This thread is inspired by the article on Politico now where the GOP is pledging to fill any open SCOTUS seats this year, up to and including the possibility of confirming a Justice after Biden wins, the GOP loses the Senate, and McConnell muscles through a Justice during the lame duck session of Congress.
I genuinely, truly do not believe the kind of fire they are playing with by making these pledges, or the extent to which politics will be fundamentally & permanently destroyed by confirming any Justice this year. This is something that just cannot be done after the theft of Merrick Garland’s seat and the justification for that.
Basically, I think one of two things will become inevitable if another Republican Justice is seated this year:
(1) Democratic Court-packing. People outside of Congress are already agitating for this; another Republican Justice will make those calls deafening & an inevitability. Note that this may already happen REGARDLESS of any confirmation, especially if SCOTUS issues an obviously bullshit hack decision in TX v US and overturns Ocare.
(2) Future Democratic governors & presidents ignoring SCOTUS decisions and refusing to enforce them. There’s already precedent for this in US history; another Republican Justice this year would supercharge the return of this practice.
Basically, there’s real danger to actually moving forward with this possibility post-Merrick Garland. In time, it’ll basically be all-out war against SCOTUS amongst Democrats, and other things on the agenda could range from jurisdiction stripping - passing laws that directly bar certain issues from being adjudicated in court - to reducing the salaries of SCOTUS clerks to $0.
Now, it will likely never be Biden to pursue these avenues because the man is an ineffective, weak, radical centrist, BUT a future president AOC would hold no such qualms.
We’ve heard “THIS is what will destroy things permanently” for years and years now. Whether it was blocking Garland, or confirming Kavanaugh, or any of a hundred other things done by Trump.
I think the SCOTUS’s reputation is already done. It’s already quite obviously just another political branch of the government – right now it’s a GOP branch. With luck maybe it will become a Democratic branch at some point, if the process to pick SCOTUS justices isn’t fixed. But there’s no chance of it resuming its role as a fair and objective arbiter of law and the Constitution unless there’s a huge change to the process of how justices are chosen.
The OP flatly says This Is Something That Just Cannot Be Done After The Theft, and you don’t aim your I think you misspelled quip there? Instead taking issue with someone who amiably tosses in a quick Near As I Can Tell?
Could we maybe split the difference with a To The Best Of My Knowledge?
As much as he would love to do so, I don’t think there would be enough time to nominate and confirm a new justice in the lame duck Senate session, especially if there’s still social distancing. Plus we might not know who controls the senate that night if there are tight races or a Georgia runoff. And some vulnerable 2022 Republicans might not want to go that far in a blatant power grab.
If Thomas retires in June, they’ll definitely fill the seat.
In the short and medium term, the Democrats can and should do absolutely everything they can get away with (McConnell-style!) to tilt the court from a GOP court to a Democratic court, including “packing” and creative interpretation of SCOTUS judgments. The court’s reputation is already sunk, and so they might as well tilt the results to themselves as much as they can get away with.
In the long term, the country needs to fix the process of appointing justices. I’d suggest either staggered 18 year terms, so every presidential term results in 2 appointments, or a minimum age requirement for SCOTUS (perhaps 65 or 70 years old). Something needs to happen so that SCOTUS picks aren’t the end-all be-all of politics, as they are now. They should just be routine – standard business for the WH and Senate. Both of these would require constitutional amendments, unless some brave president could agree to only appoint old justices from now on, and get their opponents to agree to the same, to de-escalate this skyrocketing level of importance placed on SCOTUS vacancies.
I’ve said it before – if this doesn’t happen, at some point a political party will figure out that there is good politics in manufacturing court vacancies. And if you think about what that would mean, we’ll be in big, big trouble.
Sadly the federal judiciary may be a lost cause unless there is a political realignment.
There are about 30 red states and about 20 blue states. So the gop has an advantage when it comes to confirming judges in the senate. Yeah the gems won the popular vote in four of the last five presidential elections, but the electoral College negates that advantage.
