Biden worries ‘extreme’ supreme court can’t be relied on to uphold rule of law
Joe Biden worries that the “extreme” US supreme court, dominated by rightwing justices, cannot be relied upon to uphold the rule of law.
“I worry,” the president told ProPublica in interview published on Sunday. “Because I know that if the other team, the Maga Republicans, win, they don’t want to uphold the rule of law.”
“Maga” is shorthand for “Make America great again”, Donald Trump’s campaign slogan. Trump faces 91 criminal charges and assorted civil threats but nonetheless dominates Republican polling for the nomination to face Biden in a presidential rematch next year.
In four years in the White House, Trump nominated and saw installed three conservative justices, tilting the court 6-3 to the right. That court has delivered significant victories for conservatives, including the removal of the right to abortion and major rulings on gun control, affirmative action and other issues.
The new court term, which starts on Tuesday, could see further such rulings on matters including government environmental and financial regulation.
Honest question here ... what would you have him do?
There are a few options available. Pack the court, call for ethics inquiries, draw attention to the unconfirmed justices, or literally anything at all. Go on the attack. Be a leader. Demand justice. Biden is content to shrug and say "Ah, well, you see the GOP controls too much, so only if we have all the power can we make things better."
He's not governing, he's campaigning.
Literally what the article is about.
Not at all.
He could introduce a plan to reform the courts, but it would ultimately have to go through Congress.
Step down and be replaced with Bernie.
Limit how many years they can stay there?
Civics education in this country is fucking pathetic.
Yeah that's by design. Wouldn't want people doing something crazy like paying attention and trying to do something about the institutional cruelty. 🤔
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I agree with you but there's no reason to believe that the people proposing blatantly unconstitutional courses of action are American. In fact there's no good reason to believe they're even arguing for this in good faith. There's a lot of a bad actors on the internet getting paid by various nation states to foment problems.
I tend to put commenters who won't accept that their plan is outside the bounds of the law into that second category. They KNOW what they're saying would cause serious problems if it was done but they keep repeating it. They act just like the Russian led MAGAts with the sole difference that they're pretending to work for Team Blue.
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Oh of course! Sure!
I'm not American and I don't know how your whole complicated political system works. So if I ask if something can be done a certain way and it's not how it actually works in your system I simply MUST be a foreign bad actor trying to influence Americans to vote for Putin as international world overlord.
/S
You've been instructed over and over and over in this very topic how our system works and you ignore to continue pushing a plan that would have devastating and immediate consequences.
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck odds are good that it's a duck.
It's some peak white moderation to think that there aren't already devastating and immediate consequences to simply passively accepting fascism to preserve "order". You'll croak about civics education while people are losing their lives due to a corrupt and illegitimate court being giving cart blanche to rewrite law.
Right....
Some of ya'll need to go back to Reddit with that kind of attitude.
I'm Canadian... not everyone on the internet is American.
I just thought the president had the power to sign an executive order or some shit like Trump did for a bunch of things.
You still have zero excuse. If you think the head of state of any liberal democracy can change the judicial system by fiat you don’t have the understanding nor mental horsepower to be reading about this instead of an introduction to government textbook.
Jesus Christ man. Will you calm down? What's with the insults?
This isn't Reddit. Take a chill pill for Pete's sake
Don't be insulted. Be better.
Look who's talking.
What are "two excuses you'll never hear from a Conservative"?
That's because it's much easier to roadblock things than implement them.
The GOP got their perjurous Justices confirmed, their tax cuts passed, their book bans, and the end of Toe V Wade. Seems like they are implementing just fine.
The book bans are happening at state level, not federal. Other than that, it's all been tearing down what's existing
That's not really implementing..... You left out every bit of context.
They waited and said no, we won't confirm Garland and then got the majority and pushed through a justice during an election.
They're ignoring laws and passing their own book bans that their now regressive Supreme Court is cool with.
And the end of Roe v Wade was accomplished at least in part but that same saying no and waiting.
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The Democrats did that a month ago (and in Aug 2022 as well).
Notice that it only has a 1% chance of passing at this point (as it's got to get through the committee first).
Not a power that belongs to any branch except through a constitutional amendment. The Constitution says life during good behavior.
You may want to actually read the Constitution one day. It makes no mention of "life". Here's the text of Article III, Section 1:
If their term is given no limit, it's for life. This isn't rocket science.
Do you have any basis in fact for that assertion? If it's not controlled by the constitution than Congress can set a limit.
What does "during good behaviour mean"?
Reddit-tier commentary here
Right? Fucking hell...
If I'm so ignorant of the American democratic system, when I'm not even American myself and was never really educated on the system, would it bother people to explain to me why what I ask is not possible instead of throwing insults?
The comments in this thread are appalling.
Just pointing out that the constitution does, in fact, not say for life as you stated.
While technically true it's irrelevant as the constitution does not specify any term limits. So yeah - reddit-tier nit-picking over a detail while missing the entire point.
Technically true? Well, what the other person said was entirely false. It's not nitpicking when someone says that the constitution says justices have lifetime appointments and it actually doesn't say that.
It becomes relevant very quickly when you want to change the system. An act of Congress requires a majority vote and signature by the president, fairly simple. A constitutional amendment requires 2/3 of both chambers and ratification by 3/4 of the states (or a convention by the states).
