How about the opposite: you're only allowed to retire unless you can no longer physically do the job? That'd make it very hard to predict when a seat will open up so you'd need to be on your toes at all times for when a Scalia-style opening happens. It'd also stop the Kennedy-style blatantly political opening from occurring as well.
Yes, that's called slavery and we tend to frown upon it.
But what if SCOTUS rules that justices have no rights which any man or woman is bound to respect?
I think a (lengthy) fixed term is reasonable. Less for anything to do with the current situation, and more to avoid senility/health problems/general out-of-touchness having too much impact.
That's the policy in my own country, and yes it definitely means that leaders are likely to get multiple appointments (in fact more so than in the US, since we don't have term limits for PMs), but due to the length of the terms and the swing of the political pendulum, it tends to balance out partisan-wise. There's pretty much no political policy that can guard against extremely committed bad actors, but I think the judiciary in the US is generally kind of an odd duck and could do with some reform regardless.
The more I think about it the more I believe we should have the court setup more rigidly in terms of appointments. There is no good reason to have it be random. Structure it so that every president gets 1 appointment per term, no more no less.
And I think it should be a mandatory 2/3rds vote for approval. The court should be all moderates. I don’t want people trying to law make from the bench. If a law is bad, but not against the constitution, it should stand until the actual rule makers fix it.
Jebus314 on
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
I like the idea of fixed terms, something to the effect of "every X years, the oldest (in terms of time served) justice gets the boot." You wind up with imbalances if you have a string of one party as president, but it's nothing insurmountable, and it's very hard to game the system.
I don't like making it require a supermajority to confirm anyone, though, because in this climate, that just means we can't confirm any justices unless we have a supermajority in Congress, and that guarantees only super partisan justices make it on.
I just like requiring a vote on any nominee within, say, 90 days.
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I like the idea of fixed terms, something to the effect of "every X years, the oldest (in terms of time served) justice gets the boot." You wind up with imbalances if you have a string of one party as president, but it's nothing insurmountable, and it's very hard to game the system.
I don't like making it require a supermajority to confirm anyone, though, because in this climate, that just means we can't confirm any justices unless we have a supermajority in Congress, and that guarantees only super partisan justices make it on.
I just like requiring a vote on any nominee within, say, 90 days.
If the last two years have proven anything it’s that super partisan judges is the norm now. It just only requires a simple majority these days.
The key is to make failure to confirm someone within X time lead to bad outcomes for everyone. Maybe something like if a new justice is not chosen within 1 year, then congress can no longer pass any laws until a new justice is confirmed. Which basically means government shutdown eventually. You can easily block any judge, but doing so for too long and you’ll have to convince the public that holding the line is worth a shutdown.
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
The problem there is that one side is fine with the government not doing anything. In fact it's their preferred outcome. So that's not really a punishment for them.
How about the opposite: you're only allowed to retire unless you can no longer physically do the job? That'd make it very hard to predict when a seat will open up so you'd need to be on your toes at all times for when a Scalia-style opening happens. It'd also stop the Kennedy-style blatantly political opening from occurring as well.
Yes, that's called slavery and we tend to frown upon it.
It's clearly indentured servitude, not slavery. They'd know the "for the rest of your life with no outs" policy from the start, would have the ability to say no to being nominated like they have now, and would be compensated the entire time.
Anyway, that whole thought exercise was born from trying to think of a way to removing the ability to game SCOTUS nominations by way of voluntary retirement while also not adding the ability to game SCOTUS nominations by making them mostly predictable through term limits. I'm not sure it's really possible without relying wholly on the randomness of death or something silly like each Justice rolling a dice on their first day that dictates how many years their term is and that number remaining secret until they finally do retire.
Court packing may actually be necessary if Dems take the other two branches, because any law passed by a Dem Congress and President could be struck down by an unscrupulous enough SCOTUS for any or no reason. They’ve already demonstrated that precedence and relevance aren’t important when they make their rulings and that’s before Cavanaugh even gets confirmed.
