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.
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