so i could only name 7 supreme court justices

[shugah]

which is apparently better than most people - the majority, it seems, can't even name 2.

there was a segment on keith olbermann last night decrying how little some people know - or more accurately, the stuff that people do know vs what they don't know.

how many can you name? would you have always been able to come up with at least 2?

not a quiz - just curious as to how "common" this particular knowledge is and wondering how important it should be.

on edit - too many "apparently"s

[eallen]

1. Hey! Stevens and Breyer aren't dead yet.

:hippie:

[shugah]

7. yep, those are the 2

i could not recall.

[northzax]

2. I can do all nine

but that's no a big surprise, I can do at least 75 senators too.

[Goblinmonger]

4. The quiz was to name them

not to "do" them.

Had to be said.

[Bucky]

50. I would totally do Ruth Bader Ginsberg

[serryjw]

5. SCOTUS is my hobby

so I could also BUT 75 senators is impressive. ONLY a handful are worth remembering.

[wryter2000]

3. Seven come to mind immediately

I might think up one or two more with some effort.

[PA Democrat]

6. I got 8. I forgot Breyer. n/t

[MrCoffee]

35. EVERYONE forgets Poor Justice Bryer.

The Forgotten Justice...a biography of Stephen Bryer.

[shugah]

37. it's kind of sad, isn't it?

i like the book title! :rofl:

[hughee99]

8. I would think most people here would come up with at least two

if for no other reason than the Alito and Roberts confirmation hearings were pretty recent, and Scalia and Thomas get a good bit of grief (and deservedly so) when SC issues come up.

Then, of course, I don't know that "common knowledge" on among DUers relates very well to "common knowledge" among the general population.

[hughee99]

14. Self Delete

Replied to wrong post.

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. I only got five *hanging head in shame*

[danalytical]

10. Lets see how I can do..

David Souter
Ruth Bader Ginsberg
Samuel Alito
Clarence Thomas
Antonin Scalia
John Roberts
???? Kennedy
Damn that's all I got. I know the other two I just can't find them in my brain's dewie decimal system catalog.

[shugah]

12. the same ones

those are the 7 i came up with also.

[ramblin_dave]

11. I don't consider Roberts and Alito to be legitimate

since Bush himself seized power.

[LSK]

13. I will admit I can name more House members than SC Justices

Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas

Maybe if CSPAN covered the Supreme Court Id know them better.

[sweetheart]

15. i can't name a single one; there is no justice

The butcher's whitewashers are not to do with justice, and what constitution did someone else sign away our lives?

[cali]

21. WTF?

There are some very good Justices on the SC, Breyer and Stevens come to mind immediately. Perhaps you should try educating yourself, and actually reading some of their decisions.

[sweetheart]

23. Their decisions are crap

The law they stand for is crap, Millions of people are injustly imprisoned,
it is effective apartheid and race-based justice... bullshit on what the assholes
said, the justice is paper thin.

[cali]

24. Your ignorance

is stunning. It never fails.

[sweetheart]

27. as unfailing as your hard headed bullishness

What justice lies in the cespool of tens of thousands war dead?
What justice holds anyone reponsible?

Ignorance? Hmmm... gosh, i know what justice is and when it ain't being done,
and that is called "ignorance" these days by apologists for war crimes.

Your thin ice is the ignorance of knowledge, and for all the summit of the pyramid of
judgement you pretend to summit, a rotten foundation leaves the utopia crumbling
in to a racist cespool despite the best wishes of better men and women.

The supreme court has delivered less justice than no court at all, and
had none existed for the past 150 years, we'd all be better off.

[danalytical]

34. You're anger is directed in the wrong place

Tell me how justices' Stevens, and Breyer relate to "thousands of war dead"? Oh wait they DON'T. AT ALL! They are both intelligent well meaning people working for their country. They also seem to have similar opinions to the majority here at DU.

As a side note:

The only thing they may be guilty of is not being vocal enough about our unconstitutional drug laws . I don't know if they dissented whenever those cases came up during their tenure, but they aren't very vocal about it as far as I know. The constitution forbids government intervention in peoples private lives, including the use of drugs. It's an outrage that our government was able to step over that section of the constitution using technocratic jargon.

[sweetheart]

48. Agreed

The court has not challenged the war powers, they have not enforced
the express transparency of the constitution that requires total
public disclosure of the actual finances of ALL government, and
they have not challenged blatant signing statements that grossly
misinterpret the powers of a president.

They are ridden roughshod over, and along with them, the entire
constitution and its system to keep government enslaved to citizens.
The judicial system was not designed for a devious criminal president,
as the founders could not conceive that civil society would let
a real stupid shit in to that office.

Ignorant in the extreme, i agree, i don't want to know about that
court, i would have more rights if the entire government did not exist,
as my natural rights would be returned, those unenumerated ones the
assholes did not enumerate, the bloody common sense ones....

That's my point, if they were fired, the lot of them, we'd all be free.
Its become to that point, when we're imprisoned to pay for our guards
at gunpoint, fear fear fear, work work work, die. The corporate
boardrooms of the multintaitonl citizens of the world look on
and laugh, themselves above any law, and themselves preemptively
creating more decisions of governance than any elected official.