The court ultimately has limits in that regard, because if it really came down to a "lawless" supreme court that just engaged in pure partisan hackery 100% of the time, you can just ignore them. They have no enforcement power as Jackson once proved to horrible effect.
That would be lawlessness to answer lawlessness of course, but there is no doomsday scenario where the court just says "nope" to every piece of landmark legislation.
Court packing may actually be necessary if Dems take the other two branches, because any law passed by a Dem Congress and President could be struck down by an unscrupulous enough SCOTUS for any or no reason. They’ve already demonstrated that precedence and relevance aren’t important when they make their rulings and that’s before Cavanaugh even gets confirmed.
The court ultimately has limits in that regard, because if it really came down to a "lawless" supreme court that just engaged in pure partisan hackery 100% of the time, you can just ignore them. They have no enforcement power as Jackson once proved to horrible effect.
That would be lawlessness to answer lawlessness of course, but there is no doomsday scenario where the court just says "nope" to every piece of landmark legislation.
You end up with a complete breakdown of the law in that situation.
Yeah, I mean there comes a point where the answer to "well what if they do THIS?" is just "then i guess we no longer have a viable government."
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I like the idea of fixed terms, something to the effect of "every X years, the oldest (in terms of time served) justice gets the boot." You wind up with imbalances if you have a string of one party as president, but it's nothing insurmountable, and it's very hard to game the system.
I don't like making it require a supermajority to confirm anyone, though, because in this climate, that just means we can't confirm any justices unless we have a supermajority in Congress, and that guarantees only super partisan justices make it on.
I just like requiring a vote on any nominee within, say, 90 days.
If the last two years have proven anything it’s that super partisan judges is the norm now. It just only requires a simple majority these days.
The key is to make failure to confirm someone within X time lead to bad outcomes for everyone. Maybe something like if a new justice is not chosen within 1 year, then congress can no longer pass any laws until a new justice is confirmed. Which basically means government shutdown eventually. You can easily block any judge, but doing so for too long and you’ll have to convince the public that holding the line is worth a shutdown.
Yeah, if someone abuses the law because there are no consequences, make consequences.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Yeah, I mean there comes a point where the answer to "well what if they do THIS?" is just "then i guess we no longer have a viable government."
I think people are using this idea as a cop-out though. There seems to be this sentiment that because we can’t control what anyone else will do it really doesn’t matter what we do. There are no consequences to our actions because the other side will do their worst anyway, so the only consequences are for inaction.
I just disagree. There are limits to what current politicians will do (on both sides) and the more we push ourside to be extremists, the more extreme both sides will become.
Court packing probably isn’t the final step, but the fact that you even have to wonder if maybe it could be close makes it seem very risky.
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
I just disagree. There are limits to what current politicians will do (on both sides) and the more we push ourside to be extremists, the more extreme both sides will become.
I just disagree. There are limits to what current politicians will do (on both sides) and the more we push ourside to be extremists, the more extreme both sides will become.
[citation needed]
Is it really though?
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
I just disagree. There are limits to what current politicians will do (on both sides) and the more we push ourside to be extremists, the more extreme both sides will become.
[citation needed]
Is it really though?
Children are in cages and the president is in thrall to the Russian president and one side thinks that everything is fine. Where is the fucking limit? I guess there aren't literal death camps yet.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I didn't think, never imagined, we'd see the (party in control of the) Senate just outright refuse to hold hearings on a nominee, so they could get their own man in.
But here we are.
Any remaining norms, customs and limits now exist in the context of "haven't been broken/violated... yet."
If there are limits to what they will do we have not found them yet. If there are things they have not done (which, let’s be clear here, include getting in bed with a hostile foreign power in order to secure domestic power*) it seems only because they have not been necessary.
Regardless it does not matter if there are limits. You play the game on the rules established. And the rules established say that we must push or we must cede the nation to people willing to abuse the process and our good nature in order to loot and enshrine white supremacy.
Will they push further? Not if they actually have limits.
*and that is the most kind descriptor i am willing to give for what they have done and the least encompassing of the criminality.
Yeah, I mean there comes a point where the answer to "well what if they do THIS?" is just "then i guess we no longer have a viable government."
