Joe Biden worries that the “extreme” US supreme court, dominated by rightwing justices, cannot be relied upon to uphold the rule of law.
“I worry,” the president told ProPublica in interview published on Sunday. “Because I know that if the other team, the Maga Republicans, win, they don’t want to uphold the rule of law.”
“Maga” is shorthand for “Make America great again”, Donald Trump’s campaign slogan. Trump faces 91 criminal charges and assorted civil threats but nonetheless dominates Republican polling for the nomination to face Biden in a presidential rematch next year.
In four years in the White House, Trump nominated and saw installed three conservative justices, tilting the court 6-3 to the right. That court has delivered significant victories for conservatives, including the removal of the right to abortion and major rulings on gun control, affirmative action and other issues.
The new court term, which starts on Tuesday, could see further such rulings on matters including government environmental and financial regulation.
A system that appoints supreme constitutional judges for life and without even halfway serious democratic checks and balances seems to me the perfect recipe for disaster and corruption. But hey, I’m from Europe, so what do I know… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Yes but you fail to consider that some guys wrote on a paper like 250 years ago and we’ve decided that everything needs to be viewed through the lens of either “does this agree with an incredibly pedantic and stilted reading of this document” or “what would those historical dudes think about this” - whichever happens to be more politically expedient for you at the moment, but the second one tends to give you more flexibility.
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I also love the stars and bars I’ve seen on Canadian trucks or in their front yard.
Makes perfect sense. Canada has a rich tradition of being a southern state during the civil war.
You guys are really taking that whole “America is a continent” thing seriously. Usually it’s just some pedant pointing out the name of the continents as if a Brazilian would ever say “I’m American”. Canada went a whole different direction with it. It’s like the thought process is: Canada is in North America, North America IS America and America is the US. Therefore, Canada is the US. Checkmate! You now have protections under our constitution or something IDK.
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Yeah, because making gun ownership harder/illegal is going to stop the fucking American Taliban from continuing terror attacks…
They’d barely even notice and half the cops would be with them.deleted by creator
everything needs to be viewed through the lens of either “does this agree with an incredibly pedantic and stilted reading of this document” or “what would those historical dudes think about this”
To be fair, they did expect us to modify the constitution from generation to generation.
Ultimately the failure is ours.
It’s amazing to me the way we’ve elevated the constitution to near biblical proportions. And just like the Bible where every church and pastor interprets it in their own way, so too do our 9 oracles in black robes interpret the will of our village elders from ages past.
And just like the Bible where every church and pastor interprets it in their own way, so too do our 9 oracles in black robes interpret the will of our village elders from ages past.
“So shall it be written, so shall it be done”, eh?
There are parallels in your example because it all comes down to governance of people, but I truly don’t think that people look at the Constitution/Courts like they do at the Bible.
In terms of commandments and how one is expected to follow the rules, I would argue that some do. In terms of attaching spiritual beliefs to it, no, not so much.
But yes, your point is true - it boils down to governance and how people want to be governed.
One of the more interesting things I saw (on this topic) was a historian stating that George Washington (and his contemporaries) would have been able to relate the world of Julius Cesar more than they would our modern world.
I think about that A LOT whenever I hear some idiot spout nonsense about the “vision and ideals” of the founding fathers
I thought Washington was too busy sending faxes to samurai.
Was this during or after raping all his slaves he owned?
U forgot to toggle your hexbear account
I disagree. That was BC. It’d be like saying people born in the 1930s relate more to colonial times than today. There are some of them who are still alive. While a percentage want nothing to do with modern ways, I think the type to be involved in forming a nation would be lifelong learners akin to the old folks who have little trouble with today’s modernities.
BC is somewhat of an arbitrary line. I’d say that modern society and our relationship to it are radically different from either our forefathers’ or Caesar’s due to the industrial and information revolutions. It’s not the distance in linear time that’s important, but the difference in social and cultural time.
Yup, I see. A bit like with the Bible and other holy books then. Even here in Europe, there are many who see the wording of those as the ultimate truth. No need to adjust anything, they say. It’s all good. It’s god’s will or whatever - if it helps their agenda, that is. Jesus, that must be frustrating.
They also tend to ignore pretty much all the stuff Jesus actually taught.
You forgot about Supply-Side Jesus.
Yea, some things do not allign particularly well with certain agendas. So best to just leave them out.
“Judge the shit out of everyone, you’re better than them.”
-Jesus probably idfklol
That’s kind of what it’s devolved into, tbh. The confluence of Christian fundamentalism and politics is a scary fucking thing, because when you’re “doing god’s work”, you can justify literally anything to yourself and your fellow “good Christians”.
Europe at least has had the benefit of being able to work country-by-country, whereas the US is one massive tangled morass. Hell, even achieving the kind of restructuring and harmonious cooperation that you see in the EU had to come as a result of two of the most atrocious wars humanity has ever mustered in the span of less than half a century.
Kinda puts it a little more into perspective when you consider the absolute shit-show Europe had to turn into before it was ready to grow up.
Yes, absolutely right. However, it is very sad that the Europeans in particular do not seem to have learned much from their history. I am German and here, unfortunately, a blatantly fascist party is on the rise again. That political direction is unfortunately quite popular in many European countries as of late. It might be similar to what is happening in America: the standard of living is falling and so people seem to be longing for a strong leader who will supposedly improve their living situation. The fact that this strong leader has completely different interests is apparently of no concern to many. They simply vote for the party whose rhetoric appeals to them (foreigners are to blame and so on), and that promises a way back to the good old days. It is enough to make you cry.
