THOUGH I THINK that the majority decision in Trump v USA gives it a run for the title of worst Supreme Court decision, and don't forget, there can be multiple ties for that title, I will start with the one which is generally given that distinction, the measure of bad Supreme Court decisions, Dred Scott.
"justice" Taney in issuing his monumental, first significant use of the Marbury power lied and knowingly lied when he declared that Black People had never been included in the citizenship of the United States and were not citizens of the United States with rights that any white man had an obligation to respect. We know he knew that because the dissent of "justice" Benjamin Curtis obliterated the lie that Black People weren't recognized as citizens at that time because the proposal that they be excluded from citizenship at the time the Articles of Confederation were soundly rejected by those who adopted that first government and so Black People were citizens of the United States BEFORE THERE WAS A CONSTITUTION and the Constitution, itself, says that those who were citizens at that time, either under confederation or in the states were citizens under the then new Constitution. Curtis proved that decisively, which was known to Taney when his decision was issued - he had delayed the issuance of the ruling for a period during which some scholars believe he was trying to find a way round Curtis's solid proof that he was lying and he was unable to do it. Here's a sample
Citizens of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution can have been no other than citizens of the United States under the Confederation. By the Articles of Confederation, a Government was organized, the style whereof was "The United States of America." This Government was in existence when the Constitution was framed and proposed for adoption, and was to be superseded by the new Government of the United States of America, organized under the Constitution. When, therefore, the Constitution speaks of citizenship of the United States existing at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, it must necessarily refer to citizenship under the Government which existed prior to and at the time of such adoption.
Without going into any question concerning the powers of the Confederation to govern the territory of the United States out of the limits of the States, and consequently to sustain the relation of Government and citizen in respect to the inhabitants of such territory, it may safely be said that the citizens of the several States were citizens of the United States under the Confederation.
To determine whether any free persons, descended from Africans held in slavery, were citizens of the United States under the Confederation, and consequently at the time of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, it is only necessary to know whether any such persons were citizens of either of the States under the Confederation at the time of the adoption of the Constitution.
Of this there can be no doubt. At the time of the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, all free native-born inhabitants of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, though descended from African slaves, were not only citizens of those States, but such of them as had the other necessary qualifications possessed the franchise of electors, on equal terms with other citizens.
and this:
On the 25th of June, 1778, the Articles of Confederation being under consideration by the Congress, the delegates from South Carolina moved to amend this fourth article by inserting after the word "free," and before the word "inhabitants," the word "white," so that the privileges and immunities of general citizenship would be secured only to white persons. Two States voted for the amendment, eight States against it, and the vote of one State was divided. The language of the article stood unchanged, and both by its terms of inclusion, "free inhabitants," and the strong implication from its terms of exclusion, "paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice," who alone were excepted, it is clear that under the Confederation, and at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, free colored persons of African descent might be, and, by reason of their citizenship in certain States, were, entitled to the privileges and immunities of general citizenship of the United States.
Did the Constitution of the United States deprive them or their descendants of citizenship?
That Constitution was ordained and established by the people of the United States, through the action, in each State, or those persons who were qualified by its laws to act thereon in behalf of themselves and all other citizens of that State. In some of the States, as we have seen, colored persons were among those qualified by law to act on this subject. These colored persons were not only included in the body of "the people of the United States" by whom the Constitution was ordained and established, but, in at least five of the States, they had the power to act, and doubtless did act, by their suffrages, upon the question of its adoption. It would be strange if we were to find in that instrument anything which deprived of their citizenship any part of the people of the United States who were among those by whom it was established.
I can find nothing in the Constitution which, proprio vigore, deprives of their citizenship any class of persons who were citizens of the United States at the time of its adoption, or who should be native-born citizens of any State after its adoption, nor any power enabling Congress to disfranchise persons born on the soil of any State, and entitled to citizenship of such State by its Constitution and laws. And my opinion is that, under the Constitution of the United States, every free person born on the soil of a State, who is a citizen of that State by force of its Constitution or laws, is also a citizen of the United States.
I maintain that there is something deeply significant in the fact that the first consequential use of the extra-constitutional Marbury power in the Dred Scott ruling was based on such a monumental and obvious lie. I think dishonesty has been the primary characteristic of that usurped power's use throughout its history AND I THINK THE ARROGANCE AND ARROGANT USE OF THE USURPED POWER UNDER THAT RULING HAS DISTORTED MUCH OF THE CHARACTER OF THAT COURT'S DECISIONS EVER SINCE. The often disdained and very late (and often questioned by Catholic scholars) doctrine of "papal infallibility" has, by comparison, been wielded with extreme caution and hesitancy, even by some of the most arrogant of popes with the biggest egos (JPII, Piux XI, Pius X). The less than a handful of such "infallible" declarations have been modest in ways that the Supreme Court of the supposedly secular United States has given no sign of, despite their typical lawyerly-liarly anodyne gobblety-gook masking their arrogant dishonesty.
They have certainly not been any more careful to not lie in their written decisions, sometimes knowingly and they don't feel any inclinations to correct lies contained in rulings even when those lies can have very consequential consequences FOR OTHER PEOPLE THAN THE "justices" THEMSELVES.
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There are certainly still numerous Supreme Court rulings containing untrue "facts" or statements, some of great consequence, some which resulted in serious violations of everything from personal liberties to bodily integrity (Buck v Bell is an example) to those that end up to costing someone their life. And the members of that court know very well they often have lied, perhaps originally through error or misunderstanding or . . . perhaps by watching those forensic fairy-tales so popular on American TV in the past half-century (see Kagan's mistake below).