Congress cannot impose SCOTUS term limits by statute. For one, Congress lacks enumerated authority to regulate SCOTUS. For another, even if they did, SCOTUS interprets the constitution to mean life terms, which means any simple statute Congress passes is reviewed... by SCOTUS... as facially unconstitutional.
The Constitution is silent as to the number of justices, Congress has determined how many supreme Court justices there will be. That number has been changed over time by Congress. Term limits are no different.
If the supreme Court wants to go that route, it is already been established that Congress can expand the number of justices. Congress can simply expand the number of justices, seat those justices, and then change the terms for Supreme Court justices with the new members voting in favor of the constitutionality of that change.
Even impeaching every Supreme Court Justice would be quicker and easier than the constitutional amendment. Congress unquestionably has the power to impeach Supreme Court justices.
That's up to Congress, executive branch has nothing to do with it.
I assumed that he could propose a bill or something. And what about executive orders? How does that work? I saw Donald Trump sign some stuff into law while he was in office.
Sorry, not American. I don't fully understand how your system works.
He can suggest a bill, but he can't submit it himself, someone in the House of Representatives would have to do it for him.
And as far as executive orders go they can be overturned by Congress or the next sitting president, and there are limitations as to what can and cannot be done via executive order.
You're the only person so far that hasn't freaked out and have me an explanation. Thank you!
Do you want a dictator? Or do you not understand that Biden can't do that?
Take a chill pill. I'm not American. I don't know everything about your system.
You're good. Sadly, if you don't repeat the approved narrative you are treated with hostility.
By "approved narrative" do you mean "the law"?
You would do well to indicate in your posts that you know absolutely nothing about the topic and have no business discussing it then. It sounds more like a suggestion than a question.
Man, fuck off. What are you? The boss of the internet?
I'm "not the guy admittedly opining on a subject I know nothing about".
No you're "the guy who's being a jerk and telling people what they can and cannot say or ask on the internet".
Lol, man your trigger was sensitive.
Pack the court it's with in his power to add justices to the Supreme Court. Democrats have the majority in the Senate so it can be done.
Where are you getting this idea the president can do this? When you see an article on this type of thing at least check the wikipedia page. I understand how the misunderstanding comes about due to the talk around the new deal in history classes but roosevelt only pushed for congress to act. This is something you see a lot with presidential tenures. They will push congress to act but they themselves can only do so much. It is only in recent times executive orders have been used extensively but this is still limited to what congress did not define and the constitution does not define in law.
That sounds like a good step. Where are Biden's speeches on pushing Congress to pack the Court?
I really don't think he should. It was not a great move by roosevelt either. It was actually about judges retiring. I actually think no one should be holding an office of any kind after 60 myself. Just adding more though is not going to help. Better to impeach them.
And yet after it the votes changed and they allowed the New Deal. Courts become less extreme when their comfortable power is threatened.
What's your solution to a corrupt court throwing away precedent and making law from the bench? Just pat Mitch McConnel on the back and say "shucks, you got us Mitch, guess we'll just live the rest of our lives under conservative rule"? Because waiting for 67 Democratic senators or multiple conservative justices dying under Democratic rule isn't likely to happen.
Adding more justices may instigate a tit-for-tat, but it's no worse than just accepting that they get to make law for the rest of your life, and the credible threat of doing it (or the actual practice) is likely to lead to real functional reform.
I don't believe the courts "allowed" the new deal because of the court packing idea. The court by its nature can't change votes whatever you meant by that. I have no solution except impeachment and indictment which I would truly love to see. Taking bribes like that should never be acceptable.
You get that this is functionally no solution at all, right? Even in Obama's first term there were only 60 Democratic-caucusing senators and a few of those were unreliable DINOs. 67 is a fairy tale. It's only marginally more likely than just hoping they get raptured.
And if that's the case, which do you prefer:
See the thing is you talk like changing the size of the court is realistically gonna happen any more than impeachment. Its still requires majorities which are not there. So its like your arguing that we don't have the number for what I said but we should go for the thing where we still don't have the numbers but its closer. Its not horseshoes or handgrenades.
Adding justices takes 50 votes. Impeaching takes 67. That's a world of difference. It's not going to happen if everyone up and down the party continually prioritizes making excuses for what can't happen, but if Biden (and other Democrats) continue to make their case that the court has lost its legitimacy and is in need of reform (i.e., lead) there's nothing fantastic about getting there.
the world of difference does not matter if you don't have the 50 votes. Why is it less possible to get more republicans to vote on it especially when one, like impeachment, is more legitamate?
What makes you think this is supposed to be a vote that must occur this instant with this congress? Do you think the Democrats will never have 50 solid votes ever again? And thinking that 15-17 Republicans would ever impeach a sitting Republican justice to be replaced by a Democrat is just wildly out of touch with reality. They wouldn't impeach Trump after he had his followers storm the capital that they were actual in.
Nobody wants to be the first to add justices, because that can become a game of one-upmanship where you'd could theoretically end up with a 91 person SCOTUS.
What's wrong with that? More brains the better and when bribes are involved billionaires will have to spend more.
They still own the house and senate and there's a whole bunch of those.
You're not wrong, but the number of justices could be linked to them number of judicial circuits, which now sits at 13.
That's literally no worse than simply submitting to a corrupt and illegitimate conservative Court.
The court is limited to 9 by law. He’s need a majority in the house and eliminate the filibuster to change that.