I don’t think it’ll destroy democracy, but the US will continue to be a flawed democracy for the next several decades due to white nationalist pushback against democracy and multi culturalism.
I like the minimum age requirement and I’ve thought about it before; it would have to be at least 70 IMHO and for maximum effectiveness probably at least 75.
I’ve seen several commenters postulate the idea of 18 year terms, but IMO that is still too long. I would prefer 10 year terms, personally.
If Trump loses the election and RBG dies on January 19th, the GOP will be voting on a replacement that night.
And agree with the others that it wouldn’t break politics, politics is already broken in this country. The advantage of the GOP is they know that (because they did it) and 75% of the Democrats don’t recognize that yet.
With 9 justices, staggered 18 year terms means that every 2 years, a vacancy opens up (ideally in odd-numbered years). So every presidential term would get to fill 2 vacancies. 9 year terms would mean a vacancy every year, so each presidential term gets 4 vacancies to fill. Occasionally, justices would pass or retire unexpectedly, opening up additional vacancies (or alternately, every time this happens the other justices just “move up” by a slot so that it’s always the same number of vacancies per prez term). Either would be far superior to the current system.
The fundamental problem is that Democrats want the government to do good things, while Republicans want the government do do nothing, and it’s easier to break things than it is to fix them. So Republicans break some aspect of government, and the Democrats can’t fight back by breaking some other part, because breaking government is the Republicans’ goal in the first place.
If the long-term goal is to make private interests more powerful, then the near-term goal is to make the political system dysfunctional and tilted away from serving public interests. They’ve been trying to do this for years, and they’ve gradually inched toward the goal line.
It’s a simple strategy for the GOP and their oligarchs backing them: when out of power, use whatever means are available to disrupt and obstruct so that people lose patience with and faith in progressives and reformers. Despite Romney’s defeat in 2012, they were largely successful in thwarting much of what Obama intended to do. No real reforms of the tax code. No meaningful reforms with firearms control. No meaningful change in terms of wealth inequality.
And when in power, they grab as much power as they possibly can, and double down on denying the franchise to people most likely to vote against them. The republicans will eventually get what they want: a rigged democracy. Or a “democratic republic,” just as the white supremacist elitists who founded this country intended, as they so often like to remind us.
If the long-term goal is to make private interests more powerful, then the near-term goal is to make the political system dysfunctional and tilted away from serving public interests. They’ve been trying to do this for years, and they’ve gradually inched toward the goal line.
It’s a simple strategy for the GOP and their oligarchs backing them: when out of power, use whatever means are available to disrupt and obstruct so that people lose patience with and faith in progressives and reformers. Despite Romney’s defeat in 2012, they were largely successful in thwarting much of what Obama intended to do. No real reforms of the tax code. No meaningful reforms with firearms control. No meaningful change in terms of wealth inequality.
And when in power, they grab as much power as they possibly can, and double down on denying the franchise to people most likely to vote against them. The republicans will eventually get what they want: a rigged democracy. Or a “democratic republic,” just as the white supremacist elitists who founded this country intended, as they so often like to remind us.
The Congressional sessions (both houses) start 3 January 2021. Tramp will need to have her croaked on New Years. Moscow Mitch will call an emergency session on the 2nd to fill her vacant (but still warm) seat with reptilian Stephen Miller. The newly-invigorated SCOTUS will meet that night to okay Putin’s puppy’s emergency martial law decree. Order will be maintained.
Phaw, Democrats won’t do anything. The GOP will just keep playing dirty when they have control and cry about how underhanded the Dems are to deflect attention from themselves. And enough of the public will swallow the lies and keep voting GOP. If Dems ever manage to get control again, they will try to meekly compromise with the looters and criminals of the GOP.
That doesn’t mean don’t bother to vote but I am feeling very down right now.
but I am feeling very down right now.