I think people are using this idea as a cop-out though. There seems to be this sentiment that because we can’t control what anyone else will do it really doesn’t matter what we do. There are no consequences to our actions because the other side will do their worst anyway, so the only consequences are for inaction.
I just disagree. There are limits to what current politicians will do (on both sides) and the more we push ourside to be extremists, the more extreme both sides will become.
Court packing probably isn’t the final step, but the fact that you even have to wonder if maybe it could be close makes it seem very risky.
I was specifically responding to the idea of a completely partisan SCOTUS that just declared all laws by party X as unconstitutional, while there rest of the government just ignored everything they had to say.
I don't think we're anywhere near that point, but that doesn't mean the question of "so then what?" has viable answers stretching out to infinity.
The rule of law ultimately consists of people. When the people stop giving a shit, the rule of law ends.
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I just disagree. There are limits to what current politicians will do (on both sides) and the more we push ourside to be extremists, the more extreme both sides will become.
[citation needed]
Is it really though?
Yes, because the typical response through history to an opposition party moving to the fringes is for the other party to moderate and attempt to recapture the center ground.
I just disagree. There are limits to what current politicians will do (on both sides) and the more we push ourside to be extremists, the more extreme both sides will become.
[citation needed]
Is it really though?
What part of "The present administration is committing crimes against humanity on our own soil and bragging about it." do you not understand?
Say the GOP gets Kavanaugh through, the dems take the presidency and Congress in 2020, and we try to pack the courts.
What's to stop the GOP from suing, and SCOTUS deciding that court packing is unconstitutional? I mean, it doesn't even need to make any sense, if we're at the point where SCOTUS is just another tool of the GOP, can't they just call foul on anything that jeopardizes GOP rule?
The SCOTUS that looks at it would include the judges they chose for the court packing.
I was not aware if that was a given, or if the time between establishing the new packing of the courts and actually getting justices in there would be long enough for a case to make it through.
(I do not actually know what the process of implementing a court packing scheme looks like.)
I think you have to pass a law first, but that's it. Like, you just have Congress say "The SCOTUS is now 11 members" and then you confirm 2 new judges. That's it.
The difficulty is only in getting enough members of Congress on board.
I don’t think you need a law. The FDR controversy is based on the loose, tradition-based space
I just disagree. There are limits to what current politicians will do (on both sides) and the more we push ourside to be extremists, the more extreme both sides will become.
[citation needed]
Is it really though?
Yes, because the typical response through history to an opposition party moving to the fringes is for the other party to moderate and attempt to recapture the center ground.
The other typical result is for the radical party to radicalize the other and set off a civil war. That’s the global historical experience, and I couldn’t tell you the numbers on which wins out more.
Just in the United States, we’ve had a shooting war in the 1860s, a hated occupation whose end resuled in a guerilla insurgency that murdered thousands and ethnically cleansed several Southern states to ensure white conservative power on the national level, and a soft cold war during the Civil Rights Movement. Simmering resentment over both has directly spawed today’s shock of the day government.
I just disagree. There are limits to what current politicians will do (on both sides) and the more we push ourside to be extremists, the more extreme both sides will become.
[citation needed]
Is it really though?
Children are in cages and the president is in thrall to the Russian president and one side thinks that everything is fine. Where is the fucking limit? I guess there aren't literal death camps yet.
I mean, if you believe the republicans are no longer held in check by laws and rules, then we are at the point of needing to argue for dissolution of the United States. If you honestly believe there is nothing left holding republicans back from a single party rule, then how can anything we do recover from that?
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
I mean, if you believe the republicans are no longer held in check by laws and rules, then we are at the point of needing to argue for dissolution of the United States.
Nope.
The presence of a malign influence in American politics does not imply dissolution as a solution, I have no idea why you would come to that conclusion.
The political solution is relatively simple, you ban partisan gerrymandering and restore the Voting Rights Act. Short term that should cripple the modern GOP and force them to moderate.
Longer term, the goal is to destroy the viability of white supremacy as a political force. To do that we need to desegregate our society for real.
