Noice….
Spoiler will now live rent free on the chans….
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/07/05/did-you-know-john-roberts-is-also-chief-justice-of-the-nsas-surveillance-state/?utm_term=.2e48c8588175
Perhaps the federal government is simply very judicious in invoking its surveillance authority. But it’s also possible that empowering the chief justice – especially one with an expansive view of state police powers – to appoint every FISA judge has created a tilted court. That’s probable even if the chief justice has been conscientious in his selections.
Harvard Law School professor and Bloomberg View columnist Cass R. Sunstein has found that judges are more ideologically rigid when their fellow judges are from the same party, and more moderate when fellow judges are from the other party. “Federal judges (no less than the rest of us) are subject to group polarization,” he wrote.
The FISA court is composed of federal judges. All are appointed by the same man. All but one hail from the same political party. And unlike judges in normal courts, FISA judges don’t hear opposing testimony or feel pressure from colleagues or the public to moderate their rulings. Under these circumstances, group polarization is almost a certainty. “There’s the real possibility that these judges become more extreme over time, even when they had only a mild bias to begin with,” Cato’s Sanchez said.
Just as the likelihood of polarization in the FISA court is more pronounced than in normal courts, the stakes are also higher. If trial judges are unduly biased, their rulings can be overturned on appeal. But FISA judges decide the momentous questions of whom the government may spy on and how. Their power is awesome, and their word is final. As the great legal scholar Kanye West said, no one man should have all that power.