There has been a great deal of furor of late over how the Supreme Court is “illegitimate” because McConnell denied Garland a rightful confirmation vote and also is now trying to get Barrett (or whoever else in) despite his own precedent set years earlier. The outcry is that this “illegitimate” Supreme Court is going to screw over LGBT, minorities, women, etc. and that court-packing is needed to protect such people.
What I don’t understand, though, is that even if a Supreme Court conservative supermajority was arrived at the legit way - suppose McConnell never did any Garlanding, never was a hypocrite, did things honestly, but Kagan, Sotomayor, Breyer, Ginsburg, all happened to drop dead or retire - such a SCOTUS would still screw over minorities just as much, too.
A conservative Supreme Court supermajority is always going to screw over LGBT, minorities, women, regardless of whether it was appointed the ethical or unethical way. So, since that is the case, why the calls for court-packing “because the Supreme Court is illegitimate?”
Shouldn’t it be, “We need to pack the Court because minorities are getting screwed?” In other words, even if Republicans didn’t cheat, court-packing would still be needed to stop the screwing?
I want there to be a decision-making structure. Having one is a vast improvement over NOT having one. Even a very unfair, corrupt, intrinsically authoritarian structure contains the possibility of improvement from within, whereas the complete lack of one creates rule by immediate force: “I got the big stick, you do as I say”.
Not liking the composition of the Court even though it was filled via due process within the rules devised: I can dislike the current authority structure. Too much power focused in the hands of the Supreme Court, too much power in the hands of the President, too much power in the hands of the Congress, and too much historically entrenched unfairness in the laws and the businesses and the police and so on and so forth. But still liking the fact that it took place via due process.
Not liking the composion AND it was filled by bypassing due process: ok now we’ve got a bastardized form of “I got the stick” rule, creating new rules to make it easier to descend further into that. This is far more worrisome.
A bad situation via an agreed process is fundamentally different from a bad situation arrived at via no process.
In a soundbite: Playing by the (badly written) rules is different from anarchy.
Where the Left & Right differ today is whether a smidgen of intermittent anarchy in the streets is more dangerous to our Republic and our society than continuous total anarchy in the White House.
Seems pretty clear to me, but a sizeable fraction of Amercans Just. Cant. See. It.
There are different degrees of ‘not liking’ as well. I can not like a Justice Robert’s conservatism but if it’s consistent with his record and if his arguments can at least be argued credibly with a straight face, then I accept that. But when Court justices issue assert power they don’t have and see things in the Constitution that aren’t there, then that’s a different level of unlike. And if the Court is being filled with whackadoodles who aren’t even recommended as qualified jurists by the ABA, then that’s off the charts ‘unlike.’
Why would anyone be OK with the Supreme Court screwing over minorities?
I understand how one might be more pissed with a Supreme Court that was installed after shenanigans, but I’m still going to get pissed if a legit Supreme Court outlawed abortion, gay marriage, or whatever horrors a 6-3 SCOTUS has planned for the US.
I’d be absolutely fine with it. In my opinion, the Supreme Court’s job isn’t to not screw anyone, or screw anyone, but rather to rule as a court of law as to the legality within Federal law of specific legislation or a court decision that’s been appealed to them. It should NOT be a vehicle of social engineering or social justice independent of the Constitutition/Federal law and the case at hand.
If that screwing of minorities is within the Constitution and within existing Federal law, then it’s not the Supreme Court’s job to have an opinion about it independent of that. They may not like it, but if it’s legal, they have a duty to uphold that law, not hare off in some other direction based on their own views about social justice.
What should happen in that case, is that SCOTUS upholds that particular law/case, and then subsequent legislation, constitutional amendments or court cases cause it to end up back in their laps later on, and they rule on the constitutionality of that specific case.
Usually by the time it’s ended up in their lap, it’s one of those issues that is NOT cut and dried in a legal sense, and they’re the ones to have to figure it out and make a tough decision. But that has to be done within the confines of the Constitution and existing Federal law.
I strongly disagree here. American history would have been a lot better if SCOTUS had decided that the Bill of Rights actually outlawed slavery (and a strict reading of it very clearly does).
Again, when you are the one getting screwed over, you don’t care. Those little fine points are hard to appreciate when someone has their knee on your neck.
Yes, I do. I was responding to your statement that anyone getting screwed would feel the same. My point was more that there are those who claim that they are being screwed over because they are not allowed to screw over others.
As far as “okay”, I’m not sure what the OP means. I would not be happy, and I would do what I could within the confines of a democracy to change it. As the OP said, conservatives are always going to screw over LGBT, minorities, and women, so the best way to prevent such is to promote progressives in office.
That’s the catch… the Supreme Court can’t just make rulings on anything; there has to be a court case that works its way up through the local Federal courts, and through the appellate courts until it reaches them.
In other words, someone has to sue, AND have an argument that existing case law or statute doesn’t apply. Otherwise, it’ll get shot down somewhere in the appellate system. I mean, I suppose someone could keep on appealing cut and dried stuff, but even then, the Supreme Court has the power to punt a case back to the appellate court and not even hear it if they think it’s been sufficiently resolved.
Am I the only one who feels that the Federal Court System is a broken husk that accomplishes almost nothing? I’m not saying that it couldn’t do amazing things, but it seems to catch up to society as a whole well after we’ve moved on to other matters. It should not have taken until the 60’s to dismantle Jim Crow or even the mid-1800’s to decide that slavery was wrong. There should not be any question that racism still exists and that the Civil Rights Act is needed in its entirety. Corporations are not people. Money is not speech. Montana had the right to continue not allowing corporations to meddle in elections because we all know that money corrupts. These are not rocket science revelations or pie-in-the-sky ideas. These are basic common sense principles that a child could understand. The fact that 9 people running around in their night gowns can’t understand it just points to the utter absurdity of it all.
And the Amistad decision, and perhaps others that I’m not aware of. There were opportunities the SCOTUS could have taken to end slavery, but it didn’t.
In other words, the “reverse discrimination” so loudly trumpeted by the white right in general is “too cognitively dissonant to consider”? That’s what they’re complaining about. The ending of their right to screw the other guys.