Both of those methods will not survive this Supreme Court.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I just disagree. There are limits to what current politicians will do (on both sides) and the more we push ourside to be extremists, the more extreme both sides will become.
[citation needed]
Is it really though?
Children are in cages and the president is in thrall to the Russian president and one side thinks that everything is fine. Where is the fucking limit? I guess there aren't literal death camps yet.
I mean, if you believe the republicans are no longer held in check by laws and rules, then we are at the point of needing to argue for dissolution of the United States. If you honestly believe there is nothing left holding republicans back from a single party rule, then how can anything we do recover from that?
Because the republicans are a long way from getting the military to back them in any attempted coup they undertook. Their corruption must be confusing, sly and only affect the margins of the results. Allowing them to seize complete power through targeted crimes, rather than more general ones. So they can only give themselves like a 5-10% boost in elections, with that in effect at about 75% strength, they lost the last election by 3 million votes. We can still have hope for the future.
And, once we retake power we can immedoately pack the court and reinterpret the constitution to make gerrymandering illegal, which will solve like 50% of our problems off the bat. Then we can get to work on the electoral college.
I mean, if you believe the republicans are no longer held in check by laws and rules, then we are at the point of needing to argue for dissolution of the United States.
Nope.
The presence of a malign influence in American politics does not imply dissolution as a solution, I have no idea why you would come to that conclusion.
I’m arguing that it is the ultimate conclusion of ignoring consequences of extreme actions. If you simply stop accepting the legitimacy of the other side they will do the same and we will have a defacto dissolution or a war. Every extreme move you take moves you closer to that point.
Democrats pack the court. Republicans repeal Marbury v Madison and/or ignore the court Andrew Jackson style. Democrats hold trials for/impeach republicans for ignoring the court. And so on and so forth until states/cities start picking sides and ignoring laws they don’t like.
If you start the conversation of how do we fix the current issues with the Supreme Court by accepting that republicans have fundamentally broken the system and have no limits to what they will do to maintain power, then you are left with very few options that make sense. No small step will overcome that level of malice and large steps just further break the system.
Jebus314 on
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
How about the opposite: you're only allowed to retire unless you can no longer physically do the job? That'd make it very hard to predict when a seat will open up so you'd need to be on your toes at all times for when a Scalia-style opening happens. It'd also stop the Kennedy-style blatantly political opening from occurring as well.
Yes, that's called slavery and we tend to frown upon it.
Given the court's current and probable future composition, it's still in the cards. Who can say if Garland values his own freedom more than making workers chattel?
I mean, if you believe the republicans are no longer held in check by laws and rules, then we are at the point of needing to argue for dissolution of the United States.
Nope.
The presence of a malign influence in American politics does not imply dissolution as a solution, I have no idea why you would come to that conclusion.
I’m arguing that it is the ultimate conclusion of ignoring consequences of extreme actions. If you simply stop accepting the legitimacy of the other side they will do the same and we will have a defacto dissolution or a war. Every extreme move you take moves you closer to that point.
Democrats pack the court. Republicans repeal Marbury v Madison and/or ignore the court Andrew Jackson style. Democrats hold trials for/impeach republicans for ignoring the court. And so on and so forth until states/cities start picking sides and ignoring laws they don’t like.
If you start the conversation of how do we fix the current issues with the Supreme Court by accepting that republicans have fundamentally broken the system and have no limits to what they will do to maintain power, then you are left with very few options that make sense. No small step will overcome that level of malice and large steps just further break the system.
The system was broken when it was first created, has remained broken through the entirety of its history, and is still broken today. It is not 'more broken', because it was always completely broken.
A lifetime appointment to a judicial review board with a small number of members with nearly unlimited power is an inherently bad thing for democracy. It has never been a good thing, its just only now have the views of Republicans become so obviously abhorrent and anti-american that their justices are a danger to civil society. The court hasn't become any more broken, the Republicans have.
