This is huge
Is it? I am ready to believe it is, but i guess i was hoping headlines about passing the court
“No one is above the law” seems a bit of circular with the fact that the law is what the Supreme Court says it is. Similarly, who would decide whether a Supreme Court judge violates the purported Code of Conduct?
I guess it would all come to the legislation branch, but even if the reform goes through, I’m afraid that the political division in the Congress would limit its effectiveness.
Similarly, who would decide whether a Supreme Court judge violates the purported Code of Conduct?
Congress could impeach them, but the bar is high and Republicans have proven they will vote for party over country multiple times.
I think the trick with the term limits is the way this also has teeth. My understanding of one way the term limits thing could work is by moving justices to a senior status… Still technically appointed (and for life) but just not in the starting lineup.
I would guess that if the above method is the approach, a binding ethics code could have as punishment moving a justice to senior status, effectively benching them.
it’s a testament to how corrupt the court has gotten that just four years ago public sentiment was steadfastly against reforming the court.
And that’s how much damage one lunatic republican can do when in office. Four more years of it without some kind of safety net in place will destroy the country as we know it. Thanks for ruining everything good republicans!
If you think the issue lies in one bombastic and opportunistic president, and not our deity-like elevation of these lifetime-appointed robed clerics who are the only ones we entrust to interpret the constitution as if they have some divine patriotism, then you have been oriented by the democratic party away from what would otherwise be discontentment with the political system, and instead against the republican party which, as it just so happens, makes you fall in line with the democratic party and their fundraising strategies. The democrats desperately want you to ignore the gaping insecurities, volatility, and exploitation in our political system and instead instill a fear of Republicans.
Trump merely saw how easy it’d be to capture our judicial system that was devised by 20 year old white slavers only 4 generations ago. He correctly identified how the Supreme law of the land is all based on a flimsy interpretation of the honor system: we appoint justices for life and basically just trust them to play nice for their entire tenure without provisions to deal with judicial capture. It’s honestly a miracle we’ve gotten this far without more judges being captured.
Trump merely saw how easy it’d be to capture our judicial system that was devised by 20 year old white slavers only 4 generations ago.
Still notice how much smarter were those 20 years old white slavers than most of today’s 40 years olds. They’ve actually designed something that works.
Think of this as a stress test, it point out the holes in the system now rather than later.
Showing the holes is one thing, actively boycotting solutions/fixes/patches is another story
It’s showing more holes than we would like to see. Especially in the process of fixing any holes.
It also seems to be a testament to how nothing (barring term-limits) is gonna be done. The previous laws and regulations were perfectly adequate until the supreme court ruled “uh-uh.” There still seems to be a perceptual disconnect between those not playing fairly and the Democratic establishment.
Good. We needed to hear this. How much can be done, we shall see, but a plan is a great starting point.
I’m a bit skeptical on the first bullet point: while I’m all for an amendment to the US constitution that spells out in detail the limits on presidential authority, it’s still an amendment that has to get passed. That means that it needs a 2/3rds majority in both the House and the Senate, or it needs to be ratified by 2/3rds of the states in the Union. I don’t think there’s any way in hell that Biden’s going to be able to get that through while the prospect of Trump regaining the presidency is on the horizon. At the moment, 47% of the US Senate is Democrat, with 4% caucusing with the Democrats most of the time, 49% of the US House is Democrat, and 46% of State Governors are Democrat. While it’s not 100% certain that all Republicans would vote along party lines, I’m reasonably certain that all Republicans would vote along party lines, which means a constitutional amendment is dead in the water.
Now, if Harris wins the presidency, there’s a good chance that the Republicans would be willing to vote for an amendment to curtail presidential authority. But right now? Nuh uh. Not gonna happen. As for the other two bullet points, they’re certainly more possible right now than a constitutional amendment, but still unlikely. Dems don’t have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and I’m certain that the Republicans would filibuster the shit out of that. Even if that wasn’t the case, there’s no way it’d pass the House. Best case scenario, Harris wins, with a large majority in both houses, and is able to push some legislation along these lines through.
