Supreme Court

The Disingenuous Dumbing Of The Supreme Court

John Roberts calls math "sociological gobbledygook," unless of course it supports taking away voting rights.

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The Supreme Court’s new mascot.

When Chief Justice Roberts referred to “wasted votes” rubric designed to test the impact of partisan gerrymandering as “sociological gobbledygook,” I’m guessing he expected set off the sort of nerdgasm Justice Scalia used to trigger when he’d disguise his weaker observations behind a well-placed “argle-bargle” or “jiggery-pokery” or “pure applesauce.” Everyone (including this publication) would swoon over his mastery of archaic words or long-lost colloquialisms and just blow past the fact that his cute phrases were an assault on the canons of construction.

Unfortunately for the Chief Justice, he’s no Justice Scalia and his attempt at playing it cool landed with a thud, with both Justices Kagan and Sotomayor pointedly observing that math isn’t nearly as difficult as the Chief Justice would like to pretend.

Oh, wither the Brandeis Brief? In the early 20th century, the latest advanced in the social sciences formed the heart of effective advocacy. Now the Chief Justice of the United States, charged with interpreting laws designed to face increasingly high-tech challenges, tries to dismiss simple computation by saying, “it may be simply my educational background….” Indeed it may be. However, if the Chief Justice is trying to claim that his educational background precludes him from grasping basic statistics, then that should be disqualifying in a job that requires understanding the subjects of patents.

The Chief Justice publicly declared himself the Unfrozen Caveman Justice: “I’m just a simple caveman! You’re ways frighten and confuse me. All I know is that wooly mammoth meat is tasty and forced arbitration agreements don’t violate public policy.”

Many bemoan this dumbing down of the Supreme Court as a sad day for the nation. For example, the American Sociological Association. The ASA’s president, Duke Sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, wrote Roberts a letter on behalf of the organization rebuking the Chief’s disparaging commentary:

What you call “gobbledygook” is rigorous and empirical.

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But I’m not drawn in by the Chief Justice’s crocodile tears of incompetence. The Supreme Court isn’t any dumber, it’s just a lot more disingenuous and willing to ensconce itself in naïveté when it can’t muster any better retort. When the Chief Justice struck down the guts of the Voting Rights Act, he filled his opinion with data science. Racism was over, he declared, and he had the sociological studies to prove it! Somehow these studies, which involved far greater intellectual gymnastics than “counting wasted votes,” didn’t intimidate the fragile educational bona fides of the double Harvard educated Chief. The studies Roberts cited in Shelby County should be (and were) roundly critiqued for their methodological errors, but that misses the point — when he could have fired off a superficial opinion citing his understanding of George Mason’s “mood,” he drudged up a bunch of stats to back his claims.

In Gill v. Whitford, Roberts isn’t scared because the wasted votes formula is confusingly complex, he’s scared because it’s astoundingly straightforward. When he can play with margins of error to create misleading “proof” that racism is a thing of the past or nod approvingly when Justice Scalia cites the methodological mess that is Mismatch, Roberts openly embraces social science. He craves social science, however flawed, if it can be twisted to back his political aims. He just refuses to engage it on its own terms and critique studies he doesn’t like — when he hits that wall he can only retreat to pleading incompetence. But it’s all an act.

So don’t cry over the dumbing of the Supreme Court. Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer was a one-note skit that SNL repeated over and over because that one note never got old: guy pretends to be stupid to dismiss his adversaries and then flipped dissonantly into a sophisticated advocate when it suits him.

The Supreme Court’s not getting dumb, it’s just becoming a joke.

ASA PRESIDENT EDUARDO BONILLA-SILVA RESPONDS TO CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS [American Sociological Association]

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HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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