The reality is that a lot of the “we” hopes are being pinned on, the ones that are supposed to clean house and get those amendments through, are actually “theys” that have the same rights “we” do. “They” want all the shit that is going down, they want to get the power and keep the power.
It isn’t “we” vs. Congress.
It is “we” vs. “they” and Congress.
You’re free to go to Alabama and go around, asking whether politicians should accept bribes from foreign governments, and see if “they” vote a different way than you.
I’m sure that there are some bad people who lead “them”. But there’s some stuff that’s just not questionable. Some things are so obviously just plain sense that, if someone tries to make a case against it, you can just look at them like, “Really?” 
And no one watching will feel like you’re being unreasonable to dismiss them.
If you’re genuinely good and unassailable, you can get nearly everyone to back you.
Now you try to come in and say that we need to make voting more “fair”, with the definition of “fair” being that under-represented communities get double the vote, someone’s going to be skeptical. That’s not a wholly and clearly benign choice.
Saying that the government has to do the job that’s described in the Constitution, and holding our representatives’ feet to the fire over it in a reasonable and bland way, people will accept it. They’ll be skeptical of groups who are against it.
Do you, for example, have any real opposition to any proposal that I’ve made? Do you believe that I’d be unwilling to try and correct the rules to try and ameliorate any true issues that you bring up? Are you willing to think first of the country? Or does a process that removes political point-grabbing rub you the wrong way?
If it’s a good set of rules, do you really need to oppose it at any level?
I’m trying to imagine teaching this Amendment to a 9th grade civics class in less than six weeks, and failing to conceive of a situation where the kids would pass the class. If your proposed solution is so convoluted that the majority of people being governed by it won’t understand its mechanics, you should go back to the drawing board.
EDIT: What is the word cutoff and the vocabulary level? I’m happy to do my best to satisfy you if that’s what I need to get you on board.
As others have indicated downthread from this post, the issue is that the concept of stare decisis has already been junked and tossed away. If precedent had been more or less reasonably honored and adhered to, then this pingponging would never be a worry in the first place.
Given how easy you think it is to convince the voters of things, to the point where amendments like this are realistic, why has gridlock been so commonplace for so long and why have the only patches been the nuclear option on the filibuster.
Here’s my plan for reform. There’s no magic to 9 seats: it’s not in the constitution for example. The Supremes used to talk about comity but those days are gone: conservatives don’t reach out to the liberals for support like liberals did in Brown v Board of Ed, which was a 9-0 decision.
Every President gets to nominate a Supreme Court justice every odd numbered year. So each President gets at least 2 nominations. The size of the court balloons, which is ok. The court is permitted to set up sub-courts with the Senate’s approval (a former justice once suggested this). If there are an even number of justices (who don’t recuse), the latest one to be appointed gets no vote, though they can write opinions.
Routine Supreme Court appointments should take some of the heat out of the controversy, as each appointment has lower stakes. It would also discourage sick games where justices try to hold out as long as possible until they get a President from their party.
This comment very much applies to my recommendation. It’s an adjunct, not a substitute. We also need enforced ethics rules to apply to the Supremes. With 20 members or more, the loss of one or two would be less significant (relatively speaking) than if there are 9, all of whom might still be on the court over the foreseeable future. I can imagine justices making deals across the aisle to retire simultaneously. Larger numbers make proximate interests more likely.
One issue with this proposal is that it still doesn’t give any incentive for a president to not ram through the most far-right or far-left justice they can get. If anything, the fact that they only get 18 years out of a justice gives more incentive to max their political value out of it. We can kiss any centrist judges goodbye.
But the Senate can vote “no” on those nominations?
Maybe yes, maybe no. As written they can still vote, “No”, though my proposal could be combined with others upthread. Or not: I agree with Velocity about the incentive problem. I don’t know how to square the circle. The underlying problem is that the Founder’s system of government depends in part upon democratic norms and McConnell’s GOP is happy to blow those norms up. SageRat’s proposal also limits the ability and incentive to uncover disqualifying skeletons. I predict that if his proposal passed, you would observe sitting justices who are guilty of sexual harassment, bribery, perjury, partisan insurrectionist temperament, and even rape. Such a thoroughly corrupt court would lose all legitimacy among ethically upright and careful observers.
Maybe asterisks should be added to Supreme Court decisions. We could list the full panel vote tally as well as the vote among those justices who are inclined to neither criminality nor traitorous overthow of the government. Stare decisis would only apply to the latter. Conservatives might argue that such a policy might not be fair to them, as a higher proportion of conservative judges are corrupt slime grown from Federalist Society petri dishes. I think they might have a good point.
I would say simple majority is fine, then full stop. No additional rules. McConnell didn’t bring up Garland’s nomination because his majority was slim, and he knew that a few would cross lines and vote for him.
Even if we had a “MAGA Senate”, there’s always a few that actually vote their conscience.
This is not a both-sides thing. There aren’t really any far-left justices or judges at any level.
Sotomayor is pretty left. I can’t think of a single SCOTUS case in which she ever took a conservative stance, although I’m sure someone who follows SCOTUS closely can give examples.
Also, the 3 liberal justices vote together in unison as a bloc/cohort even more often than the conservative justices do.
Nope.
Irrelevant.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Nobody is saying that there aren’t any judges on the left - but I don’t think any of them are as far to the left as Thomas and Alito are to the right. ( Which IMO is part of the reason why the three liberals vote together more than the six conservatives - and of course, another part is just the numbers)
I think this proposal is unnecessarily complicated. I like the idea of 18 year term limits, with a new Justice being appointed every few years. I think it’s probably better to allow the court to fluctuate in numbers, rather than allowing some Presidents to get extra appointments when Justices die or resign. Returning to a 60% requirement in the Senate would be a huge step in the wrong direction; in fact, I would argue for a 60% threshold to reject the appointment, so that only 41 votes are needed to approve. That prevents Presidents from just installing whoever they want, but prevents the opposing party from shutting the process down with just a small Senate majority.
No, we don’t. If they are not as far left as others are far right, then they are by definition NOT far left, but just left.
It’s more of an issue of complexity than length or word choice. The constitution already creates a fairly complex government, with our three separate branches, one of which is bifurcated, with varying checks and balances within all three.
Complicating the senate by creating a new subclass of senator, in addition to a potentially randomized settlement of judicial appointees? A state suddenly being deprived of part of its senatorial representation because their politics don’t line up with the executive’s for up to four years? The only benefit to this that I can see if that it lends itself to term limiting senators, as a once-humbled senator probably loses a lot of the advantages of incumbency.
Are you talking about Biden’s proposal or my proposal?
My proposal requires a 60% supermajority and removes anyone from the process who demonstrates themselves as being overly extremist (including the President).