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.
The reasons he was Obama’s VP:
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He was “the Republican Senator whisper”
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He was supposed to be there to guide Obama
He was supposed to be the one that got that SC pick thru, but I don’t remember seeing a single article or interview where he tried.
That 5 years later people forgot and started claiming Joe was “the Senate whisper” again was just fucking ridiculous. The only thing worse was when Biden implied once the Dems had a white man as president, suddenly Republicans would be super cool again.
asdfasfasf
Tell me what he could’ve done
At the absolute bare minimum Biden should have understood that the issue with Republicans wasn’t just a Black president…
And that “working with Republicans” wouldn’t work.
Yet that’s what Biden ran on in the primary, and surprise! Working with Republicans is just as impossible today.
It’s not that complicated, and I highly doubt no one has ever explained that if you ask a lot…
Are you just ignoring people when they try to explain that to you?
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Too bad you can’t scroll down and see I’ve addressed that multiple times…
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I just realized I already replied to you multiple times… No matter what you just say “that’s not what I meant” and never clarify what you meant.
I think the reason “no one has explained it to you” is the same reason my dog doesn’t know anything about nuclear physics. The smartest experts in the world can spend his whole life explaining it.
But my dog is never going to get it. Thinking that means there’s no explanation for nuclear physics…
asdfasdfsdf
Dude. Your answers are like complaining about our lack of faster than light travel. It’s actually impossible and yelling about it not happening is not an actual solution.
Do you honestly think what you’re saying in this thread is intelligent? Admit you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about and log off for the day, bud.
Are you just ignoring people when they try to explain that to you?
Well, you ignored the actual question. The question was what could Biden have done to get the Dem nomination to the Supreme Court through in the face of McConnell obstructing it.
Well, if he was there for his ability to negotiate with Republicans, he could have negotiated with Republicans…
If he was there to use his lifetime in the Senate to advise Obama, he could have explained that the Senate is just allowed to vote on SC picks. Not voting is a choice, so Obama should have called their bluff and appointed his pick.
asdfasf
I recall an exchange, I think it was between Obama and some Republican senator, but for the life of me I haven’t been able to find it since I read it. It went something like “I’m not going to vote on this bill without something in exchange.” “Okay, I can make sure we get some funding for some project. So, this means I can count on your vote?” “Oh, no, I would never vote for that.”
There is no negotiating. You try to meet them half way, and they’ll take a step back. Every time.
So…
Why did Biden, the party, and the media all act like Biden was the only one who could negotiate with Republicans in 2020?
Were all those people just too stupid to know better? Or were they all lying to voters?
Yes, I’m quite sure that Obama, the Constitutional scholar, wasn’t aware that a simple trick like saying ‘I’ll accept your silence as consent’ would actually work and get his SC pick through. I’m absolutely confident that whoever the hell you are is right and Obama, Biden, and their entire administration overlooked this one neat trick that republicans hate. Damn you’re smart.
…
Republicans were cheating, so we just gave up?
How did that work out? Did republicans suddenly discover morals and stop cheating?
Is everything better now that we took “the high road”?
It’s insane to see so many people act like they’re fine with the last decade of politics and think Dems are doing a great job
A) republicans cheat within constitutional loopholes. what you bigger isn’t a loophole, it’s wholesale disregard for the constitution.
B) they’re bad so we should be bad too is a shit line of reasoning.
C) I’m not fine with the last 30 years of politics (if you think it’s only a decade that we’ve been seeing the rise of this breed of fascist right wing, you’re less informed than even I guessed from your previous comments), and the dems are doing a pretty poor job, particularly in regards to being aggressive with pushing their agenda through.
Grow up.
In all fairness, saying “working with Republicans won’t work” isn’t specifying what the Dems could have done to have their nominee seated, which is what the commenter asked for.
asdfasfasdf
Oh, thought we were talking about Biden…
Back when Obama was in office he should have said:
If republicans won’t hold a vote, I’ll appoint who I want
And then just fucking did it. Republicans don’t just do what they’re allowed, they do everything they can.
That’s why their winning. They don’t spend half a term discussing if they can do something, they do it and hope it sticks.
You can say that’s not how a government should work, and I’d agree. But when 2 people are playing a game without a ref, you better cheat just as hard or you’ll never win. Because regardless of if we always play explicitly by the rules or not, they’re gonna keep cheating.
We can piss and moan all day about how it shouldn’t be like this, but the reality is that it is like this.
asdfasfa
Lol, I know it’s fake internet points, but how does this guy have a positive score for the “direct violation of the constitution” strategy.
Because your country is rife with people who don’t understand how their own country works.
sadfasdfasdf
Oh, thought we were talking about Biden…
We are. You asserted that as Obama’s VP “[Biden] was supposed to be the one that got that SC pick thru.” And you’ve been challenged to state how you think Biden could have done that.
Your suggestion what you think Obama should have done belies a misunderstanding of the process. Obama did appoint Merrick Garland. The Constitution says the appointee has to be confirmed by the Senate before they can be seated. The Court isn’t going to end-run around that and seat an unconfirmed judge.
The lesson to have learned is not to cheat harder than them, it’s that we need to update the rule book to prevent this type of obstruction in the future.
There actually is a loophole that allows for appointments without approval. If the senate is in recess the appointment just happens. The Obama administration tried and failed to argue several lower positions were recess appointments when there were pro forma sessions though. It’s really not possible that a justice was going to be seated without approval.
Very true about recess appointments.
Actually during recesses Republicans would leave someone behind to keep the Senate in session. They’d open and then adjourn, essentially blocking recess appointments.
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With hindsight, given the dirty tricks the GOP played in order to secure Trump two Supreme Court appointments; the Dem’s should have just gone full radical and take the Senates refusal to put the nomination up for a vote as a tacit ‘approval’ (seeing as they didn’t technically vote him down), and sit Garland on the court.
