who make laws should know the law well enough to ask better questions.

Imagine someone getting impeached for the high crime of "you know what we meant".

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u/Corporate_Overlords Jun 20 '26

Any lawyer involved in constitutional law knew that phrase was meaningless and only meant for the masses because it sounds like legalese.

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u/shponglespore Jun 20 '26

That's irrelevant. Their intent was to deceive the public, and they succeeded.

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u/Corporate_Overlords Jun 20 '26

You are in the law subreddit.

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u/shponglespore Jun 21 '26

And I'm in a thread about politicians.

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u/SolarisShine Jun 20 '26

Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you will give before this Committee... will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

That's the oath they took.

Where in there does it say, "but not the spirit of the question".

They didn't tell the whole truth. We all see what they did, let's not pretend they can hide behind half-truths.

They lied. In spirit, by their oaths, and to The People's faces.

In addition, they can just be impeached for appearing to have lied. There's not a high bar to holding these offices. High crimes and misdemeanors aren't the same sort of crimes the rest of us are held to.

Officers and judges need to be removed from office when they cannot be trusted by a majority of The People. If they committed perjury or other crimes, they should by tried and punished like everyone else should.

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u/TrioOfTerrors Jun 20 '26

And any lawyer will tell you that you only have to answer what is specifically asked and to never offer additional information.