Yeah. That’s basically what’s happening in the US. Combine that with our two political parties not giving a fuck about the voters belonging to the other party, and you’ve got two, deeply entrenched political parties which can basically do whatever they want because your only real choice is between red or blue.
Then you have the… god I hate this term …privileged… people who vote and donate to team blue and insist on the blue team taking the high road at all costs; because even if the blue team loses you can still claim the moral high ground and that’s all that matters in their eyes; they’re too comfy and financially insulated to truly feel the affect that blue team losing would have because of feel-good morality.
This comes at the cost of civil rights, because it means team blue (the party currently concerned with civil rights) doesn’t really have a reason to expand their voter base outside of the areas they’re already entrenched. That’s where their big donors are, and they might have to sacrifice their righteous morality in order to expand into the hard red areas.
You’ve also got team red voters who’s views actually align more with team blue, but they vote team red because team red is the only one who actually pretends to listen and serve them; because team blue is too eager to take Ls if it means their precious morality and ethics are intact even though it risks allowing team red to destroy marginalized communities. Also, team red is destroying the quality of life of their voters while successfully convincing them that it’s team blue’s fault, because any attempt team blue makes at countering them is half-hearted at best.
My biggest fear is that we’re heading towards a new civil war, and the history books aren’t going to teach how team blue assisted in team red’s bullshit by stubbornly insisting that they mustn’t take any action that might be immoral or unethical while team red runs rampant.
Sorry to hear that, man. It’s definitely a sad situation all around. The apathy of so many is hard to overcome, then there are those like you mentioned who cling to cults of personality or are just looking for a savior. Democracy is still hanging on, but it’s in a rough spot.
For better or worse, it’s next to impossible to successfully modify the Constitution without significant support. It has to be ratified by about 38 States (3/4 of the State legislatures or 3/4 of the conventions called in each State). That’s after either 2/3 of both Houses of Congress (2/3 of the House of Representatives and 2/3 of the Senate) propose an amendment or 2/3 of the State legislatures request one via a convention.
In a way, it’s a good thing since it keeps the Constitution from being able to be changed on a whim, and it mostly keeps it from being affected by the political tug-of-war that happens every few years in the US.
It’s also a bad thing, though, as it makes it very difficult to adapt to certain situations that wouldn’t have happened 200+ years ago.
“It’s also a bad thing”
You realise you can change laws? Congress does it regularly. The Constitution primarily restricts the type of laws that can be passed. Congress has huge leeway otherwise.
Laws like the Voting Rights Act or the ones that established the EPA or the CFPB? The problem here is we’ve let a rogue court assume ultimate legislating ability and the only real remedies to that are impractical supermajorities or open conflict between the branches.
“Assume ultimate legislating ability”- Unless you are whining about Marbury v Madison, what on earth are you talking about? SCOTUS doesn’t write laws, they rule on the permissibility of (a small fraction) of them.
“Impractical supermajorities”
Did you just discover what checks and balances are? One should want supermajorities because you don’t want laws based on shaky public support. Do we really think the cycle of each president overturning the previous presidents policy is practical?
The person I was replying to was talking about the Constitution, not other laws.
It’s also a bad thing, though, as it makes it very difficult to adapt to certain situations that wouldn’t have happened 200+ years ago.
I would argue though that if it’s something that truly needs to be changed by the majority that it would get done.
The problem is the way our politics are today (those in office care more about gaining money to stay in office than their constituency, etc.), and the population being split almost down the middle and adhearing to that mindset (‘my team is always right’) over the common good, makes getting that type of majority almost impossible.
But again, that’s still on us, not our forefathers.
Not anymore. They are just making shit up now. The check is congress impeaching them. That will not happen if enough people demand it.
It’ll never happen as long as republicans control either half of congress. People have been sounding the alarm on their power grabs for decades and only now are some people starting to listen.
I expect the American experiment to fail in my lifetime.
I’m not sure that I see the American Collapse happening in my lifetime as a certainty, but I would agree that it’s a very strong possibility if we don’t get our shit together pretty fucking quick.
It’s won’t collapse. We’ll become another authoritarian state.
It’ll be isolationist so only Mexico should be worried.
Yeah if we go that route, I absolutely expect some Christian Nationalist administration to decide that it’s time to take over Mexico, which to be clear is an apocalyptically stupid idea.
I bet the MAGA base would love the idea of taking over Mexico.
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The American boys in blue get to gun down the cartels, as well as the convoys of people who are obviously poor brown terrorists
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We could save a lot of money on a really sweet wall if we use the southern part of Mexico as a choke point
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Travel more of the world while never leaving the US
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Think of the travel, resort, and real estate opportunities!
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Why the fuck would they want Mexico? I think Canada probably has more to worry about, especially as water becomes more scarce
Some of the MAGA folks are already saying that we should bomb/invade Mexico to stop the drug cartels and immigrants. Of course, they hand-wave how horrible a war would be. They assume that Mexico would thank the US for such a great bombing and ask for more. Because MAGA.
For anyone who was downvoting the above comment: It’s absolutely a real thing that Republicans have been talking about for a while now.
This should concern you. Only a complete imbecile would think that conducting unilateral military action against Mexico is a good idea. We would rightly be cast in the same light as Russia vis a vis Ukraine. We would destroy any remaining semblance of geopolitical soft power we still have. We would be unambiguously turning away from even trying to be the “good guys”. We would be global pariahs, just like Russia is now, and we would deserve it.
Hey. You can’t just use common sense when it comes to our Judicial System. That would be too logical. What next? You gonna ask that our Supreme Court Justices have Ethics Rules!?
What is this world coming to?