We fix the supreme court by getting rid of the entire concept of it, and the best way to do that is just to nominate enough justices such that there is near continual turnover. Then the justices can set up some kind of rota as to who hears each case. If we had like, 501 justices and each case was heard by a random nine then the whole system would be 100% better. Simply because with so many judges, a few of them would die every year (even if every republican quit to be replaced by a younger person every time Republicans took power), meaning that the lifetime appointment is far less meaningful
I mean, if you believe the republicans are no longer held in check by laws and rules, then we are at the point of needing to argue for dissolution of the United States.
Nope.
The presence of a malign influence in American politics does not imply dissolution as a solution, I have no idea why you would come to that conclusion.
I’m arguing that it is the ultimate conclusion of ignoring consequences of extreme actions. If you simply stop accepting the legitimacy of the other side they will do the same and we will have a defacto dissolution or a war. Every extreme move you take moves you closer to that point.
Democrats pack the court. Republicans repeal Marbury v Madison and/or ignore the court Andrew Jackson style. Democrats hold trials for/impeach republicans for ignoring the court. And so on and so forth until states/cities start picking sides and ignoring laws they don’t like.
If you start the conversation of how do we fix the current issues with the Supreme Court by accepting that republicans have fundamentally broken the system and have no limits to what they will do to maintain power, then you are left with very few options that make sense. No small step will overcome that level of malice and large steps just further break the system.
The system was broken when it was first created, has remained broken through the entirety of its history, and is still broken today. It is not 'more broken', because it was always completely broken.
A lifetime appointment to a judicial review board with a small number of members with nearly unlimited power is an inherently bad thing for democracy. It has never been a good thing, its just only now have the views of Republicans become so obviously abhorrent and anti-american that their justices are a danger to civil society. The court hasn't become any more broken, the Republicans have.
We fix the supreme court by getting rid of the entire concept of it, and the best way to do that is just to nominate enough justices such that there is near continual turnover. Then the justices can set up some kind of rota as to who hears each case. If we had like, 501 justices and each case was heard by a random nine then the whole system would be 100% better. Simply because with so many judges, a few of them would die every year (even if every republican quit to be replaced by a younger person every time Republicans took power), meaning that the lifetime appointment is far less meaningful
On the other hand, that puts even more power in the hands of the chief justice, whose succession is practically purposefully built to stay in the hands of one party, with only a freak incident and the political stars aligning making it possible for it to pass to the other side
I mean, if you believe the republicans are no longer held in check by laws and rules, then we are at the point of needing to argue for dissolution of the United States.
Nope.
The presence of a malign influence in American politics does not imply dissolution as a solution, I have no idea why you would come to that conclusion.
I’m arguing that it is the ultimate conclusion of ignoring consequences of extreme actions. If you simply stop accepting the legitimacy of the other side they will do the same and we will have a defacto dissolution or a war. Every extreme move you take moves you closer to that point.
Democrats pack the court. Republicans repeal Marbury v Madison and/or ignore the court Andrew Jackson style. Democrats hold trials for/impeach republicans for ignoring the court. And so on and so forth until states/cities start picking sides and ignoring laws they don’t like.
If you start the conversation of how do we fix the current issues with the Supreme Court by accepting that republicans have fundamentally broken the system and have no limits to what they will do to maintain power, then you are left with very few options that make sense. No small step will overcome that level of malice and large steps just further break the system.
The system was broken when it was first created, has remained broken through the entirety of its history, and is still broken today. It is not 'more broken', because it was always completely broken.
A lifetime appointment to a judicial review board with a small number of members with nearly unlimited power is an inherently bad thing for democracy. It has never been a good thing, its just only now have the views of Republicans become so obviously abhorrent and anti-american that their justices are a danger to civil society. The court hasn't become any more broken, the Republicans have.
