Well, as of last year, it seems it can (in a way), as long as someone involved in a lawsuit elsewhere asks nicely. The Court has now created ex nihilo a new veto power for itself. The precedent is United States v. Windsor. As Justice Scalia wrote in dissent:

In other words, there was no dispute before the court to adjudicate, and thus no case (in a legal sense). Yet the Supreme Court nevertheless chose to offer its opinion on gay rights and overturn a federal law, despite a lack of any standing, any dispute, or any case.

It's probably the most important element of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence to come out of the recent gay marriage decisions -- much more critical legally than the gay rights issues themselves. The Supreme Court has basically come up with a justification to offer its opinion on a matter where no legal dispute exists. This is really unprecedented, but it's a newfound power of the Court. Look for this to pop up again in some unexpected way in coming years. Scalia called the idea "jaw-dropping," "an assertion of judicial supremacy over the people's Representatives in Congress and the Executive. It envisions a Supreme Court standing (or rather enthroned) at the apex of government, empowered to decide all constitutional questions, always and everywhere "primary" in its role." :

So, technically someone still has to suggest the idea of an action to the Court, I suppose, but I don't know after Windsor whether we can really say that an actual "case" is required for the Supreme Court to offer an opinion and change laws.

(Note that I'm not arguing against the outcome of Windsor -- only that no parties in the lawsuit were actually arguing for the Supreme Court to take any actual normal legal remedy within its jurisdiction; the correct action would have been for Obama to appoint a third-party to defend DOMA and argue for the law, if he felt the Justice Department shouldn't do it. Without doing so, there was no legal justification for SCOTUS to take any action.)

Another poster already defended me, but let me be very clear about why I made the second comment: some of the actual cases listed in the article I linked were actually originally brought against the Bush administration. Some of these recent rulings took years to get to the Supreme Court, and the Obama Justice Department was put in the position of defending actions that were originally brought against the Bush administration. This is a common legal situation.

My point is that some people might have viewed my first post as sound like "yeah, the Supremes hate Obama so much they overruled him unanimously 13 times," when actually it could be argued that a number of those actions were really cases which originally involved the Bush administration.

So, I added a clarification that I think BOTH of the administrations are culpable for ONGOING bad actions. I'm NOT "backtracking" or giving Obama a "free pass" AT ALL, since I absolutely think that he has continued some of the worst policies of his predecessor and in many ways has made things significantly worse.

But regardless, the point is the violation of fundamental rights -- no matter what adminstration or who is doing it.

Huh? From your own link:

And schools were even offering entire degrees through distance education by the 1850s:

I am by no means downplaying the significance of the Chicago model in the history of education. But why did you omit mention of decades and perhaps centuries of preceding distance-learning courses in your claim?

While true in a strict sense, in a broader sense the Supreme Court has the ability to shape jurisprudence around bigger issues. Take, for example, the recent plethora of federal court rulings overturning gay marriage bans in a number of states. The Supreme Court did NOT rule on this issue directly. In fact, the majority rulings last year explicitly avoiding tackling that issue. But, as Scalia noted in dissent at the time, the type of argumentation used in the majority opinion strongly implied that no legal logic would support a gay marriage ban.

So, in the process of adjudicating a case before them, the Supreme Court laid the groundwork for other rulings that were strictly unrelated, but followed from the legal arguments employed.

In this way, Supreme Court justices can shape jurisprudence on cases far beyond their docket. If they begin to make strongly worded objections to Fourth Amendment violations and present new legal justifications for stopping those violations, chances are those sorts of legal arguments will be upheld by lower courts.

True, but 1 out of 9 is somewhat better odds than 1 out 435 in terms of hoping to "get something done," particularly when a number of privacy-related cases have been coming before the Court in recent years.

Duh.

Who said anything about "initiating" anything?

I said she was one of the few who "potentially have the direct power to constrain" the government's overreach, since the other two branches have obviously gone along with various Fourth Amendment violations in recent years. Obviously, implicit in that "potentially" is that it would require a case to come before the Court. Given that numerous people have been filing court cases against the government in recent years about privacy violations, it's reasonable to say that Sotomayor WILL have a number of opportunities to try to rein in government overreach.

I took Civics in school. There I learned about something called checks and balances, including the Supreme Court's ability to overrule laws and executive actions that are Constitutional violations.

Perhaps, given your overreaction to something I didn't say, the larger criticism should be about how our schools are failing at teaching reading comprehension.

(By the way, before anyone accuses me of bias against Obama or whatever because many of these cases involved actions taken under Bush as well -- note that my argument was about Executive power in general. Obama has generally continued Bush's abuses of that power, and this problem is not one that falls along party lines.)

Maybe because she's one of only NINE people in the United States who potentially have the direct power to constrain a surveillance state, since it's clear that our Executive and Legislative branches have "sold out" and have effectively rendered many clauses of the Fourth Amendment meaningless.

Note that the Supreme Court has UNANIMOUSLY overruled the Obama administration's stance at least 13 times in the past two years, in a number of those cases protecting privacy and related freedoms.

