"I don't think it's too much of a stretch to believe that the lower courts feel more emboldened the less likely they are to be overturned by the folks in the big chairs."

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The Most Surprising Side Effect of the Supreme Court Vacancy
By Charles P. Pierce, August 26, 2016

Nobody likes to be told that they're wrong. Nobody especially likes to be told that they're wrong in public. And nobody with the ego of the average federal judge, especially, likes to be told that they're wrong in public, which may account for a welcome, if surprising, ongoing development in the federal courts.

In recent months, the lower levels of the federal courts have been extraordinarily active in knocking down laws beloved of the conservative governors and state legislatures that have passed them. They have done so in areas ranging from reproductive freedom to voting rights. It likely is no coincidence that this all occurred after Antonin Scalia shuffled off to Originalist Heaven, leaving the Supreme Court skating one player down, and virtually guaranteeing a 4-4 split on contentious issues like abortion and the right to vote. A 4-4 vote in Washington means that the decision of the lower court stands. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to believe that the lower courts feel more emboldened the less likely they are to be overturned by the folks in the big chairs.

Even the language in lower court decisions is becoming more, ahem, vivid as the lower courts decide that they don't have to swallow whatever nonsense state politicians throw at them, whether that's the idea that anti-choice legislation is really for the benefit of a woman, or that there is a crying need to stem an avalanche of non-existent voter fraud.

Witness, for example, the plain talk that U.S. District Judge James Peterson employed to blow up a big part of Wisconsin's draconian voter ID law.

"The evidence in this case casts doubt on the notion that voter ID laws foster integrity and confidence. The Wisconsin experience demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities. To put it bluntly, Wisconsin's strict version of voter ID law is a worse cure than the disease."

This, of course, is another result of the political genius of Mitch McConnell, whose Senate majority won't even give Merrick Garland a hearing, let alone a vote.

Good job, Mitch. Have a cookie.
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