We fix the supreme court by getting rid of the entire concept of it, and the best way to do that is just to nominate enough justices such that there is near continual turnover. Then the justices can set up some kind of rota as to who hears each case. If we had like, 501 justices and each case was heard by a random nine then the whole system would be 100% better. Simply because with so many judges, a few of them would die every year (even if every republican quit to be replaced by a younger person every time Republicans took power), meaning that the lifetime appointment is far less meaningful
On the other hand, that puts even more power in the hands of the chief justice, whose succession is practically purposefully built to stay in the hands of one party, with only a freak incident and the political stars aligning making it possible for it to pass to the other side
Ahh, but my plans go one step further. We then bring a case to any of the lower courts where we can still get a case onto the docket and will give us standing. The case states that the concept of the chief justice deciding which cases are and are not seen by the supreme court during their meetings, is unconstitutional as the ability to do that is not defined anywhere in the constitution. Someone whose case is refused by the supreme court due to the chief justice would have standing here. This court will then rule in our favor and state that the chief justice no longer has any formal power on the court other than being the preciding justice during an impeachment, forcing Roberts to either hear the case (and lose since pro democracy justices outnumber right wingers 496 to 5) or let the lower ruling stand.
If this is impossible, we will pass an act of congress making it illegal for chief justices to receive ANY additional funding from anyone for any reason while in office and lower the wages of the chief justice to $15 an hour.
Okay, I think the majority is this conversation is somewhere between off topic and absurd.
Let's talk about our actual SCOTUS, not some 501 seat fantasy hyper-SCOTUS presiding over the dissolution of the nation, or whatever the fork is going on up there.
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HakkekageSpace Whore Academysumma cum laudeRegistered Userregular
The most realistic reform that can be achieved in the near term is court packing, and that is only because it is not explicitly barred in the constitution. If I had to only pick one, I greatly prefer regular term limits as a meaningful reform over court packing, but altering the lifetime appointment structure of the current court would require a constitutional amendment. That’s a very remote possibility. So, pack the Court.
BREAKING: Chairman Grassley has unilaterally ruled 1/3 of the #Kavanaugh records to be “Committee Confidential” meaning anyone not on Judiciary Committee cannot see them. That’s 79 Senators & the entire American public. It’s an unprecedented level of secrecy.
The same guy that stood on the floor of the senate talking about how they just had to have ALL of Kagan's documents and time to review them to determine if she should be a justice.
BREAKING: Chairman Grassley has unilaterally ruled 1/3 of the #Kavanaugh records to be “Committee Confidential” meaning anyone not on Judiciary Committee cannot see them. That’s 79 Senators & the entire American public. It’s an unprecedented level of secrecy.
The same guy that stood on the floor of the senate talking about how they just had to have ALL of Kagan's documents and time to review them to determine if she should be a justice.
Basically just start hitting them on what are they trying to hide how bad is what is in those documents that they are going to this level of secrecy. It is like an entire fig tree of cover for moderate dems to not vote for him.
BREAKING: Chairman Grassley has unilaterally ruled 1/3 of the #Kavanaugh records to be “Committee Confidential” meaning anyone not on Judiciary Committee cannot see them. That’s 79 Senators & the entire American public. It’s an unprecedented level of secrecy.
The same guy that stood on the floor of the senate talking about how they just had to have ALL of Kagan's documents and time to review them to determine if she should be a justice.
Basically just start hitting them on what are they trying to hide how bad is what is in those documents that they are going to this level of secrecy. It is like an entire fig tree of cover for moderate dems to not vote for him.
It's almost certainly a legal defense of torture and black sites, right? Or maybe he wrote a memo about how the vice president can put a load of bird shot in anyone he pleases.
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But what if SCOTUS rules that justices have no rights which any man or woman is bound to respect?
That's the policy in my own country, and yes it definitely means that leaders are likely to get multiple appointments (in fact more so than in the US, since we don't have term limits for PMs), but due to the length of the terms and the swing of the political pendulum, it tends to balance out partisan-wise. There's pretty much no political policy that can guard against extremely committed bad actors, but I think the judiciary in the US is generally kind of an odd duck and could do with some reform regardless.
And I think it should be a mandatory 2/3rds vote for approval. The court should be all moderates. I don’t want people trying to law make from the bench. If a law is bad, but not against the constitution, it should stand until the actual rule makers fix it.
I don't like making it require a supermajority to confirm anyone, though, because in this climate, that just means we can't confirm any justices unless we have a supermajority in Congress, and that guarantees only super partisan justices make it on.
