Suppose the Dems win the senate and Biden the presidency. If RBG (or any other justice) dies at 11:59:00 AM on Jan. 3, there will be an emergency meeting of the outgoing senate and a new justice will be approved at 11:59:59. If it happens any time between then and Jan. 20 and Trump nominates anyone, the collective guffaw from the Democratic senators will be deafening.
The GOP seating ANY Supreme Court Justice this year would permanently & irrevocably destroy politics
The SCOTUS doesn’t okay law/decrees.
See Article III, Section 2, Clause 1.
And Susan Collins will voice her concern before voting in favor.
It’s not implausible that the incoming Senate will be a 50-50 split (simplifying the numbers to lump to two parties) with a Trump/Pence loss.
In this scenario, the January 20th date would still be very relevant as Pence would be the tiebreaker for those weeks while he’s still in office.
Yankee’s fan, huh?
Yes, also a fan of the constitution, unlike the Supreme Court at that time.
Ah, they must have done something that you disagreed with.
And we all know that disagreeing with puddlegum is unconstitutional.
As will Alaska’s coward, Lisa Murkowski.
If the Pubs stack the court beyond all fairness, can’t the Dems (if they take back the Senate) increase the number of justices on the court? I confess ignorance as to the process involved.
This has been discussed many times before (“court packing.”) AIUI, it only requires a mere Senate majority, if a future Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer were to invoke the nuclear option on that.
The main reason not to do it is that it just invites retaliation in kind. If Democrats increased the Court to, say, 15 justices, there’s no reason a future Republican administration wouldn’t increase it to 21 or 99. Of course, one could try a strategy where you “nuke your opponent entirely in one blow” by increasing the Supreme Court to such an immense size - packed full of one’s own judges - that you run entirely roughshod over your opposition and they don’t even ***get ***a chance to pack the Court their way in return down the road. But it’s doubtful that you could get fifty Democratic senators to sign onto that idea, especially the ones in red states.
GOP seating any SCOTUS justice might destroy politics, and/or it might destroy the courts. If the US goes into a full-on economic depression and a political crisis ensues, and if the people elect some political superman to “fix” the country, one of the first things that guy (or gal) is gonna do is tell courts to stay the hell out of its way. It’s then a question or whether or not that president would have a mandate, but if it’s like the 1930s, that president would probably have it.
Ha! We’re long, long past this. Everything that can be done to help the GOP gain advantage is being done or is in the works. McConnell has demonstrated time and time again that he has no actual principles. Until the SCOTUS process actually invites a chance for non-partisanship in the courts, the Democrats should do exactly the same.
Of course not. By this logic, McConnell would have tried to pack the Supreme Court by now. He’s had a Senate majority for years and years and hasn’t.
This is because he currently doesn’t have enough support for this among his Senators, not because he’s unwilling to do it. I can’t prove this, of course, but nothing I’ve seen in the last ten years or so suggests to me that McConnell has any principles beyond acquisition of power and money.
I doubt the Democrats would have the support to pack the courts either, if they got the Senate… but they still should try. There’s no reason not to.
Because he hasn’t needed to, because he already has a majority on the Court.
Doesn’t make sense. A 5-4 majority is flimsy; nowhere as secure as a 25-4 majority. Roberts has ruled against conservatives/Republicans on multiple occasions. Packing SCOTUS would ensure an iron-clad right-wing court.
Court packing is the Democrat’s version pre-emptive escalation, in the “he hit me back first” sense. They are just doing in retaliation for what Republicans haven’t done yet.
Liberals find they can get the Supreme Court to litigate things they can’t get thru legislation. So they push for more of it. Eventually, the pendulum swings back, and conservatives get Justices who don’t litigate from the bench. Whereupon liberals begin to scream two things - one is lie about how Justices who don’t litigate from the bench are litigating from the bench, and the other is scream about how unfair turnabout is.
Regards,
Shodan
Yep, and he would if he could (but right now, he can’t, because not enough Senators support it). Why wouldn’t he? What are the consequences? Principles don’t matter any more. Decency doesn’t matter any more. Norms don’t matter any more. All that matters is power and money.
Always interesting to hear signals from another universe, strange and nonsensical that they sometimes are!
The Constitution means whatever the Supreme Court says it means. If Trump declares that due to the Covid 19 crisis, the results of the 2020 election were in error and as sitting president is declaring martial law until the situation can be rectified, so long as the SCOTUS agree with his interpretation, who can the Dems appeal to?