Though Taney's lie was certainly a matter of common knowledge among Supreme Court "justices" in the entire period after it was issued, they haven't shown any tendency to be more careful to not lie in their rulings.
Here's bit from a 2017 Mother Jones article dealing with a ProPublica study of just some of the recent years of the Roberts Court.
In all, ProPublica found seven errors in a modest sampling of Supreme Court opinions written from 2011 through 2015. In some cases, the errors were introduced by individual justices apparently doing their own research. In others, the errors resulted from false or deeply flawed submissions made to the court by people or organizations seeking to persuade the justices to rule one way or the other.
The review found an error in a landmark ruling, Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down part of the Voting Rights Act. Chief Justice John Roberts used erroneous data to make claims about comparable rates of voter registration among blacks and whites in six southern states.
In another case, Justice Anthony Kennedy falsely claimed that DNA analysis can be used to identify individual suspects in criminal cases with perfect accuracy.
Some of the mistakes were technical or arguably minor, and it is difficult to determine with certainty if they played a vital part in the court’s reasoning and final judgments.
But the NASA case was not the only one where a mistake involved a core aspect of the court’s ruling on an issue with widespread ramifications.
In 2013, the court issued a unanimous ruling in a case involving Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches by the police. In the case, the court determined that when a drug-sniffing dog signals it smells an illegal drug from outside of a car, police have probable cause to search the entire car without a warrant. Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote the opinion, took on one of the central fears of those worried about innocent people being caught up in such police searches.
Kagan argued that the risk of “false positives”—instances in which a dog might mistakenly identify the presence of drugs—should be based on whether the dogs had been formally certified by police groups as reliable in their performance. She cited material from the Scientific Working Group on Dog and Orthogonal Detector Guidelines to support the court’s position.
However, none of the largest certification groups actually test for the risk of false positives. ProPublica reviewed standards and testing records and interviewed several experts on drug-sniffing dogs, including the head of the working group Kagan cited. He said her confidence in the certification process was misplaced.
“It’s important that it’s not just taken at face value to say just because the dog’s certified with a national organization that means they’re reliable,” said Kenneth Furton, the chairman of the working group, who now is provost at Florida International University.
It would seem that Harvard Law School lawyers (Kennedy and Kagan), professors, deans of that law school (Kagan) and then "justices" are as naive about the status of such "science" as your typical consumer of TV police procedural melodramas - which is reported to be a serious problem when real jurors make the same mistake about TV and movies being real in real trials.
"justice" Kagan, though, is hardly the worst or even part of the Republican-fascist majority who routinely lie in their written decisions and concur with such lying. And once found out, the Roberts majority is happy to let the lie stand even though that lie could cost someone their life.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday decided not to correct a factual error it made in a previous opinion, making it much more likely that two death row prisoners who have made credible arguments that the lower courts got their case wrong will be executed.
The court declined a motion to modify its ruling, last month against Barry Jones and David Ramirez. Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion in favor of Arizona included a line saying Jones and Ramirez had conceded that they would lose their appeals unless they were able to introduce newly discovered evidence. But the statement wasn’t true.
Both men were sentenced to death for murder. But Jones’ conviction has been overturned by lower courts in light of new evidence, and Ramirez’s claim of ineffective legal counsel has been backed by his own trial lawyer.
The court's decision not to modify the line means that a lower court could actually abide by that language. That would almost certainly reinstate the men's death sentences because virtually all the exculpatory evidence in their cases was discovered only after their state-level trials (and before the ongoing federal-level appeals).
The Supreme Court’s conservative bloc ruled against Jones and Ramirez in May, holding that people can appeal to federal courts if their state-court attorney was incompetent but can’t actually introduce new evidence to support those claims. There is no need to allow new evidence, Thomas wrote, because that undermines states’ sovereign power to “enforce societal norms through criminal law.”
The ruling is in keeping with court's stance since 2020, an approach that has seen the court repeatedly clear the way for executions after a 17-year hiatus, often in ideologically split decisions, and notwithstanding plausible innocence claims, or disagreement from lower courts, prominent conservative lawyers and even the (virtually apolitical) American Bar Association.
That anemic analysis in Thomas' May opinion - a policy determination that it’s societally preferable to strictly limit post-conviction appeals, regardless of the weight of newly discovered evidence - underscored the conservatives’ indifference to the wrongful convictions epidemic, (to say nothing of the judicial integrity concerns raised by that holding).
The inaction on Monday puts a fine point on it.
The justices declined to correct a single line in a previous ruling, even though the court frequently modifies its opinions, from small spelling errors to substantive statements of law, sometimes publicly and sometimes surreptitiously.
It did so even though Arizona, which refurbished, its gas chamber last year and carried out its first execution in eight years in May, agreed with opposing counsel that the court should make the modification.
Moreover, the decision effectively punishes death-sentenced petitioners for the justices’ own mistake - even though the court forgave the same kind of misstep when the state seeking the death penalty was actually at fault. (More on that below.)
As a practical matter, the court’s inaction doesn’t condemn the men to death just yet. Their attorneys can rely on a few last-ditch arguments when the case goes back to lower courts – like judicial estoppel, which precludes litigants from taking positions that contradict their arguments in previous proceedings (here, the state’s agreement to the modification request indicates that it can’t also argue that Jones and Ramirez had in fact conceded that they can’t win without new evidence).
Arizona solicitor general Brunn Roysden III didn’t respond to a request for comment. Robert Loeb, an attorney at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe who represents Jones and Ramirez, declined a request to comment, noting the sensitive nature of the litigation.
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