We’d better make this one count.
Couldn’t agree more.
I wouldn’t go that far. When something really extreme happens, the country can very, very briefly come together and agree. It’s fleeting but it can happen. The last time I remember was after 9/11. If an amendment was needed following that, it could have happened.
But it takes something like that. Something that seems almost like an immediate existential crisis. Something I hope we don’t see.
Yes, but it ends up being ad hoc. Oh well it’s this but not this.
Sounds good but doesn’t end up happening. Nine people doing whatever the dick they want is a lot faster moving than people acting through elections, etc.
I kinda don’t agree. The most fundamental rule of democracy should be–and I think in the case of the US Constitution is–that you can’t vote out democracy. Hitler along with Hindenburg hacked the weak Weimar constitution and did just that. The results were unpleasant.
The game theory problem with it is that, if hacking democracy is allowed, then you will eventually see a successful hacker who can do whatever s/he wants once the hack is successful as a single individual, whereas the whole point of democracy in the first place is that a single individual should not reign supreme (e.g., King George III).
Is the current Court so constrained, limited by the people via elections? I wish it were so!
Indeed. I appreciate your input.
What you say is true, but I don’t think that should be the standard of what makes a constitutional amendment possible. We have so much we need to do that we can’t do right now. We’re headed toward a revolution in my view, since the constitution gives the minority too much power to thwart the will of the majority.
Abso-freaking-lutely.
Now imagine what it would take for an amendment that covers SCOTUS.
There is remedy for that - impeachment. If the court comes to such a blatantly anti-textual read of the Constitution, then throw them out. And before you correctly point out how impossible it would be to impeach a supreme court justice in the current climate, keep in mind that the threshold to impeach is… 2/3rds of congress.
Honestly, giving Congress the ability to over come a court “veto” the way they can over come the President’s veto isn’t a terrible idea, but the fact is, it wouldn’t have prevented a single one of the spate of recent bad calls from this court. If you wanted congress to block the presidential immunity ruling, the standard would have to be “simple majority in the Senate, and ignore the House entirely.”
That’s because if there’s a review board for the supreme court, then the supreme court is no longer supreme, and all the problems that attach to the current supreme court attach to this new, extra-supreme court.
Fair enough on the missed step, but the point is that there are already checks on the supreme court’s power, and the fact that we can’t muster the political power to use any of them isn’t a problem with the system, it’s a problem with the public. About half of the American people don’t want an impartial judiciary, and that’s not a problem that can be fixed through judicial reforms.
Step 1: ID the conservative Supreme Court majority as corrupt. Then the solution becomes investigation followed by reform. This would only happen with Democratic majority in the Senate of course. But accurate characterization is a necessary prerequisite.
[The following borders on a hijack. I think it’s a helpful placeholder if someone wants to take SCOTUS reform to another thread. GD?]
Step 2: My favored reform is to give each President a free SCOTUS nomination every odd numbered year. Let the number of Supremes vary: it’s not like they can make a credible case for 9 member comity or consultation after all. If there are an even number of Supremes, the last one appointed can write decisions but will have not vote until another is slotted in. Yes there are downsides. Among them is that the proposal doesn’t address the scenario where the Senate and the Presidency are controlled by opposing parties.
Much simpler to merely say appointments are automatically confirmed if not run through the complete process to full-Senatee Yeah or Nay vote within 60 days of the nomination being lodged.
Haha, yep.
I think in general presidential appointments should work this way. It would prevent McConnell-style sabotage and force the Senate (which I think is an obsolete institution anyway, if it was ever any good) to get off its ass.
I’ve never really understood this argument. I’m not sure whether I’m being comparatively cynical or comparatively naive, but I always kind of figured the point was to emphasize to Obama that, hey, just to be clear: you’re not getting our consent. And, well, that was it, is all; if they’d had to get off their asses to do it, it would’ve been no big deal — but doing it without getting off their asses was just meant to underline it.
To be honest, I kind of figured they expressed that to Obama before he named anyone, and then he named someone, and then they said to each other did — did he not get what we just explained to him? I thought we made it pretty clear; if we act like we’re taking this seriously, he might (a) still not get it, and (b) do it again, even though, again, it’s been made pretty clear. Well, let’s make it so clear that even he gets it: by dismissively making a big show of not even getting off our asses.
I figured nothing substantial would change if they had to get off their asses; they’d just have to say they’re being dismissive instead of showing that they’re being dismissive.