Yes, sorry, that would be too much to ask. I’ll show myself out.
not just a series of Ethics Rules, but ones that were actually followed…
It’s more a symptom of the FPTP voting system
Europe has viable parties outside the two most popular in any given election cycle, so partisan loyalty is less of a threat to the application of removal proceedings or other punitive measures.
Article V of the the Constitution.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artV-1/ALDE_00000507/#
Amending the Constitution was intended to be much more usable, but over half the country doesn’t vote.
I can see how 9 out of 13 colonies (or equivalent votes in congress) might be more plausible than 34/50 states or 357/535 congresspeople (house + senate) considering the state of politics today.
The framers counted on congresspersons being good faith actors that loved America, and on a populace that wasn’t apathetic or incompetent on important matters of state.
To be fair, the farmers “envisioned” a country where a good proportion of the population was literally enslaved. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves
Not wrong to point that out.
I always liked this quote:
“The man who penned the revolutionary, unprecedented notion that all men are created equal, could read those ringing words by the light of a lamp held by one of his slaves.”
Sol Wachtler & David S. Gould, Et Tu Judge Bork?: Will Solipsism Destroy Conservative Ideology?, 15 Touro L. Rev. 1, 15–16 (1998).
This raises an important point, especially as it pertains to the civil war. This country nearly split itself in two because there were two very different ideologies that simply were not compatible.
The US is a fairly large nation geographically with no shared cultural heritage to speak of and greatly differing political beliefs. I don’t know the answer, but we really need to at least think about how we can expect all US citizens from liberal Californians to conservative Texans to ever be satisfied with the state of the national government we share.
Full offense but as you mentioned we’ve already seen what the “southern” ideology does when left to itself and fought a rather bloody war about it. Unfortunately the American military has this historical pattern where they win the initial military campaign and lose the occupation. Imo the south is the ultimate example of this, we simply let the former slavers be and gave them seats in Congress. What we should have done is called a new constitutional convention with representation from freedmen instead of trying to ship them off to Liberia or whatever.
So after the war the social relations in the south changed somewhat in form but not in essence we’re still dealing with the fallout today. In short, I think conservative Texans don’t really deserve to be satisfied with the state of the national government.
The thing, though, is it isn’t so geographically separated. There are more Trump voters in California than in Texas and more Biden voters in Texas than New York. This is simply because there are more people in California than Texas and in Texas than New York, and even the blue states and red states are actually pretty purple.
True, my reason for using those states as examples had more to do with people’s expectations than actual numbers.
I’ve made a very similar point to some of my friends about how the two sides of the political spectrum are no longer geographically separated. A civil war today would be very different from the US Civil War in the 1800s. It won’t be a physical war like the Russia/Ukraine war because it geographically and logistically can’t be. I think we’re likely to see acts of terrorism as the tension continues to grow, but not geographic borders being drawn and guarded.
on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention
Always wondered what the legal definition of “several” was, as it applies to that clause.
It’s the adjective form. It just means separate or distinct.
I always took that phrase as expressed in the Constitution to be a quantitative factor? Several as in three to many.
Nice, ty.
Definition & Citations: Separate; individual; Independent. In this sense the word is distinguished from “joint.” Also exclusive; iudi- vidual; appropriated. In this sense it is opposed to “common.”
Still confused though, quantity wise. Basically, the point being made here:
By definition, several means three or more (but often less than many, which we will cover next.) So, if several party-goers out of a group of nine were intoxicated, several could correctly be translated as three or four. If five party-goers were intoxicated, that would usually be stated as most. However, if several party-goers out of 100 people were intoxicated, that wouldn’t be three or four, but a slightly higher number. So again, this term is challenging to interpret under time pressure because its meaning can change, depending on the size of the group.
Yeah, the drafters of our constitution really fucked up in that regard.
I’d attempt to solve the problem by creating an independent judicial review board entirely separate from the US govt. similar to other “professional” professions. Let these judges go up for review every 5 years and if they are found to be in breach of conduct, remove them from the bench.
Also, rework how they get to the bench in the first place. Of course the SC is going to be politically motivated. They only get their seats because one of the two big parties literally puts them there. Impartiality is really hard to claim when you owe your entire existence as a SC judge to a giant money machine.
The whole point of a lifetime appointment is that they can abandon all political concerns once they’re in the SCOTUS - so they don’t have to be political. And I’ve seen that happen - while they obviously stay conservative or progressive, they tend to drift away from an alignment with the parties - with exceptions, obviously.
But, as with all other branches of the US government, it’s becoming clear that we’ve exited the era of being able to trust our leadership to support the Constitution and represent the people.
(For me, it wasn’t even Trump that snapped me out of that mindset. It was when they were talking about outlawing congressional insider trading. One of the Republicans said, out loud and in public, that the notion of prohibiting congressional sick trading was off the table, because it was a core part of the job. He said something like, “half of us wouldn’t be here” - as though that was a bad thing.)
You should get the same behavior with a single term appointment with no possibility of a second term. There would also have to be limits to what they can do AFTER the appointment too, so they don’t use their single term power to set themselves up when they are done. I guess it would have to be a single term appointment with an extended ban on future employment or investments.
But how long would those appointments be? Many justices have written about how long it took to adjust sitting on Scotus, even if they had plenty of experience on the court of appeals(Sotomayor I think?). So like a 10 year period might work. Scalia and RBG voted together a surprising number of times… So there is something to the experience brought to the table. Thomas’s corruption is just nuts and Alito is frustrating, but the other justices at least have substantiating arguments mostly.
In Germany it’s one 12-year term, generous pension afterwards. Minimum age 40, maximum age 68 or their terms ends prematurely once their successor is appointed. They have to be actual jurists (passed 2nd state exam and/or are a professor of law). Half are elected by the Bundestag (Parliament), half by the Bundesrat (representing the states), in both cases with 2/3rd majority. Ultimately appointed by the Federal President but not in a deciding role but acting as notary of the state.