Iirc constitutional ammendments have to pass both congress AND the states. It’s not an either or
Technically, it’s an either / or process. It either needs 2/3rds of both houses, or 2/3rds of state legislatures have to call for a constitutional convention. You are right, however, in that after either hurdle is passed, it still needs to be ratified by 3/4 of the state legislatures in the union. That’s where the equal rights amendment is now. It passed both houses, but has not yet met the 3/4 state legislature hurdle, so it’s still in the pipeline 81 years after its proposal. Yay government!
Can we just step back for a minute and look at the big picture here? We’re at a point where passing an amendment that says “the president cannot commit crimes” is seen as something that has no chance in passing, because one party is dedicated to protecting a criminal. The founders would be ashamed of us.
I mean, no argument from me. The fact that the Supreme Court basically just ruled that the President can operate independently from the law, like a fucking king, would have every single one of those guys spinning in their graves fast enough to power a city. It’s just the latest milestone in a decades-long quest by the Heritage Foundation to convert America’s government into a Christian theocracy.
You’re 100% missing the power of a sitting president making this official statement in the first place. Further, then giving the House/Senate and the state governments a choice to publicly shot themselves in the feet, on the record, by opposing such a common sense approach to this obvious problem.
The goal isn’t the amendment, it would be nice, but it’s not the first/main victory here.
Presidents say shit all the time, though. Just saying that there is a major problem is newsworthy, but it’s all worth a hill of beans if it doesn’t lead to lasting changes. I believe that he was right in that an amendment will be the securest way to enumerate the boundaries of executive authority, as it will be much harder for the Supreme Court to fuck that up, but there is an extremely high bar to pass to get an amendment through. If he decides to go the legislation route instead, any new laws that are passed by Congress are potentially subject to being overturned by the courts.
As for the optics of Republicans opposing supreme court reform or curtailing of executive authority… meh. We all watched nearly every single Republican in the House vote to not impeach Donald Trump on two separate occasions, for incredibly stupid reasons, and most of those people won re-election. Relying on the public to make good decisions when faced with bald-faced congressional corruption is a losing proposition.
All Biden need to do is threaten to use his newfound powers to meddle in the red states’ crusade against lgbtq.
Maybe he could change the rules of voting in congress from “Yea/Nay” to “Yes, harder daddy/No, don’t fucking stop daddy” that’s probably within the role of his office.
I mean, thanks to Obama, the president has the authority to kill any US citizen they deem as a threat. The ACLU brought a case against the government about that, but that case was dismissed on procedural grounds, so it’s still constitutionally untested. But regardless of it being tested, there is precedent for it, thanks to Obama’s murder of Anwar Al-Awlaqi. And since the precedent says that the murder by the executive branch of any US citizen it deems a threat is kosher, well that would fall pretty nicely under the heading of “official acts of office” that this latest supreme court case showed would be absolutely immune from prosecution.
So I guess the question is: does Biden feel like murdering a bunch of citizens?
They’re not citizens if they’re Nazis, but murder isn’t the answer, let’s grab one of the for profit prisons the right so loves to build, in the middle of Oklahoma or Missouri and invite the traitors to stay a good long time.
Wasn’t that guy fighting for ISIS? Like actively engaged in the fight against US forces and killed in a targeted drone strike?
I’m all for Biden using his newfound kinghood to say, lock congress in their chamber until they vote the right way, but I don’t think your example is comparable.
He was alleged to be the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula. But, of course, he was a US citizen, and the drone strike happened in Yemen, a country we were not at war with. So it raised a significant number of ethical and procedural questions. Also, we killed his 16-year-old son (who was also a US citizen) with a drone strike several days later, also in Yemen.
but I don’t think your example is comparable.
Well, that’s the thing. Precedent is a tricky mistress. Sure, Obama had what he considered very good reasons for crossing that line, but it set a precedent that any subsequent president could follow. It’s like how George Washington set the precedent for presidential pardons by pardoning two men who were sentenced to be executed for protesting a tax on whiskey, and then a couple hundred years later, Trump was just straight up selling pardons to people for two million bucks a pop.
