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Obama citizenship at SCOTUS tomorrow

by Frank James – (The Swamp)

The U.S. Supreme Court’s justices will discuss at their Friday conference tomorrow the Obama’s-not-a-natural-born-citizen lawsuit known as Donofrio v. Wells.

As Chicago Tribune reporter James Janega writes:

The suit originally sought to stay the election, and was filed on behalf of Leo Donofrio against New Jersey Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells.

Legal experts say the appeal has little chance of succeeding, despite appearing on the court’s schedule. Legal records show it is only the tip of an iceberg of nationwide efforts seeking to derail Obama’s election over accusations that he either wasn’t born a U.S. citizen or that he later renounced his citizenship in Indonesia.

In one of those delicious ironies that makes life so interesting, the justice who distributed the case to his colleagues was none other than Clarence Thomas, only the second African American to sit on the high court. I can only assume the justice saw some potentially interesting legal issue in the lawsuit.

Janega goes on to write:

The most famous case questioning Obama’s citizenship was filed in Pennsylvania in August on behalf of Philip J. Berg and sought to enjoin the Democratic National Committee from nominating Obama. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to accept the case. Earlier, a federal judge rejected it for “lack of standing”–ruling that Berg had no legal right to sue. In cases like this, judges sometimes believe the matter is best left to political institutions, such as the Electoral College or Congress, said legal scholar Eugene Volokh of the University of California at Los Angeles.

The remaining case with the highest profile is Donofrio vs. Wells. Because it was distributed by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to other justices for conference, it gained undue importance for people unschooled in how the court works, Volokh said.

Many petitioners seeking stays of pending events have their cases distributed to the full court, he said. Of those, Volokh found that 782 were denied in the last eight years while just 60 were heard–and not all of those ultimately were successful.

So just because the high court’s justices will have the chance to decide whether to take up Donofrio doesn’t mean they necessarily will. The odds are obviously against that especially since as has been often said, the court can read polls. And it can read election results too.

It’s been reported that most members of the court didn’t enjoy being dragged into the Bush v. Gore dispute in 2000, believing that the disputed election should have settled politically.

After that decision, the court lost a lot of popular support. It has since regained its stature in the public’s eyes.

The justices are reluctant to see that threatened because, as legal scholars have said, the court’s rulings are accepted largely because of the respect Americans have for it. That’s a trust the justices take very seriously.