That 2/3rd majority rule has, because no party can reach it on their own, led to bench seats being allocated proportionally to electoral results, parties picking their favourite out of the possible candidates (the ministry of justice draws up a list of all eligible) and other parties adding the rest of the necessary votes unless there’s an actually important reason to veto a candidate, say, for being an ideologue instead of jurist.
That part would be very hard to transplant over to the US. The rest is the culture of the court itself, they’re notorious for being, well, jurists, not giving a rat’s arse about politics leading to decisions like this, blindsiding everyone on either side of the controversy. A judge may come in with political leanings but they’re going to get beaten into shape by the rest of the judges very quickly.
There’s also other structural differences, e.g. the constitutional court pretty much only doing constitutional review, they’re not part of the ordinary instance chain. They have other prerogatives (e.g. banning parties, deciding cases where constitutional organs sue each other) but constitutional review is pretty much their sole bread and butter.
Thanks for writing all of that, it’s very interesting! I can see how that would be an effective system, but as you said, very difficult to implement in the U.S. anytime soon. Even making some incremental changes would help, as I would think there would be good evidence from systems like yours. We shall see I guess!
Lifetime appointments mean they don’t owe anyone shit. They have nothing to gain by being loyal to the party that appointed them. There are better ways to accomplish the same thing, but it’s at least one facet of how the court works that seems to do what it’s supposed to.
So instead they’re loyal to their party’s billionaire donors
Which is why Congress has the power to remove them if they fail to meet “good behavior”. But Congress is also abdicating their responsibility to democracy.
Is there any definition of what good behavior is?
Nope.
No. That’s for Congress to determine in an impeachment.
For some, but what we’ve seen is them moving to appointing committed ideologues. If you want someone who agrees with your theocratic beliefs you appoint a young theocratic nutjob like Justice Barrett. They also established a feeding program to ensure mildly conservative law students would be rabidly conservative by the time they’re judges and using the fact that this program feeds you into judgeship as the way to get people into it.
The corrupt ones are loyal to the people they take bribes from. The fact that those same people tend to be donors to the party isn’t really relevant.
Staying loyal still keeps the (extra) cash flow going.
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I don’t necessarily think the founders fucked up. It’s important that the court be free from political influence when deciding cases so I think they had the right idea. I’m not necessarily opposed to lifetime appointments. Where I think there’s a lot of room for improvement is the nomination and confirmation process. It’s entirely political, contentious, and has produced a few lousy justices in recent years.
This idea of one party only appointing conservatives and the other only appointing liberals and both sides hating the other’s appointments is what’s fucked up. What could be interesting is a bipartisan Congressional nominating committee that produces candidates that are at least palatable to both sides. Let’s say there’s a 2/3 majority requirement for the committee to nominate someone. They could produce a list of several candidates and the president nominates one of them. Basically take this process away from partisan NGOs and give it to a bipartisan group of elected representatives.
Yeah, the drafters of our constitution really fucked up in that regard.
The thing is, the drafters of the constitution didnt mean for the supreme Court to be as powerful as it is today. There is nothing in the constitution that even grants them the power of judicial review. They just interpreted that they inherently had that power, and we’ve gone along with it for the last hundred years.
According to the drafters, separating the judicial branch from the executive was a way to inhibit veto power and to prevent the executive from reshaping laws that have been passed by Congress. There only other function was to handle cases between two states, and to oversee an impeachment trial in the Senate.
It wasn’t entirely about the rights to review, but also about their impotence to do more than just talk. The balance of powers isn’t just that Congress can impeach, but also that they can write laws that address the Court’s arguments directly and the executive can just tell them “no”. But we’ve let them just be the final arbiter of law with no response from either other body, so they’re now just unelected super-legislators.
When the court is embroiled in corruption scandals and abandoning precedent to strip rights from citizens, the other executive institutions in the country shouldn’t just be acquiescing to their demands. Instead we get “you may be unethical and corrupt, and firing off society shaking reinterpretations to settled law, but thems the breaks”.
Tiptoeing into calling their adherence to the rule of law into question is moving in the right direction, but very slowly. Maybe that’s the right way to do it, but I don’t really trust that it’s not just a misplaced belief in the system to work itself out so moderates don’t have to actually do anything that might be scary.
They probably never expected anyone in government to be so openly corrupt and incorrigible. At the time they wrote the declaration they probably viewed democracy like the roman Republic did and thought the people would categorically reject anyone willfully stealing their rights and freedoms for their own political or personal gain. Of course they couldn’t foresee a political party so openly hypocritical that they would literally lie on mass to a public brainwashed by unchecked “news” publications that only regurgitate what they want to hear. Democracy is f*cked, blame the murdochs.
It’s really a shame that so many seem to be clinging to a constitution that is close to 250 years old. You would think that some things would need to be updated over that period of time, but as I said, I’m from Europe…
Our constitution has been updated. Our current constitution is from the 90s. It’s just we update it in pain in the ass bits and pieces
Of course, I am aware that the U.S. Constitution has been updated several times and that any changes are a difficult political process (this is the case in every democratic country). From a European point of view, it is just difficult to understand why, for example, majority voting has still not been introduced and so on. In our system, it is unthinkable that votes are effectively devalued because the majority in one state disagrees. I understand, of course, that that was necessary some 250 years ago, so that electors could be sent to Washington to represent the will of the people of their particular state. But is that still in keeping with the times? To me, it seems antiquated - as does the attempt to guarantee independent constitutional judges by appointing them for life and thus - in theory - making them independent of political influence. I think that reality has shown that this is nothing but wishful thinking. Otherwise, a supreme justice like Clarence Thomas, who is obviously not only bound by his conscience, would probably no longer be in office. I just think that self-regulation has never really been effective - not in politics, law, or business.