So, yeah, this person is one of the few who are close to our only hope in stopping the continuous march toward government surveillance, intrusions into privacy, and complete dismissal of Fourth Amendment protections.

THAT'S why her opinion is news.

Actually, Sotomayor is a bit of an outlier on the Supreme Court and has been highlighted for laying the groundwork to reinstate stronger Fourth Amendment protections -- particularly against the government intrusions -- especially in her ruling in United States v. Jones . (For details on her privacy rulings before joining the Court, you can see EPIC's summary here.)

Note that in TFA she was warning about "Orwellian" surveillance, which specifically tends to refer to a world where the government is spying on you, not just private citizens. The quotation highlighted in TFS seems to focus on private citizen regulations, but she has also demonstrated more concern about many government invasions of privacy than most other Supreme Court members, including those who are definitely NOT ''progressives."

Also, by the way, I don't think we should derive any conclusions about "hot fields" from Harvard's enrollment numbers.

Until the past couple years, one of the top two biggest courses at Harvard was "Justice," with enrollments upwards of 800 students. I don't think that was a signal that hoards of Harvard students were going to become political philosophers -- it just had a reputation for a good lecturer and satisfied the right distribution requirement.

Similarly, a few years back another course with 800+ enrollments for many years was "First Nights," a course in the Music Department that revolved around premiere performances of a few major classical works. That clearly wasn't some sort of "sign" that the next "hot field" would be studying classical music.

Harvard has a culture where courses have detailed public ratings, and "hot courses" generally happen because (1) they have a good lecturer, (2) they satisfy some university requirement that nobody wants to have to bother with otherwise, and (3) they give out a lot of A's.

I can't guarantee that all three of those things are at work here, but I bet at least two of them are. The actual field of the "hot course" is almost irrelevant.

You obviously haven't bothered to look into Harvard's course numbering system (or credit system). Like just about everything else at Harvard -- from their wacko GPA system that had 15 points (instead of the usual 4.0) until recent years to the fact that they have a "concentration" instead of a "major" -- their course numbers aren't like elsewhere.

If you want to see their CS offerings, look here.

Basically, in Harvard's numbering system (which varies a bit by department), 0-99 are often undergraduate offerings, 100-199 are courses that could be taken by both undergraduates and grads, and 200+ are graduate-only classes. (Some departments with a lot of courses change the numbering so that the undergrad/grad courses start at 1000 instead of 100, and graduate courses start at 2000.)

In many departments it's uncommon to take anything numbered 100 or above until your junior year (maybe earlier in CS, looking at their course offerings). So, saying this course is numbered 50 isn't saying much. In most departments, the generic courses for non-majors are often in the 1-10 or 1-20 range.

And as for credits -- notice the catalog lists this as a "half course," from the old system where most Harvard students would enroll in courses that would last a full year (two semesters = "full course"). Harvard doesn't charge by the credit hour like a community college or state university might. They basically have a set tuition rate per semester and you're expected to take "four half courses" per term, five if you're ambitious. (You can take more -- generally for the same tuition -- but I believe it requires special overrides.)

I have no doubt that some students are in fact taking this class to "try out" computer stuff, but it's hard to tell what those stats mean. Also, Harvard has a "gen ed" distribution requirement, and CS50 satisfies one of those distribution requirements. So, I'd imagine the bigger draw is "learn something in computers" AND "satisfy some stupid requirement," rather than "hmm... maybe I'll try computer science..."

Anyhow, I know you (and most people here) didn't need to know that much about Harvard's wacko systems... but this post shouldn't be "+5 Informative" when it's based on wrong information.

Well, yes. But it's hardly "original" -- this is a problem that has been profiled extensively for years, yet few people seem to realize how far it extends. A couple of times over the past year, when posters on Slashdot mentioned random forfeitures that happened to them, they were met with comments saying, "You must have done something suspicious" or "What's the rest of the story," and I tried to provide links to point out the systemic problem, but have been met with ignorance and resistance.

For a sample of past coverage, here's an extensive piece from The New Yorker a year ago, a piece from Reason in 2012, a piece from Forbes in 2011, pieces in Slate and The Economist from 2010, a detailed piece on NPR from 2008, etc., etc., etc. Here's an extensive account of problems with the system from PBS almost 15 years ago (around the time that legal reform forced money to go to local municipalities in many cases rather than the federal government). The ACLU has been fighting this for decades.

I know some people here may be well aware of this problem, and others may find this shocking and new. Regardless, it's very sad that it may take other countries' shaming us into taking action to fix an unjust assault on our citizens that has been going on for many years.

Your statement may be accurate, but probably not in the way you mean. If you seriously want to look into the history of scientific views on race, you might start here.

Yes, for most of the history of science, scientists have claimed that they had "proof" of the inferior intelligence of one race or another. The funny thing is... the race that is "stupid" tends to change depending on the time period or the background of the authors, suggesting most historical methodologies were probably flawed. Unless, of course, you actually believe that the Jews and Asian people of the 19th century were actually so very stupid (as scientists of that time said), but recent IQ tests seem to put them at the top. And if you believe that all these scientific "tests" are valid across different eras (which is rather preposterous if you look at their "methodologies" for determining "superior" races), then your genetic heredity hypothesis runs into problem -- otherwise, how do you explain the giant jump in intelligence for Asians and Jews in "scientific" studies in the past couple hundred years?

