Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

A few days ago the US Supreme Court refused to take an appeal from a 9th Circuit case that took a constitutional stand for homeless people. The 9th Circuit sad that it is cruel and unusual punishment for the city of Boise, pursuant to authority from the State of Idaho, to criminalize sleeping in outdoor public places such as parks and sidewalks.  SCOTUS refused to take that up. What are we to make of this? I offer the following thought.  This is yet another piece of evidence that the deliberations of SCOTUS are not what the ideologues always make them out to be. Ideologues of left and right count heads -- five appointed by Presidents of Party left, 4 appointed by members of Party right. Ah, the decisions will naturally be leftward, as ideologues understand it. Or, if the count comes out the other way, so will the results.  Even most ideologues will sometimes admit that there are lots of issues before the court that don't offer themselves neatly as left-versus-...

The Jan/Feb issue of THE FEDERAL LAWYER includes a review, by Nicholas J. Patterson, of a recent biography of Clarence Darrow, the renowned early 20th century trial lawyer. The review discusses the Steunenberg/Haywood murder trial briefly, and my thoughts while reading it stuck on that. Frank Steunenberg had been the Governor of Idaho from 1897 to 1901. (The officeholder received a two-year term in that state in those days, so this entailed one re-election.) Though he was elected largely through labor support, near the end of his second term he took management's side of a labor conflict, asking President McKinley to send federal troops into Idaho to break a miners' strike.  He did not seek a third term in the 1900 election, and seems not to have continued to be active in politics in the years left to him. In 1905, Steunenberg died. Somebody -- probably former miner Harry Orchard -- had rigged explosives to the gate outside his h...