One single office is elected with the Electoral College.
And? What’s your point? We’ve had several presidents in the last, what 30-40 years, who lost the popular vote but got to be president anyway because we decided some states matter more than others.
The president? Isn’t that the most important office that comes with a lot of power?
Keep moving those goalposts.
The president is in charge of managing the country, but he is beholden to the legislative and judicial branches. The president can’t unilaterally do much.
How does the prime minister get elected in most countries? It’s typically because the population elects a representative body, and that body elects a PM. Most countries do not directly elect a PM.
How do laws get passed in most countries. You elect a legislative branch and that legislative branch votes on laws.
The vast majority of even the most democratic countries do not directly vote on much, because nobody wants that.
I find it interesting that there are so many Europeans that have such strong opinions on the US, yet they don’t keep themselves informed on the same.
The US Constitution has been updated many, many times since it was written.
I am aware of that. But essential things were obviously not changed at all. For example, in terms of majority voting. What speaks against it? Is there still a need for electors who have to ride to Washington on horseback?
The whole thing? Has the whole thing been looked at and revised? Or are you counting each and every amendment as an “update”? That’s not an update to me. It’s an addition that ignored the many flaws with the way we run our country.
It’s literally how the constitution is changed. You make an amendment that changes the constitution. If you wanted to change the whole thing in a single amendment, you can do just that.
If you wanted to start from scratch and do the whole constitution over, you’d have the exact same set of steps to do that, unless it was done with an armed overthrow of the government. Then what you would have is a small group of people who ran that revolution would write a new constitution. And that would be unlikely to be any better than what is currently there.
How exactly do you think we would get a new constitution otherwise?
Sure, you’re not wrong. That is a change. But I don’t think that many people would call each and every amendment an update. If that’s your argument, though, the constitution hasn’t been updated in over fifty years. I’d say it’s due for a change.
Joe Biden worries that the “extreme” US supreme court, dominated by rightwing justices, cannot be relied upon to uphold the rule of law.
If he really worries about that, and is not just scaring people to vote for him, then he has a responsibility to enlarge the court.
I’d argue this should have been the immediate response to Mitch McConnell blocking nominees half a term away from an election, but if the court can’t uphold the rule of law, it should be fixed (and expansion seems like the obvious solution) or replaced.
The procedural question on this one is whether he could shrink the court to boot say… Thomas, then expand it again to replace him with someone less obviously corrupt. Republicans fail to confirm a replacement? We’ll shrink the court a little more. Obviously, this won’t happen, but I’m interested to know if it’s possible.
Shrinking it (through established legal channels) is impeachment and removal which has a high bar. Enlarging it is just passing a law, which is only hard because the senate has a policy (not a law) to effectively not pass laws without supermajorities. The latter could be done with a simple majority of politicians with a spine.
I’d argue this should have been the immediate response to Mitch McConnell blocking nominees half a term away from an election
Honestly I feel like that needed a civil war level response, that really should not have been allowed/normalized, regardless of which party initiated the block.
whether he could shrink the court to boot say… Thomas, then expand it again to replace him
I couldn’t agree to that, that’s way too manipulative and dishonors the previous selections from previous presidents.
I would expect him to just expand the court by two seats, if he was going to try to do something along these lines.
dishonors the previous selections from previous presidents.
To what degree should prior selections be honored/respected if the presidents in question won under questionable circumstances, e.g. George W. Bush’s election in 2000 and the stopping of the Florida recount, or Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016 after his call for foreign interference, alongside James Comey reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton just before the election?
Don’t forget Reagan/Carter. Reagan manufactured the October Surprise, making a deal with terrorists to prolonging a hostage situation in Iran, just to tank Carter in the polls.
Yeah, the most scandal-ridden judge was appointed under H.W. Bush. They’re not a particularly worthy bunch even aside from shenanigans.
To what degree should prior selections be honored/respected if the presidents in question won under questionable circumstances
It would depend on the circumstances, but it would have to be very unique and extreme circumstances. The goal would be to avoid a Tit for Tat downward spiral to Civil War.
George W. Bush’s election in 2000 and the stopping of the Florida recount,
I believe that the mob that raided the office should not have allowed the vote counting to have been stopped. IMO it gave a green light to whomever set that up to go forward and do something along the lines of January 6th.
Having said that, no I wouldn’t for this situation. Almost, but no.
or Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016 after his call for foreign interference, alongside James Comey reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton just before the election?
No. Simple political interference wouldn’t be enough, we’re talking about extreme circumstances only.
My preference would be to simply enlarge the court by a few seats, nominate some additional candidates that exceed the number of available seats by 2 or 3, and then hold some sort of Survivor-like competition to see who captures the seats. I would also accept a Hunger Games style competition for this first new court session.
High-level politics should involve physical challenges. Put the judge chairs up a tall ladder and across a balance beam and we won’t see so many justices dying on the bench. At least from old age rather than balance-beam accidents.
How?
Are you under the assumption Joe Biden is some sort of wizard?
The supreme court is supposed to be based on certain numbers, when those numbers increased the SC could have been increased, but hasn’t been.
Basically all it would take is for the president to decide “hey this court is supposed to be bigger, because the rules it wrote for itself say so” and sign a few things and boom. Increased court size.
What fucking coloring book did you read that in
LOL
What? Where did you find executive branch authority to regulate the Supreme Court?