It’s the political equivalent of not negotiating with Terrorists, akin to the Paradox of Tolerance.
asdfasfasdf
They don’t give a fuck about the rules. Why should the Dems? They don’t want to play by the rules, then we shouldn’t hamstring ourselves with following the rules. If they want to knock over all the pieces and shit all over the board, that means we can do whatever we want, whenever we want because they threw the rule of law out the window, after wiping their ass with it.
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Change the playing field during the few weeks he had a supermajority in the house and Congress.
Campaign finance reform, voting rights guarantees, fucking anything rather than pissing away an opportunity to actually enact some meaningful changes.
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It’s like playing checkers with a kid who openly cheats…
If you keep following the rules, the kid will always win. If you can’t make them stop cheating, your only options are to stop playing or cheat back.
This isn’t a game of checkers tho. We can’t just stop, and if we keep following the rules then we’ll never win.
So literally the only thing we can do is play like they do.
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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.
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, 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.
“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.
The person I was replying to was talking about the Constitution, not other laws.
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?
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.
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.
They also tend to ignore pretty much all the stuff Jesus actually taught.
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
You forgot about Supply-Side Jesus.
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.
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.
Hey! How dare you? That piece of paper is so strong that we have people in Canada claiming they have a 2nd amendment right to bear arms!
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.
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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.
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.Yes it would, and yes it does. It’s been shown empirically.
Stupidity knows no bounds.
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.
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.
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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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?
not just a series of Ethics Rules, but ones that were actually followed…
Yes, sorry, that would be too much to ask. I’ll show myself out.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Staying loyal still keeps the (extra) cash flow going.
So instead they’re loyal to their party’s billionaire donors
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.
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.
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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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
At least they’re finally starting to get a clue that “They go low, we go high” is bullshit
Cool. Impeachments when? Oh wait never, cause talk is cheap
What part of the government has the power of impeachment and which party is in control of it?
Do you really believe that if Dems win a majority in the House they’ll start impeachment proceedings? This isn’t a problem that started this year. His damn wife was involved in an attack on Congress.
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That’s alright. A decision to release billions to Iran to cause a war is so much worse.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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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.
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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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.
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.
“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.
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.
If team magma wins, what will the water Pokemon do??
Then maybe he should have packed the court with some good judges
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.
and also, relevantly, not really in Joe’s hands.
That didn’t stop FDR from trying and indirectly succeeding.
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?
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?
Not give up. Seeing a single solution as bad doesn’t mean we give up.
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.
Nothing Biden could have done.
He could have attacked them. Called on their constituents to protest outside their offices. Politics is more than just filing papers and casting votes.
Machin’s constituents are heavily Red.
Manchin’s constituents are heavily red, but his voters are mostly blue.
How do you figure? Biden received 29.69% of the vote in 2020 vs 68.62%.
Joe Manchin won his last election with 49.6% of the vote. Presumably Biden voters all vote for him. 29.7% is more than half of 49.6%.
Ok, but what’s your point?
It’s just that easy ™️
I think each state should have 1 justice. Enough of this supreme 9 crap.
Ok cool, so that way 500 thousand people will have the same say over our constitution as 40 million people, just because they live in the dirt state.
What are these numbers? There’s 330 million in US, are these the number of people that vote? Genuine question
Those are the populations of Wyoming and California.
They’re referring to different state populations in response to the above person stating that we should have one justice per state.
The States already have their own courts. We don’t need a federal government at all, really, except a few very limited purposes. The purposes are even already spelled out for us in the US Constitution.
Yeahhh… we fought a whole ass war over this one you’re wrong.
Yeah? How’s that working out for you?
Better than having slavery and a constitutionalized apartheid state, tf you mean?
Hahahahah.
Oh, wait, you’re serious. Let me laugh even harder.
HAHAHAHAH!
Obviously states and ctitizens in general can not agree on the proper interpretation of the Constitution, therefore SCOTUS exists. So long as there is a SCOTUS there needs to be equal representation. 9 people holding life-long seats are far too few for far too long. Special interest groups can take control too easily as has happened.
No way.
That’s just creating a judicial version of the Senate.
I don’t want a drastic overall of the SC, I just want to see more accountability.
I don’t want a drastic overall of the SC, I just want to see more accountability.
Ok, agreed but can we do term limits next? This giving it to the whoever is the president when someone drops is bullshit. Especially now that the bar has been lowered so far for the office.
And proceeds to do fuck all about it! Awesome.
Okay, but “The Extreme Court” does sound a lot cooler.
He’s not alone
I am concerned about the obvious concerning things as well. Y’all should make me your leader.
Can you figure out how to get off a stage though…
I love completely unaware comments like this. President stable genius wasn’t really all that stable nor all that much of a genius. Dude bragged about memorizing 5 words in a TV interview.
If you’re willing to mention one as a disqualifying factor, you should really take a long hard look at the other candidate through the same lens.
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So your argument is literally “both sides”… I thought both siding was frowned upon
Also … to be fair… my capability to walk on a stage has no bearing on my ability to be president. FDR used a wheel chair and had ramps installed in the White House. I find it terrible that we disparage our presidents based on their physical abilities.
I would put more stock in whether they can string together a cogent argument on a debate, or whether they can actually put together a sentence with correct punctuation, spelling, and grammar…
Ironically, Biden has been shying away from debates…
I don’t understand this whataboutism the US has going on. Trump was a megalomaniac and didn’t give a shit about the country. Biden is a demented old man and doesn’t give a shit about the country.
Democrats and republicans have chosen horrible leaders this past decade. Can’t you see it’s harming you all? Why are you acting like this is a sports team you’ll die following?