Me vs. The Supremes – Part VI

The Rules of the United States Supreme Court, Rule 44, allow for the filing of a motion to re-hear any order entered by the Court. When the Court on October 29, 2007, entered its order disqualifying itself from considering Case No.: 07-6522 under the authority of 28 U. S. C. §1 and §455 as they lacked a quorum when seven of the Justices disqualified themselves, I timely filed a motion to re-hear. Five hundred sixteen (516) days later, the Supreme Court has not determined that motion to re-hear and therein lies a significant problem which has put the Justices on the path to a potential forfeiture of their offices and a criminal investigation of their actions. . .

The motion to rehear made two points. First, it is black letter law that similarly situated litigants must be treated similarly. Accord: James M. Beam Distilling Company v. Georgia, 501 U.S. 529, 537 (1991)(“. . . litigants in similar situations should be treated the same, a fundamental component of stare decisis and the rule of law generally.”). In the first suit, Case Number: 05-459, on November 14, 2005, Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, David Souter, John Paul Stevens and Clarence Thomas joined in entering an order in that case denying my Petition for Writ of Certiorari. Yet, in Case Number: 07-6522, these same Justices disqualified themselves from considering my Petition. In both instances, the Justices were named defendants in the respective complaints. Accordingly, I argued, this differing treatment demanded explanation by the Court – particularly when exactly the same fact patterns result in diametrically opposed results.

Second, in United States v. Will, 449 U.S. 200, 213 (1980), the Court held : “We therefore hold that §455 was not intended by Congress to alter the time-honored Rule of Necessity.” In Will, the Court – expressly recognizing that §455 mandated the entire Court’s disqualification – nevertheless held: “And we would not casually infer that the Legislative and Executive Branches sought by the enactment of § 455 to foreclose federal courts from exercising ‘the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.’ Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803).”  

Thus, I argued, the Supreme Court was obligated to explain how it is that the Court could ignore the express prohibition of §455 to insure its own salary levels when those salary levels were at issue but invoke the same statute to avoid determining whether personal liability attaches to its actions in Case Number: 05-459.  Simply stated, if the Court could ignore §455 when it benefited the Court, then it cannot invoke §455 when it threatens the Court’s salaries without doing violation to the Equal Protection Guarantees of the Fifth Amendment.

Thus, I demanded that the Supreme Court, pursuant to its obligation of ratio decidendi to declare the “principled reason” for acting differently in its inconsistent decisions in Case Number: 05-459 and Case Number: 07-6522.

To date, the Court has refused to address these arguments, though they were set for hearing on January 4, 2008. Which then brings up the basis for the third lawsuit I filed against he Supreme Court.