Even if they did, how would a president appoint justices without Congress?
I don’t know the details, from what I understand FDR was contemplating the same thing, so it does seem like the power to do this is an electoral branch power and not in the legislative branch.
But I honestly don’t know the details so I could be wrong, its just something I heard of before.
Congress can pass a law increasing the number of justices. The current law setting it at nine justices was passed in 1869. Congress is inept right now.
“so it does seem like the power to do this is electoral branch power and not in the legislative branch”
Quite poor evidence for your conclusion. FDR tried to pass legislation to expand the SCOTUS, and was interpreted as trying to manipulate the court by his own party, which is why it was blocked.
Court expansion has always been done by Congress, it’s interpreted as an extension of it’s power to create courts.
Quite poor evidence for your conclusion. FDR tried to pass legislation to expand the SCOTUS, and was interpreted as trying to manipulate the court by his own party, which is why it was blocked.
It was blocked after the judges flipped and started approving his programs. It was expected to pass up until that point.
Quite poor evidence for your conclusion. FDR tried to pass legislation to expand the SCOTUS, and was interpreted as trying to manipulate the court by his own party, which is why it was blocked.
Fair enough. Just a friendly reminder…
But I honestly don’t know the details so I could be wrong, its just something I heard of before.
It was an off-the-cuff comment and I mentioned in the comment I could be wrong and that I was not certain, so, /shrug.
Other than political gain for one team or the other, what is the argument for expanding the supreme Court?
To correct for the explicitly political gain one team is solely interested in for their own authoritarian redefinition of established precedent that also had their nominees lie their way into their SC positions at the expense of the Constitution and our freedoms. That’s the argument.
you don’t think by expanding the court the “other side” isn’t just doing the same exact thing you just described? so where does it stop?
The problem is that we’re at a point where Republicans are not hesitating to lie, cheat, and steal their way to power. They have demonstrated quite clearly that they no longer have an interest in playing fair.
We need Democrats who aren’t afraid to fight back or we’ll lose our Democracy in America and eventually fall to fascism.
There may not be a good ending here, but it’s time to draw a line in the sand.
It’s a sad state when people actually believe one party has a better moral compass than the other. The reality is one party lies better than the other, but it’s two sides of the same coin. I blame gullible people that can’t do anything but parrot what the media tells them to. Sadly, that’s the majority of society.
Dude… both sides are absolutely not the same. Just look at the policies each side is trying to implement. On one hand, you’ve got Democrats trying to do things like forgive student debt and raise the minimum wage. On the other, you’ve got Republicans focusing almost solely on a culture war they’ve started just because they hate people who are different than they are.
I could go on and on with examples here. While it’s true that people parrot things they’re told to believe by the media (like pretty much everyone who watches Fox and actually believes it’s real news).
Our current Republican party has zero plans to actually help anyone they supposedly represent. It’s insane to me that anyone could look at what they’re doing and think it’s somehow beneficial to society…but I guess that’s because I don’t think of hurting people as a way to make my own life better.
If you look at the history of people who were put up for nomination as a Supreme Court member, you’ll see that what you said is not true.
The persons being submitted have a distinct qualification for fairness that one side puts up, versus the other.
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There’s the problem. You think one party is inherently bad and one is inherently good. That’s completely an idiotic take. But you’re too stupid to see that.
Probably stops at civil war.
What options are there to fix this active extremist right wing slow motion coup that is trying to overthrow our Constitution by destroying established legal precedent?
This is not a one side versus the other political sport contest, this is far beyond any such sophomoric simpleton bullshit.
I am concerned about the obvious concerning things as well. Y’all should make me your leader.
Then maybe he should have packed the court with some good judges
Would have had to nuke the filibuster to make it where they could pack the court. That required yes votes from all Democratic senators (only because not a single fucking Republican would vote for it), and Manchin and Sinema refused to do it.
Nothing Biden could have done. We needed more Democrats in Senate seats. That’s the game though. Republicans do their best to make us feel like voting doesn’t matter, then we don’t turn up - making it easier for Republicans to say the government doesn’t work.
It’s just that easy ™️
I don’t think he’s exactly even capable of doing so. SCOTUS judges have to retire or die, and then vacant seats have to get confirmed by the Senate, and no self-respecting Republican Supreme Court justice would die while in office. Expanding the number of justices is also extremely unlikely to happen, and also, relevantly, not really in Joe’s hands.
The notable historical threat to pack the courts previously (which succeeded in moderating the court without packing) was done by a president. They don’t have unilateral authority, but they are the leader of the party. Stuff doesn’t happen unless leaders lead.
When has Joe Biden had the opportunity to replace a ring wing judge?
I’m talking about Roosevelt as a model for Biden threatening to pack the court. This reply doesn’t make sense.
Those threats only worked because the party was sane. These days we have nothing more the terrorists calling themselves the gop.
What? There were like 16 Senate Republicans total in Roosevelt’s time. It had nothing to do with sane Republicans coming around. The threats worked because Roosevelt and his policies were incredibly popular and if the court didn’t stop blocking them the court packing bill likely would have passed.
I’m saying the opposing party. And yes fdr used the bully pulpit well. But there were still rational people in office. Today we have a party that thinks the election was stolen because… Reasons.
There’s no limit to how many supreme Court justices can be active at a time. Biden could have nominated more. Getting them approved is the hard part.
Then you end up with the next president doing it again. We don’t need that race today.
So we just give up without trying?
and also, relevantly, not really in Joe’s hands.
That didn’t stop FDR from trying and indirectly succeeding.
At least they’re finally starting to get a clue that “They go low, we go high” is bullshit
Damn, did he just now notice this?