The point is, what seems reasonable when justified by a good president could easily be turned into something horrible by a bad president. The precedent set by Obama is probably not going to be as narrow as: “the US president is free to order the killing by drone strike of any US citizen who US intelligence agencies believe is a high ranking member in a terrorist organization (or a member of their family), as long as they are currently located in a middle eastern country”, just like the precedent set by Washington wasn’t: “The US president is free to pardon anybody who is accused of protesting a tax on whiskey”.
You’re asking this question for no reason as the answer is clearly no.
And I don’t really think you’ll garner much sympathy for Anwar Al-Awlaqi’s “murder”. He left the United States and was orchestrating terroristic plots to murder innocent civilians in the United States. He was involved in two high profile incidents of terrorism as a commander for al Queda. Nidal Hasan’s mass shooting at Fort Hood and an attempted bombing of an intentional flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.
I’m not looking to garner sympathy for Al Awlaqi. But it is a really fucking bad precedent to allow the president to kill people with no oversight, and if you’re not sure why that’s the case, maybe think on it a bit.
Up until the recent Supreme Court decision there was already oversight. Al Awlaqi was deemed to be an imminent threat and his killing was authorized by the National Security Council which would include 10-20 other individuals with access to superior knowledge of Al Awlaqi’s actions and includes the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Homeland Security advisor. All people tasked with positively identifying imminent national security threats. The country he was seeking refuge in had even ordered him to be captured dead or alive. And if you’re questioning his involvement in al-Qaeda, he appeared in a video bearing al-Qaeda’s emblem praising the two prior mentioned terrorists and called them students of his.
I think you misunderstand me: I’m not questioning his involvement in al-Qaeda. But the fact remains that he was a US Citizen. Being a citizen typically entitles people to certain perks, like due process in a court of law. This was denied to him, which is why the ACLU took up the case. The state has the power to execute someone, but up until this precedent was set, it was only able to legally do so after they had been convicted in a court of law. Intelligence agencies do not fall under that umbrella.
The country he was seeking refuge in had even ordered him to be captured dead or alive.
This is entirely irrelevant to US law. If, say, I was in Bolivia, and the Bolivian government had an active dead or alive warrant on some US expat, it would still be a capital crime for me to kill that man on Bolivia’s behalf.
Fair enough. I just feel as though there are extenuating circumstances surrounding his specific case. I believe that his due process was rather not denied, but expedited due to his own behavior. His due process took place in a briefing room of national security advisors discussing what violence he could be capable of before international police were able to capture him. I believe that he knew that his status as a US citizen would shield him from military action for some time and would be willing to use that time to orchestrate further attacks on western civilians for as long as possible.
I liken it to a hostage situation at a bank. A group of people commit armed robbery and 2 of the 3 have killed civilians. So in response they were killed by a SWAT team. The ring leader is the only one left and is holding hostages in a room with no windows, but is able to communicate with a negotiator. The orchestrator tells the negotiator that he has no intention of killing people but is holding hostages to ensure his safety. There’s already been lives lost so how willing are you to allow him to negotiate an arrest without further casualties? He’s holding hostages with the threat of violence but hasn’t killed anyone yet. Eventually he is killed without incident by law enforcement and the hostages are brought to safety. Is that situation a denial of due process by a court of law?
Fun fact, it doesn’t have to be an amendment - it can just be a normal law. The check on judiciary is if Congress and the President both say, " you got it wrong SCOTUS" and pass a law that specifically says things are different.
Now I’m basing that on my 9th grade civics knowledge which could be wrong… But I thought that’s why there were pushes for contraceptive laws post gutting of abortion rights. Basically telling the high court, this is what we’re doing now.
That’s a bit trickier, though, because SCOTUS already ruled on this, which means that their fucked ruling is now precedent. So any future challenges to a law passed by congress would be interpreted with that precedent in mind. If the composition of the supreme court changes, they could reverse their earlier rulings, but it’s much less certain of an outcome than if there was an amendment to the constitution guiding future decisions.
Laws override precedent. The court’s job is explicitly to interpret the laws made by congress. Precedent is simply the way that previous courts have interpreted the laws at the time. If the relevant laws to the case haven’t changed since the previous case, that is where precedent comes in. If there are new laws written by congress then those are more important than precedent.