It's kinda like the fact that back in the early 20th century, Jews were the stars of professional basketball, lauded for their supposed athletic prowess, their craftiness and stealthiness ("scheming minds"), and their shortness, which was supposed to give them an advantage on the basketball court by allowing faster maneuvering closer to the ground. Of course that sounds like nonsense today when basketball is dominated with large, tall African-American players, but we still seem to want to find some sort of genetic explanation for the "natural athletic ability" of certain races.

I know average Joe. He often harbors some racist views, either overt or latent.

The problem is that you have to accept that (1) IQ tests actually are a reasonable measure of the only type of "general intelligence" that counts, (2) that IQ can't be influenced significantly by experience or life conditions, and (3) that there are no other confounding variables that could make comparisons between vastly different groups problematic.

I don't accept any of these. First, IQ tests measure something but many scientists have severely criticized them as the only possible measure of "general intelligence." And second, there are many, many known confounding factors, including environmental factors and life experience, that make comparisons difficult between races.

I'm NOT saying that no racial differences exist. I'm saying that (1) even if they do exist, the tests are mostly written by smart white people to evaluate smart white people, so they may not accurately measure useful intelligence in other cultures, (2) there are way too many confounding variables to give a lot of accuracy to comparisons, and most of the differences seen at face value are very likely not to turn out to have meaningful genetic or racial sources.

Despite the fact that I disagree with you, I actually agree that this SHOULD be our reaction. I really have no clue why people are so obsessed with proving (or disproving) racial differences in intelligence, when there are so many other interesting confounding variables that have been PROVEN to play bigger roles in shaping intelligence. Even if we did find some sort of minor difference, why the heck is this significant? On the basis of research by people who have tried to take these confounding variables into account, the general consensus is that any minor differences of a few IQ points are NOT enough to explain away disparities in, say, socioeconomic outcomes of other races.

And, if you look back at that history of people who claimed racial superiority for one race or another -- even promoting "scientific" opinions -- you'll find that they disproportionately have a racist agenda. I'm not saying you do, but it's hard to figure out why people are so obsessed with this unless they view race as something so significant that these differences overshadow other factors... unless they have a racist agenda at heart.

And that's probably the reason for your observed "weirdness" of people avoiding claims for racial differences -- in the past, the vast majority of those claims were bogus and promoted by racists. It's hard to separate the very minor differences that might be legitimate.

Yes, I've heard the English follow this practice, but they also let the wounds from the lashing begin to heal on some of their grain-fed cattle, producing Cornish clotted cream.

The alcohol one is quite tricky. Yes, it's true that health outcomes for heavy alcohol consumption are often somewhat worse that moderate drinkers (in most studies). But there have been quite a few studies that show that heavy drinkers still do better than those who abstain completely. I wouldn't quite go as far as recommendations in this article, but the consensus of many, many studies that have included hundreds of thousands (probably millions) of people is that people who drink have better health outcomes, and heavy drinkers still do a lot better than abstainers.

So, is "alcohol overconsumption" "undeniably bad"? I don't know, but the evidence seems to suggest that it's less bad than other seemingly "better" choices, like not drinking at all.

(Note that these studies do NOT say that alcohol is the DIRECT cause of the better health outcomes, only that it is highly correlated. Most scientists don't think the effect is so much about alcohol protecting the body so much as it guards against depression, alleviates stress, helps social interactions which contribute toward better mental and physical health, etc.)

While it's somewhat refreshing to see someone here acknowledge that ancient writers did do something akin to modern science, it's a little strange to try to lump Pliny, Aristotle, and modern science into one continuous method.

Pliny the Elder was trying to write an encyclopedia, essentially a collection of anything anyone had ever reported or discussed about the natural world. While Pliny did some notable investigations of his own, his work in the Natural History is more of a collection of claims rather than anything like modern science. (For some entertainment, read the parts of the Wikipedia article about his methodology, or better yet, read the description in the original and his nephew Pliny the Younger's discussion of the method -- basically, the guy just read books day and night, made extracts, and shoved them all in a giant treatise. Hardly "science.")

As for Aristotle? Well, he definitely did experiments, and contrary to the way we often talk about him in the history of science, his explanations were often pretty good and logical. He was respected as authority not just because he was an authority, but because his models of the world seemed to make sense according to observations of the time (such as they understood them).

But a lot of the modern scientific method was about overthrowing various aspects of Aristotelianism in the 17th century. And I'm not talking about specific facts or theories -- I mean the basic method.

Anyhow, my points are that (1) these writers didn't deliberately write any "nonsense" and they were widely respected for THOUSANDS of years because a lot of their writings agreed with things as observed and known at the time, and (2) despite this, what ultimately corrected their misunderstandings was a reconfiguration of the way we do research and model the external world... so the methods of thousands of years ago vs. today are not really comparable, nor is the method of correction.