To me, as a non-American, the most baffling thing is that everyone in the States just assumes, and accepts, that these appointed justices are going to rule according to some political bias.
That’s not the way it works in the rest of the free world. Judges are, by definition, trusted to be impartial interpreters of the law/constitution. That’s their role.
I live in Canada, and I’m vaguely familiar with some of the names of our Supreme Court justices, but I certainly don’t know their political leanings, nor do I care. Nor does any Canadian I know. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
So as far as I can see, the problem isn’t that SCOTUS is stacked with Republicans, nor that it can be. The problem is that everyone seems to assume that this is the way it should be.
No, we don’t. Along with Citizens United, EVERY American with a brain and open eyes is aware these are the absolute most important problems, and they lead to endgame checkmate authoritarianism.
And yet I never see any mention of this anywhere. Even here, it seems that Biden is more concerned about whether the court can administer justice because it is so much out of balance. No mention, though, that the “balance” shouldn’t even be a factor.
SCOTUS justices are appointed for life because it’s supposed to put them above political considerations. No politician can influence them by threatening removal. Yet, there you are, SCOTUS is just as political as the other two branches.
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I don’t know what i hate more, being subjected to increasingly authoritarian christofascist rule in my country or having some punk looking down his nose at me and saying it’s my own fault.
Pssssh.
Tell you what. When it happens to you, why don’t you tell me what you hate more.
(Fuggen punks think theyre fighting ready just cuz they’ve never been tested, geez almighty.)
Oh shit… love the ratm and/or the boss reference! Very different music, very similar representation :)
It’s RATM and steinbeck, since the reference lead me to read the book and afterwards led me to many more truths. Thanks man! I am happy when people get the ref.
You fuck w Tortilla Flat? My favorite by far.
Oh my God tortilla flat is fucking brilliant. I thought it trite in the first couple chapters but i stuck it out and was proven a fool. By the end i loved every one of those guys and now i need to read it again
What do you think RATM would think about these “don’t criticize me for doing nothing” posts?
Tom and zach would both be embarrassed for you.
Firstly for your cowardly sock-puppetry, secondly for not knowing that those lyrics reference an important steinbeck character.
But cone. You have one more, right? One more name you use to pump upboats in your silly existence? Hurry and bring that one out to be clever as well
The irony of you calling someone cowardly. You didn’t name your account “Tom Joad”, you named it in reference to the song, which is explicitly a social protest song from people willing to actually do something rather than complain about being shamed. This isn’t quite Paul Ryan loving Rage while being the actual machine, but what a monumental lack of introspection.
“Where there’s a fight 'gainst the blood and hatred in the air, look for me, mom, I’ll be there.”
I don’t know what i hate more, being subjected to increasingly authoritarian christofascist rule in my country or having some punk looking down his nose at me and saying it’s my own fault.
Clearly Tom and Zach would echo this sentiment. Authoritarianism or someone looking down their nose at your inaction, who’s to say which is worse?
Yeah… shocking… victim blaming coming from tough guys
Victim blaming and undeserved arrogance come from the same type of folks, huh? The best (only good) part of interacting with these losers is the fact we’re on a public forum. At least then there are others to witness the interaction and see how dumb they look. I can only hope
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Fuck you
;)
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Oh, you were agreeing with the punk? Geez i am surprised. I wonder if it matters to you that you wasted my time just now?
Probably not, huh? It’s kinda you’re thing, huh? Being clever?
Americans largely haven’t had much of a choice. In states where the laws are decent and political corruption isn’t heavily entrenched, things are alright and the system isn’t totally broken. But in places where it has? There’s less and less ability to vote in more reasonable laws.
The problems are systemic. The same states have shitty education systems, mass voter disenfranchisement of prisoners and anyone else they can justify taking the vote from, extensive gerrymandering, and every other form of corruption and political inefficiency. The major population centers take a very different approach, but they have to compete with these backward and broken states through an electoral system that skews the results in their favor.
Trying to take direct action outside of the official political framework is also problematic. In Europe you’ve got the benefit of an extremely high population density and a relatively small area regardless of which country you’re in. In the US everything is extremely spread out. The result is that protest is often not terribly effective. You might be able to shut down a couple of streets, but there’s no way you’re disturbing commerce for more than a single metropolitan area (of which there are many) at a time. It’s the same reason mass public transit runs into issues: we’re way too spread out for strategies that require high and comparatively uniform population density.
That doesn’t mean there’s no answer, but it does mean we’re going to have to get a little more creative.
People take for granted what made Occupy special. We all rally around the fact that folks that normally wouldn’t recognize they’re all the 99% came together. But the real win was that it was everywhere all at once all the time.
Right, but compare the effort to the results. People were bussing in from all over the country, but like what actually changed?
Same thing with the BLM protests. The largest protest movement in American history and… nothing changed. COVID kills a million plus Americans and all that changed is OSHA was banned from enforcing worker safety measures. No extra disease tracking, no countrywide efforts to improve air quality. We’re stuck in a quagmire where leaders just wait out problems rather than needing to address them.
No we definitely don’t enjoy this, it’s the same reason we all love to say “eat the rich” and “it’s guillotine time” and then do absofuckinglutley nothing about it. No one wants to be the one to start something absolutely crazy, we all deep down believe that we can somehow fix this within the system as opposed to throwing Molotovs. :/
It sounds like that belief is worth having a look at again.
Sounds like you don’t have any real-life experience with the American political system.
Yeah, we shouldn’t have been walking outside wearing that…
Largest protests in history (at least at the time) were against invading Iraq in the lead-up to the war. Democrats protest, but Republicans VOTE. That’s why they run everything from a minority position.
