Alito wasn’t bluffing: He believes the Supreme Court is above the law
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito no doubt intended to shock the political world when he told interviewers for the Wall Street Journal that “No provision in the Constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”
Many observers dismissed his comment out of hand, noting the express language in Article III, establishing the court’s jurisdiction under “such regulations as the Congress shall make.”
But Alito wasn’t bluffing. His recently issued statement, declining to recuse himself in a controversial case, was issued without a single citation or reference to the controlling federal statute. Nor did he mention or adhere to the test for recusal that other justices have acknowledged in similar circumstances. It was as though he declared himself above the law.
The Supreme Court should be elected by popular vote and have to be reconfirmed by the states every four years.
One national election every four years is enough for me. I can't even imagine what the campaigns for judges with the power to rewrite the Constitution through creative interpretation would look like, but if they can put Trump in the White House, they could put him on the Supreme Court.
Term limits. Active oversight. Maybe go back to requiring 60+ votes to confirm so the GOP can't shove the Federalist Society hack-of-the-day through with a simple majority.
The problem with requiring 60 plus votes is that it's would be open season for the GOP to prevent nominations, then the second they had the Senate again, they'd remove the rule. Just like they did the last time.
Then add into the requirement that you need 75 votes to remove it.
Except that's not how it works. At some point there will be a rule that can be removed with a simple majority. Because that's all the constitution demands.
Also, these super majority rules are always abused by the rightwing to hinder actual progress.
No. The actual fix is restoring voting rights and making voting day a national holiday. Then we need to add jail time for voter suppression.
That's the basics of a start to fixing things. I can think of two or three more changes that we'd have to make before even beginning to talk about changes to the senate and supreme court.
But to get any of the changes to stick we'd have to pack the court with judges who are not partisan hacks.
Offset by two years from the Presidential election.
Yeah, because midterms have great turnout.
That would be the draw would it not?
I highly doubt it.
Yeah, I think four years might be too short for this. Maybe eight? Idk though. The period doesn't really matter. There just needs to be something done.
No. Judges should not be political. I don’t know the answer here, but being an elected official isn’t the right course.
Yeah, if anything their selection needs to be further removed from the political process.
Maybe the supreme Court should be like jury duty. Randomly select from a pool of judges from around the country to fill the position for a certain period of time.
They'd still need to understand the laws, prior decisions and cases, and be able to make a logical argument.
I didn't mean select random people to be supreme Court justices. I meant select from existing judges to temporarily serve in the supreme Court.
It's the only way I can think of to remove as much politics as possible from the SC.
It's always going to be political, they just pretend to be above it.
That is my concern. In an ideal world we would have well educated apolitical folks with decades of good faith judicial practice on the supreme Court.
We don't live in the ide world so judges are political and you are voting for them when you vote for your representatives.
Honestly if we fixed the house and Senate (add Puerto Rico and DC as states, uncapped the house) it might get better in the long term, but doesn't solve the problem.
The Constitution did not plan on the elected officials being corrupt and unwilling to do "the right things", so I think it has proven to be fundamentally broken.
I don't know how to fix it.
Judges are already absolutely political. Judges get appointed based on whether they'll support the policy agenda of the person appointing them. Being said, I'm with you inasmuch as giving the people who made Donald Trump president the power to pick the supreme court all by themselves is a bad fucking idea.
Good thing they're not political now then, right?
Never said they weren’t presently.
Ok, so we shouldn't elect them, because then they would become political.
Instead, they should be appointed, like now, when they are political.
Makes sense.
I never said the current system was good.
It is political. Whether they should be or not doesn't really matter.
Judges have always been political
That's how you get Trump on the Supreme Court. Elected justices is not great.
My solution is ~16 year terms spaced out like Senate terms, where if the person dies or retires the appointment just fills out their term, and each presidential term gets an appointment or two. Removes the benefit of appointing someone young so we can have more experience on the court.
My country solved the problem by having 9 years non renewable terms and requiring a 2/3 majority in the parliament to elect a judge. This avoids them thinking they are the state and prevents any hyper partisan hack from entering the court. Of course this is only possible because none of the major parties is trying to make the state implode but it works well.
Australia has age limits.
What happens when no party can get a 2/3 majority or no house can achieve a 2/3 plurality?
There's an agreement between the parties to nominate the judges. The center right and center left parties nominate most the judges and there are a few places reserved for the parties more to the right and left, in a way that keeps a balance between judges nominated by right wing and left wing parties. Sometimes a party will try to nominate someone that gets rejected by the other parties and then they have to pick someone else, but usually the process is a footnote in the news.
Sounds nice to have a functioning government of civil legislators.
Yeah that sounds really nice. I bet y’all can get a budget passed consistently as well. We can’t and it’s destroying our credit
What magical country is this?
Portugal, but other countries have similar systems in place, for example Germany has a similar system but with 12 years terms. Some countries like Spain and France give different institutions (the head of state, the parliament, other courts, etc) the power to nominate a set number of judges, to try to prevent the court from becoming lopsided, but honestly I don't think that works that well, France in particular has an history with judges participating in party politics.
9 justices 18 year terms. Staggered so that every 2 year election cycle 1 justice is up for election by popular vote. Required to be member of Bar in at least one state.
You can get Trump now, that isn't any different.
Terms limited to the number of Justices. Staggered so every year 1 Justice is retired and replaced. Maximum term of 20 years (just in case Congress gets antsy and provides funding for more chairs.)