Another user brought up the idea that they might still try to rule the new law unconstitutional but that would be a much harder bar to achieve legitimately since the constitution is intentionally rather succinct. Of course if the court is corrupt and no one actually challenges their power I suppose they could say anything they want- precedent overrules laws, anything they don’t like is unconstitutional, for the low low price of a vacation getaway you too can influence my rulings, etc. But legally speaking laws override precedent and doing away with a law because it is unconstitutional is an extremely high bar which can’t realistically be met by the vast majority of laws unless the law directly goes against the few rules that the constitution establishes.
SCOTUS can simply rule the law unconstitutional…
Laws for contraceptive right are needed because SCOTUS ruled there weren’t any laws saying it was a right, because they have the constitution backwards.
We need to just ignore Marbury at some point. These fuckers gave themselves judicial review, it’s not an actual power they have.
Rights not enumerated… are no longer rights.
They don’t give a shit if the rights are enumerated lol
If the Democrats don’t win a landslide, this goes nowhere.
Vote!!!
Absolutely right but it does also make this a more concrete election issue. This sets up Harris clearly for reform and makes a strong argument against for Trump’s criminality and the corruption he spreads.
It won’t happen even if the Dems do win in a landslide. There are always enough Manchins in the Senate to keep anything meaningful from actually getting passed.
It’s not gonna happen, we need 2/3rds of states, but when republicans block it, it sends a clear message who the wannabe autocrats are.
There are still other options if this goes nowhere. If they have the numbers, they can impeach the sitting justices and/or pack the court with more.
Also, it’s possible that if the republicans see a string of back-to-back democrat presidents, maybe presidential immunity would be less popular. Especially after trump finally kicks the bucket.
Of course none of this matters if the dems don’t win in November.
As if the Republican party isn’t already screaming that message loud and proud on the daily
it sends a clear message
eye-roll Need to stop pretending that Republicans are just being cutesy and cryptic, and recognize that large parts of the country fully endorse a fascist federal government.
Agreed! Them voting Against this is a MUCH clearer Message then them Literally saying You Won’t Need To Vote Ever Again Because The Fix Will Be In!
Let them vote against it. Let them vote against all the popular ideas and see where that gets them.
Let them vote against all the popular ideas and see where that gets them.
That only works if people are paying attention.
Increasingly, the general public are checking out of paying attention to the political circus.
They have been doing this for decades… sure, there was a time people just didn’t understand it. But they literally voted against cheaper insulin.
I am not saying these bills should not be presented even if the Republicans will kill them, but the expectation that Republicans voting against thing that benefit the working class would eventually make their base shrink is a complete fallacy at this point.
See where it gets them? It gets them right where we are now, with them on the precipice of turning the country over into a russian style dictatorship with billionaire oligarchs and their bought politicians running little fiefdoms?
Have you not being paying attention to how fucking enthusiastic a not-insignificant chunk of the country is for fascism and enshrining their teams power as dominate and eternal?
The point is to pull the cloak off and get bigger wins in the future to get the reforms through. There’s enough people who still don’t know what’s really going on
So the article admits that Democrats aren’t just relying solely on rhetoric, they have 2 bills needing to be voted on. It even goes so far as to call out the actual problem within the Democrat party, Manchin and Sinema, for flip flopping about what they support and don’t support: either HR1, the John Lewis voting rights act, and/or removing/adjusting the filibuster.
But it suggests that if Democrats just lean on them a little bit, they’ll cave.
…
Right. Let’s blanket blame the Democrats for being the reason nothing in the the house passes and is currently R220-D213, and nothing leaves the senate and is currently D49-R49, minus the 2 above.
We need to call out the actual reasons much more, and much louder.
Exactly. The Democrats should have ended the filibuster when they could have.
You make a fair point. I do think there are signs the democrats and progressive are finally seeing that they need to play hardball. Amendments are a long play, and if the democrats have “candidate x thinks Clarence Thomas should be able to go on million dollar vacations in exchange for his vote on the Supreme Court” to smack every republican with for the next decade or so, it makes winning the necessary states a real possibility.