The financial corruption of the world's wealth has completely
corrupted any semblance of that constitution, in to a pure
brutal militarist prison property state where citizens are
not entrusted with the standards of human rights that the
US has fought for abroad. And by creating this constitutional
hole, and not reconciling this economic erasure of the rights
of the poor, and a century of wars against the poor says yes,
the court has been ok, "D+", fine, there were some nice epople
who tried to change a corrupt system. But i'm upset, and it
is yes, irrational, i'm lashing out, and pissed off at how
the *"£$$% this has become premeditated aggressive war, and
a court that cannot prosecute war crimes either, denuded of
any powers at all except to corrupt elections.

:toast: Yes my anger is with this executive, with the system
that is destabilizing the strategic interests of women's equality
in the world today, and with the evil criminal bastards who are
relentelessly dumping hostility in to our veins that we whipped
house slaves stop asking questions and get back to the washing up.

:-)

[Salviati]

16. Ya know what...

the media breaking from non-stop JBR and celebrity scandal coverage to report on this story seems a bit ironic. Maybe if the "news" actually covered important issues, the average person on the street would have a better idea about what's going on. I see this not as a testiment to how dumb the average american is, but rather how bad the news media is doing it's job.

[shugah]

19. good point

i don't know if i consider it dumb not to know who sits on the SCOTUS (there was a time when i probably would have only been able to come up with 2 or so) but it seems that people just don't think it is important to know - otherwise they surely would, right?

[hughee99]

17. Geez, Stark BS

or GS STARK BS may help. Ginsburg is the G, when you have to do Bader-Ginsburg, the acronym doesn't work as well.

[warrens]

18. All 9

Just sometimes I have a mental block on Roberts, for some reason. Just too common a name, I guess.

[huskerlaw]

20. I got 8 immediately

and briefly spaced out on Breyer. Oops.

[MrCoffee]

22. So what if I can name them all and tell you who appointed them and

who they replaced. Does that make me some kind of a freak? Possibly, yes.

[karlrschneider]

26. Yeah, but a good freak.

:D

I'm pretty good with about half of congresscritters, I can identify about that many by sight and
almost as many by voice!

I'm kinda freaky too...

[MrCoffee]

28. You win. That's way freakier.

:toast:

[karlrschneider]

29. LOL! I used to have a life. Really.

:D

[shugah]

30. most impressive!

[MrCoffee]

31. tell my wife that...she totally thinks i'm a freak because of it

well, that and other reasons.

[karlrschneider]

25. I can name them pretty easily if I can see a group picture

but would probably forget 1 or maybe 2 without it. Okay I'm gonna try without cheating

Kennedy
Scalito (fat Tony)
Scalito (the newer guy)
Thomas
Roberts
Ginsberg
Breyer (sp?)
Souter

Dammit, who's the other? I keep wanting to write O'Connor

Okay, have to peek now. :eyes:

[Throd]

32. Wow, I actually got all nine

Sometimes I surprise myself

[fujiyama]

33. Eight immediately came to mind

as I started with the RW-lunatic majority (Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kennedy) and the usually-sane minority (Ginsberg, Stevens, Breyer)...but for some reason I couldn't remember Souter's name. I knew it started with an "S". And at first Brenan came to mind in place of Bryar, but I kept trying to remember whether Clinton or Bush appointed him.

Once I realized it was Souter, I remembered that he's the one that pissed off all the RWers with regards ro Bush Sr., since he didn't turn out as they expected.

[calico1]

36. Stevens, Breyer, Gingsberg, Souter,

Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas.

I didn't look either! :)

[Bucky]

51. Wow. And you even named them in descending order

Except I don't know who "Gingsberg" is

[calico1]

52. Ginsgberg. Thanks for the correction.

;-)

[WI_DEM]

38. I just took a piece of paper and wrote down their names

I got all nine, but I admit I had to think for a moment about a couple of them.

[JitterbugPerfume]

39. I named seven of them

which makes me practically a genius compared to this survey

[shugah]

40. hi JitterbugPerfume!

:hi:

i thought 7 was not bad at all - but i can name all 9 now ;-)

[TahitiNut]

41. Without reading, off the top of my head ...

... Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Roberts, Stevens, Breyer, Kennedy, Bader-Ginsberg, ... and the New Hampshire guy ... uhmmmm... (shit!). OH! Souter. David Souter.

How'd I do? :shrug:

[shugah]

44. a+ !

you got them all!

"the new hampshire guy" lol

[TahitiNut]

45. (grin) I remember his nomination and confirmation hearings.

He was depicted as somewhat of a loner - a relative hermit with a residence in the woods (or woodsy setting). The tabloid media was having a hard time finding anything into which they could sink their teeth/fangs. Souter (imho) is a traditional conservative, having little of the "own the world!" ardor of today's neoconservative imperialists. There's no way I'd characterize him as a 'liberal' and he has almost no 'activist' inclinations whatsoever. But law is, by its very nature, a 'conservative' profession. Souter is almost the poster boy for the profession, imho.

[devilgrrl]

42. Let me see, off the top of my head no googling...

Thomas, Stevens, Breyer*, Kennedy, Scalia, Ginsberg, Roberts, Alito, Suter* (*spelling?)

How'd I do?

[TahitiNut]

43. OK, now do it from left to right.

:evilgrin:

[dsc]

46. I think I can name all 9

Samuel Alito, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, David Breyer, John Paul Stevens, and Clarence Thomas. Doh, I can't believe I almost couldn't come up with Thomas.

[TahitiNut]

47. Now ... name the Seven Dwarfs.

:evilgrin:

[dsc]

49. I can't

Sleepy, Dopey, grumpy, and that is it.