No, they gerrymander. They lose on popular vote all the time.
So we’re going to protest our way around gerrymandering now?
It’s gerrymandered because people voted in 6he reps who gerrymandered everything. Things didn’t get gerrymandered by the GOP protesting for more gerrymandering.
First of all, the Overton Window in America is skewed heavily right. So our centrist Democratic leaders are center right, our Republicans are what most countries would call regressive, extremist, authoritarian right wing, or even fascists.
See, the problem is rightwing extremism has been on a campaign since the civil rights era to take control of the country and undo the progress made since the 1960s.
They installed right wing media. They cut education and tampered with curricula. They gerrymandered. They instituted voter suppression. Their strategy culminated in the Federalist Society influencing the selection of Gorsuch and installation of right wing judges during the Trump administration.
The thing you have to know if you ever want to try and stop extremist, authoritarian, right wing regressives is that they do not hold the same ideals and morals as you and I. They do not play from the same playbook or follow the same rulebook.
They believe that “might makes right,” that any ends justify the means, that rules are enacted to protect them and their in group and punish their selected out group. They believe in many cases that their cause is justified by God.
And so any justice who adheres to such zealous principles will see no issue with finding a way to rule in the favor of their side. They may even go so far as to rule with weak or minimal justification. They will be a lot less likely to rule in an unbiased fashion.
My current opinion is that, so far, we have only seen rulings that fall into the “finding a way” category.
I think these justices will incrementally push the envelope on what they can get away with over the upcoming decades.
“I think these justices will incrementally push the envelope on what they can get away with over the upcoming decades.”
I feel like we have already turned the corner of openly ruling along party lines as well as unrepentant corruption.
I think it will get worse and worse until… well I don’t know what will turn it around or when.
Agreed. I forgot to end my post with “but I fear that it can get so much worse before anything is done.”
I mean, as crappy as the court has been and all the confidence they’ve lost, they have essentially just cemented the role of Supreme Court justice as a politician instead of some honored impartial high quality person who stays above it all.
So they have blatantly pushed the Republican agenda, including things like Roe. But they could do so much more damage still.
I doubt the Republican justices stay alive for much longer with the growing realization that political assassinations easily solve issues with the supreme court. It’s talked in hush tones a lot online because people act as if talking about the thing means you’re inviting it.
Tbh I’m genuinely surprised suicidal people on the left haven’t already taken one out. I was betting on it to happen shortly after Biden took presidency. It’s going to happen eventually if they keep ruling like shit. Revolutions are started by such political stunts.
Although I used to think all the crazy school shooters were eventually going to be lefties as well. Turns out they at least try to get medicated and fix themselves. Righties just go out murdering for apeshit reasons lol. Still, I know way more people on the left in serious depression and wanting to commit suicide. With the amount of fame MSM gives suicidal murderers… like before, I’m surprised it hasn’t already happened.
This patently false, compared to the world as a whole the US is quite liberal. Only in certain aspects, compared to certain European countries is the US “right-wing”. US for instance has way more liberal freedom of speech and religion than most countries. How many European countries have a state religion?
That’s not the way it works in the rest of the free world. Judges are, by definition, trusted to be impartial interpreters of the law/constitution. That’s their role.
The problem is that these judges are appointed through a political process, as about any government worker apparently is. This way you get a hyper politicized country, where even the job of librarian is no longer just a job, but an oppointment that should be strictly controlled.
It’s absolutely baffling.
Yes. The supreme court is a political tool just like every other branch of government.
They are not impartial. They all have agendas.
I think Canada may not have this issue because there aren’t as many different cultures in Canada competing for dominance.
Even though your ruling class wants to extend its reach as much as possible, they acknowledge they’re still ruling over Canadians.
In the US, it’s “city people ruling over country” or “whites ruling over blacks” or “christians ruling over everything.” This means it’s acceptable and even encouraged for one group to abuse another.
This creates an “us vs. them” mentality because it really is us vs. them.
Your parliament just gave a nazi a standing ovation.
COLOUR ME SHOCKED
Can they write this article without Biden…?
I mean, the only thing happening here is Biden worrying, so, no, I don’t think they could. It’s not like they could write a news story talking about steps Biden has taken to deal with this problem, there aren’t that many ways to say “nothing.”
I too would wish he’d expand the court as he suggested he would on the campaign trail, but unfortunately the game of politics is such that actually doing it would become the biggest topic ever, and not in a good way. It would be super unpopular with the moderates, and it would allow republicans the perfect opportunity to accuse Biden of being anti-democracy, which of course they would love an excuse to do because it would distract from the fact that they actually want to destroy democracy. Maybe, and this is a big maybe, he’ll consider it in a second term when he no longer has to worry about re-election, but that hope always seems to be a pipe dream.
It would be super unpopular with the moderates
Gay marriage was super unpopular with moderates, until people made efforts to change that. No one in the country cared about drag queens until the conservatives made a concerted effort to make it a political issue. The political whims of the country are changeable, if you’re willing to try to change them.
Too many people look at politics as the job of reading an opinion poll and then staying within a rigid bound of the status quo rather than as leaders who should be influencing the public to adopt better policies. This continual worry about moderates’ beliefs as if they’re not the least ideological people in the nation is a flawed approach to politics that just puts up barriers and excuses for doing anything.
Okay, but “The Extreme Court” does sound a lot cooler.
He’s not alone
And proceeds to do fuck all about it! Awesome.
I mean, if this is the way the executive branch is talking about the judicial branch, both of them should be forced to resign and be replaced with other people.
How that is, I have no clue, but you can’t run a country with distrust like this.
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That’s alright. A decision to release billions to Iran to cause a war is so much worse.