The issue here isn’t that the Democratic Party isn’t playing hardball. The issue is that while the Dems are playing Baseball, the Republicans are playing Blernsball, and the blue continues to lose points and players due to following the old ruleset. The worst thing though is Team Blue has the better players. We have the home run strikers. We have down-the-line pitchers. Left, center, AND right field golden gloves. Our team are winners by any measure of the old system.
We’re just playing a wholly different type of game now.
tldr: Stop being blind in your tolerance. Start calling everything you see that is unjust and malicious out. Your freedom probably depends on it
Most republicans I know believe that their party, like their country and their religion, needs to be followed blindly; if their party supports it, it’s good, and if their party rejects it, it’s bad. End of story. No more thought will, or should, be put into it.
The people who go on and on about how America is the best because “freedom” are now working out whatever mental gymnastics they need to perform to justify voting for the man who said if you vote for him you won’t need to vote anymore. They already chose to support Trump and his party - nothing they say or do anymore will change that decision.
It seems like republican voters deeply believe that their way is the “right” way and they’re willing to do anything to impose it on the nation in perpetuity.
I’m sure most aren’t really comfortable with trump, but they’re willing to overlook his rough edges if he can establish a republican government.
It’s an Authoritarian Personality Disorder. You are correct, and I have not found an effective means of countering it, given the material conditions we find ourselves in.
Thank you for doing what Wikipedia won’t and rightfully calling it a mental disorder.
They lack emotional intelligence
They can kill it by doing nothing, or having it tied up in procedure. If the amendment has a time limit clause for ratification (the one’s submitted over the last century have), then they can just sit on it. Otherwise, it might become like the 27th amendment, ratified over two centuries after congress signed off.
As if America ever learns anything from "clear messages’ that are in fact painfully clear and obvious.
An amendment needs to be proposed by 2/3 of both houses of congress, or 2/3 of states can call a convention where any amendments can be proposed. Then an amendment needs to get 3/4 of states to ratify.
If I’m reading this right, that is.
So we need 2/3 of both houses of congress and 3/4 of state legislatures to agree. A large hurdle, but doable and necessary for our democracy. We’ve done it before, and now is a time in our history begging for amendments/reform.
You’re optimistic about it being doable. Maybe if it was put to a vote in each of the states or maybe if it wasn’t currently relevant to one party’s head. But not put to a vote by the state legislatures. There only needs to be 13 state legislatures that say no to keep it from happening. The last time we passed an amendment was over 30 years ago and was just not allowing congress to give themselves a pay raise in the same term. Not a super contentious thing like presidential immunity when it the previous republican president is facing several criminal trials.
I didn’t say I was optimistic, just that we are at a time in our history begging for amendments and reform.
It needs 2/3 of both houses to be proposed by Congress, but Congress has no power over ratification. The end of Article V is simply saying that Congress may propose one of the modes of ratification (by state legislatures or convention), not that Congress can unilaterally ratify an amendment.
I don’t get the appointing of a new judge every two years for 18 years. Does that mean that the courts are gonna like fill up with a bunch of justices or is it just every two years you can replace an empty seat?
To expand on what AirBreather said, the new justices would have an 18 year term, replacing one every two years.
this is actually a reasonable solution I pushed a while back. Basically, it would keep the aspect of the court changing slowly (an intentional feature,) but it would still let it change. Further, each president gets two SCOTUS peeps at predictable times, removing the ability of the senate to play games and game the system. (or installing relatively young judges who will serve for forty+ years.)
I was pleasantly surprised to see him propose this too. I’ve heard a lot of people online throw around the idea. I’m glad it’s getting more mainstream attention too.
Not to mention, this also ensures the court is keeping up with modern society. You won’t have 80 year old judges using outdated interpretations
Exactly. You get steady change lacking wild swings, and no president will have the ability to change the majority in a single term (unless it was already close to that.)
Once the lifetime appointees have been dealt with in whatever way, the Court will have nine members, each appointed one after the other with two years in between, with the next-most-senior member’s term expiring every two years to keep the number stable at nine.
I’m curious to see how they plan to transition to that system. Force one of the current Justices out every two years? If so, which one? Or do they plan on just starting fresh? Then who gets ousted in two years? To be clear, I fully support this plan, I’m just curious how the transition will go if/when this passes.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they allow the sitting justices to continue their life appointment
Force one of the current Justices out every two years? If so, which one?