I just like requiring a vote on any nominee within, say, 90 days.
If the last two years have proven anything it’s that super partisan judges is the norm now. It just only requires a simple majority these days.
The key is to make failure to confirm someone within X time lead to bad outcomes for everyone. Maybe something like if a new justice is not chosen within 1 year, then congress can no longer pass any laws until a new justice is confirmed. Which basically means government shutdown eventually. You can easily block any judge, but doing so for too long and you’ll have to convince the public that holding the line is worth a shutdown.
It's clearly indentured servitude, not slavery. They'd know the "for the rest of your life with no outs" policy from the start, would have the ability to say no to being nominated like they have now, and would be compensated the entire time.
Anyway, that whole thought exercise was born from trying to think of a way to removing the ability to game SCOTUS nominations by way of voluntary retirement while also not adding the ability to game SCOTUS nominations by making them mostly predictable through term limits. I'm not sure it's really possible without relying wholly on the randomness of death or something silly like each Justice rolling a dice on their first day that dictates how many years their term is and that number remaining secret until they finally do retire.
The court ultimately has limits in that regard, because if it really came down to a "lawless" supreme court that just engaged in pure partisan hackery 100% of the time, you can just ignore them. They have no enforcement power as Jackson once proved to horrible effect.
That would be lawlessness to answer lawlessness of course, but there is no doomsday scenario where the court just says "nope" to every piece of landmark legislation.
You end up with a complete breakdown of the law in that situation.
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Yeah, if someone abuses the law because there are no consequences, make consequences.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I think people are using this idea as a cop-out though. There seems to be this sentiment that because we can’t control what anyone else will do it really doesn’t matter what we do. There are no consequences to our actions because the other side will do their worst anyway, so the only consequences are for inaction.
I just disagree. There are limits to what current politicians will do (on both sides) and the more we push ourside to be extremists, the more extreme both sides will become.
Court packing probably isn’t the final step, but the fact that you even have to wonder if maybe it could be close makes it seem very risky.
[citation needed]
Is it really though?
Children are in cages and the president is in thrall to the Russian president and one side thinks that everything is fine. Where is the fucking limit? I guess there aren't literal death camps yet.
But here we are.
Any remaining norms, customs and limits now exist in the context of "haven't been broken/violated... yet."
Regardless it does not matter if there are limits. You play the game on the rules established. And the rules established say that we must push or we must cede the nation to people willing to abuse the process and our good nature in order to loot and enshrine white supremacy.
Will they push further? Not if they actually have limits.
*and that is the most kind descriptor i am willing to give for what they have done and the least encompassing of the criminality.
I was specifically responding to the idea of a completely partisan SCOTUS that just declared all laws by party X as unconstitutional, while there rest of the government just ignored everything they had to say.
I don't think we're anywhere near that point, but that doesn't mean the question of "so then what?" has viable answers stretching out to infinity.
The rule of law ultimately consists of people. When the people stop giving a shit, the rule of law ends.
Yes, because the typical response through history to an opposition party moving to the fringes is for the other party to moderate and attempt to recapture the center ground.
What part of "The present administration is committing crimes against humanity on our own soil and bragging about it." do you not understand?
I don’t think you need a law. The FDR controversy is based on the loose, tradition-based space
The other typical result is for the radical party to radicalize the other and set off a civil war. That’s the global historical experience, and I couldn’t tell you the numbers on which wins out more.
Just in the United States, we’ve had a shooting war in the 1860s, a hated occupation whose end resuled in a guerilla insurgency that murdered thousands and ethnically cleansed several Southern states to ensure white conservative power on the national level, and a soft cold war during the Civil Rights Movement. Simmering resentment over both has directly spawed today’s shock of the day government.
I mean, if you believe the republicans are no longer held in check by laws and rules, then we are at the point of needing to argue for dissolution of the United States. If you honestly believe there is nothing left holding republicans back from a single party rule, then how can anything we do recover from that?
Nope.