It’s not good enough:
- History has proven that impeachment doesn’t work, even in the most egregious cases (viz Donald J. Trump, recidivist criminal extraordinaire).
- Even if it worked, it’s not fast enough: the SC can issue decisions a lot faster than the impeachment process can proceed.
- Even if you impeach the bastards, the decisions still stand, right? So then you need to get in new SC justices to overturn the old decisions. That itself will take a long time, if they end up doing it at all.
So if the court goes rogue, as it is doing now, there are no checks, no balances on it. No bueno.
Right, something like this is needed. It would also be good if Congress could temporarily stay a SC decision for review and discussion.
It’s not about preventing them from firing them off but preventing them from going into effect, either temporarily or forever.
Not quite. First of all, the review board would not be issuing decisions itself. And if we agree that Congress should get a veto of some sort, then problem (mostly?) solved. The point is less to micromanage the SC but prevent it from going nucking futs–as it absolutely is doing right now.
I don’t agree. Since it is too stringent, the amendment process allows a minority that benefits from the status quo to retain it forever. That and the undemocratic Senate and Electoral College and Supreme Court crisis are allowing the RWNJs to shit on the country forever without consequence. We are getting close, IMHO, to the majority engaging in a revolution to remedy this situation. Quite frankly, in 2024, this 18th century bullshit is killing our democracy. Without it, we wouldn’t have been held hostage by the Trumpists since 2016.
As I said above, our system of government is so sclerotic that we depend on the SC to get pretty much anything done. And it’s not just the right who wants it. Actual agreement and/or compromise among the citizenry on racial segregation, gay marriage, abortion? Aw well, we’ll have the SC take care of it!
It’s not how democracy should work.
To my memory, the concern was that, if Garland’s appointment had made it to the Senate floor, he would have been approved. So, Mitch didn’t even let the process get started.
Yeah, if we want presidents to able to choose Supreme Court justices, then they should be able to do so. In that case, changing it to a Senate veto if it makes the effort and has the votes to do so would make sense.
McConnell showed how tradition (basically accepting a president’s choices unless there is a major problem) can be overturned and the system can be hacked. So now we need a new system. (But we need a lot of new stuff, and we need to get rid of a lot of old stuff–like the senate itself.)
This is just made up. That’s not what happened at all, as pointed out by @RitterSport.
Obama made his pick, and it was a canny one. It should have gone to the Senate floor for an up-or-down vote. It was made clear that Garland was acceptable to both sides and would have been confirmed if McConnell had brought the nomination to the floor for a vote. That’s why McConnell didn’t.
Failing to bring it to the floor for a vote is what should have outraged the American people. But as usual, they don’t realize the import of these ignoring-of-norms until it’s far too late.
You say it should have outraged the American people. If you’re right, should it have outraged the Republican senators? If you’re right, and I’m wrong, then shouldn’t they have acted accordingly? But if I’m right — if they weren’t outraged by Garland not getting on the SC, and instead were okay with letting things play out the way McConnell wanted — then wouldn’t things have played out as they did, the way McConnell wanted?
They always fall in line. Did you expect otherwise?
No, I expect them to fall in line. Like, if McConnell says hey, let’s not put this guy on the Supreme Court, I expect them to fall in line with a ready okay. And if McConnell says in fact, let’s not even bring this to the floor, I expect them to fall in line with a quick that’s fine by us; you just keep doing your job.
All of them? You can’t make a blanket statement like that since the extent to which they value impartial justice versus their own ideology varies with the individual. Thomas and Alito are just political hacks who care nothing for justice. Virtually all their decisions are completely predictable and are just clumsy ad hoc attempts to rationalize them with a predetermined outcome that conforms to their crazed ideology. None of that is “hyperbole”. It’s literally true.
With other justices, it varies. John Roberts and (somewhat surprisingly) Amy Coney Barrett are two of the more reasonable ones on the conservative side. Yet it was Roberts who explicitly contrived to turn Citizens United into a much bigger and much more far-reaching ruling than it needed to be and opened the floodgates to big money in politics.
And Barrett was part of the Trump immunity ruling (while unofficially expressing some reservations about it) and part of the collective insanity that overturned Roe v Wade despite it being a firmly established precedent for 50 years, throwing the foundational principle of stare decisis right out the window. Some of these justices sometimes make entirely partisan and prejudiced rulings, and a couple of them always do, and that’s not “hyperbole”.