Presumably the currently longest serving justice.
And then we get chief justice Thomas for 2 years, followed by 2 years of chief justice Alito…
Once the lifetime appointees have been dealt with
This sounds specially more ominous now that the President is untouchable.
The same dark comedy thought crossed my mind!
I expect they might retire and replace the existing judges, one every two years, in order of length of time already served. This would make it so they start this new system off already having 9 seats filled.
How many justices do you think there will be if there’s a new one appointed each two years and they are term-limited to 18 years?
Nine
As I understood how this would work is the next appointment will be “term limited”. After 18 years they would assume senior justice status. This will do two things. First, allow for someone new to be appointed. Second, ensure they don’t run afoul of the lifetime appointment status.
Under the senior status, the most recent to leave the court can step in again as a sub after a death pending installation of a new “starter”.
So in one way yes, there will be many more justices… But there will be a starting 9, and more in a pseudo retirement. This will be a long road to get there, as they need to wait for the first vacancy, and then the next, etc.
Alrighty then.
I don’t get the appointing of a new judge every two years for 18 years. Does that mean that the courts are gonna like fill up with a bunch of justices or is it just every two years you can replace an empty seat?
Still 9 justices. The justices would have an 18-year term limit, so one seat opens and is then filled every two years.
This whole “every two years” new justice thing is really bothering me. Did he say that or is the journalist taking liberties?
I wonder because that timing will fly straight out the window the minute someone retires early or dies. Does the next Justice get a shorter term? A longer one? Does the seat go empty for a time? Do we end up having cycles of presidencies that get to appoint 3 or 4 justices in one term?
Bah- this will keep me up tonight, I just know it.
I imagine it will be the seat itself is reappointed on a fixed schedule, that would function most similarly to the Presidency or Congress. The replacement be more or less an “acting” Justice to finish the term.
Every 2 years the longest-standing justice would be replaced, if they have served at least 18 years. Since there are nine justices this means each will get an 18 year term exactly. Any early exits would just mean you skip the next cycle. That’s how I’d imagine it anyway.
Not sure what the solution would be that is proposed by the legal experts but it seems to me that we already have a system for dealing with that for the office of the president in the form of vice presidents etc taking over if they die. Not that you should have to have an entire chain of people ready to take over for every SC justice but rather, if one dies or retires or whatever before their 18 years is up then a replacement can be appointed to finish the remainder of their term.
I don’t even know why we need specific appointments for the seats. Just rotate judges from the lower courts through.
I saw someone mentioned that if something happened and a seat was vacated early, one of the justices whose term had expired could be brought in to serve in that seat until it is filled with a new person at the next scheduled time. But that seems to mean that some other justice(s) more senior than the one who vacated might wind up serving more than the normal 18 years as they wouldn’t be replaced until the next cycle.
As far as a president getting to appoint 3 justices in one term, we just had that with trump. IMO there really should be more than just 9 seats. A common suggestion is 13, one for each District.
I’m a 2A Loving Republican getting my Guns ready in case the Government gets TOO BIG and I HATE the idea of Term Limits. We need LIFETIME APPOINTMENTS in ALL Parts of the Government with NO WAY to recall or otherwise Punish people who are Corrupt!
🥱
new favorite account 💖
I’m here for this satire. The random capitalization is what sets it off.
Only Steven Seagul is
GOOD NEWS.
Let’s get this done.
Ha. Good luck with that, seeing as it’ll be the supreme court ruling on the constitutionality of any law that’s passed. In short it’ll take a constitutional amendment to do anything, and that’s not happening in this political climate
He can kill them all and declare it an official act
They’ll just rule all this unconstitutional without more justices. Democrats are so useless.
I hope you’re sitting down for this one because it’s quite shocking; things ammend to the Constitution become a part of the constitution itself, and thus constitutional.
Bro, they already ruled Trump a king which the constitution also says isn’t possible. They don’t care what it says.
What exactly would you like the Democrats to do? What’s your grand plan? They have to work within the law, even though the SC is clearly not. You ever read Alan Moore’s, The Killing Joke? We have to show them our way works. At least for now.