The presence of a malign influence in American politics does not imply dissolution as a solution, I have no idea why you would come to that conclusion.
Longer term, the goal is to destroy the viability of white supremacy as a political force. To do that we need to desegregate our society for real.
Both of those methods will not survive this Supreme Court.
Because the republicans are a long way from getting the military to back them in any attempted coup they undertook. Their corruption must be confusing, sly and only affect the margins of the results. Allowing them to seize complete power through targeted crimes, rather than more general ones. So they can only give themselves like a 5-10% boost in elections, with that in effect at about 75% strength, they lost the last election by 3 million votes. We can still have hope for the future.
And, once we retake power we can immedoately pack the court and reinterpret the constitution to make gerrymandering illegal, which will solve like 50% of our problems off the bat. Then we can get to work on the electoral college.
I’m arguing that it is the ultimate conclusion of ignoring consequences of extreme actions. If you simply stop accepting the legitimacy of the other side they will do the same and we will have a defacto dissolution or a war. Every extreme move you take moves you closer to that point.
Democrats pack the court. Republicans repeal Marbury v Madison and/or ignore the court Andrew Jackson style. Democrats hold trials for/impeach republicans for ignoring the court. And so on and so forth until states/cities start picking sides and ignoring laws they don’t like.
If you start the conversation of how do we fix the current issues with the Supreme Court by accepting that republicans have fundamentally broken the system and have no limits to what they will do to maintain power, then you are left with very few options that make sense. No small step will overcome that level of malice and large steps just further break the system.
Given the court's current and probable future composition, it's still in the cards. Who can say if Garland values his own freedom more than making workers chattel?
The system was broken when it was first created, has remained broken through the entirety of its history, and is still broken today. It is not 'more broken', because it was always completely broken.
A lifetime appointment to a judicial review board with a small number of members with nearly unlimited power is an inherently bad thing for democracy. It has never been a good thing, its just only now have the views of Republicans become so obviously abhorrent and anti-american that their justices are a danger to civil society. The court hasn't become any more broken, the Republicans have.
We fix the supreme court by getting rid of the entire concept of it, and the best way to do that is just to nominate enough justices such that there is near continual turnover. Then the justices can set up some kind of rota as to who hears each case. If we had like, 501 justices and each case was heard by a random nine then the whole system would be 100% better. Simply because with so many judges, a few of them would die every year (even if every republican quit to be replaced by a younger person every time Republicans took power), meaning that the lifetime appointment is far less meaningful
On the other hand, that puts even more power in the hands of the chief justice, whose succession is practically purposefully built to stay in the hands of one party, with only a freak incident and the political stars aligning making it possible for it to pass to the other side
Ahh, but my plans go one step further. We then bring a case to any of the lower courts where we can still get a case onto the docket and will give us standing. The case states that the concept of the chief justice deciding which cases are and are not seen by the supreme court during their meetings, is unconstitutional as the ability to do that is not defined anywhere in the constitution. Someone whose case is refused by the supreme court due to the chief justice would have standing here. This court will then rule in our favor and state that the chief justice no longer has any formal power on the court other than being the preciding justice during an impeachment, forcing Roberts to either hear the case (and lose since pro democracy justices outnumber right wingers 496 to 5) or let the lower ruling stand.
If this is impossible, we will pass an act of congress making it illegal for chief justices to receive ANY additional funding from anyone for any reason while in office and lower the wages of the chief justice to $15 an hour.
Let's talk about our actual SCOTUS, not some 501 seat fantasy hyper-SCOTUS presiding over the dissolution of the nation, or whatever the fork is going on up there.
NNID: Hakkekage
The same guy that stood on the floor of the senate talking about how they just had to have ALL of Kagan's documents and time to review them to determine if she should be a justice.
Basically just start hitting them on what are they trying to hide how bad is what is in those documents that they are going to this level of secrecy. It is like an entire fig tree of cover for moderate dems to not vote for him.
It's almost certainly a legal defense of torture and black sites, right? Or maybe he wrote a memo about how the vice president can put a load of bird shot in anyone he pleases.
That’s what they are trying to hide IMO.