President Joe Biden has suggested he will appoint progressive justices to the Supreme Court if he wins a second term in the White House in November.
“The next president, they’re going to be able to appoint a couple of justices… Look, if in fact we’re able to change some of the justices when they retire and put in really progressive judges like we’ve always had, tell me that won’t change your life,” he said during a campaign rally in Philadelphia on Wednesday.
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Crazy idea maybe, but what if the senior justiciary of his country weren’t political appointees?
Dumb question but like… Is there an obvious best way to do this?
Not really obviously best. But there’s obvious, well known problems that can be obviously improved.
- Don’t let the president alone appoint candidates. Include states or the justice system.
- I assume the Senate confirms with a simple majority; increase to 2/3 majority.
- Separate questions of constitutionality from top-court-revision processes.
Probably pull justices from the lower courts at random to hear individual cases. Much harder to bribe all the judges than like two well known supreme Court justices.
One take I’ve seen some Australian lawyers suggest is that the extent of politicisation of America’s Supreme Court is an inevitable result of how highly political their constitution is.
In Australia, our constitution deals with the basic functioning of government; how elections take place, who can vote, and mostly fairly boring procedural stuff like that.
America’s constitution quite famously lays out a number of very specific rights. Rights that are, by their very nature, quite politiciseable and open to interpretation. If SCOTUS is able to invent rights that they claim are implied by the written text, with the legislature unable to legislate around it, that’s a problem. It becomes even more of a problem when SCOTUS decides they can infer rights that are implied by those rights which SCOTUS themselves inferred. Deciding what rights people have—or removing those rights—should be the job of democratically elected representatives, not political appointees. So the court granting a right to abortion because they say it’s implied that you have this right based on the right to privacy (quite a large stretch, IMO), and that right to privacy being implied by your explicit right to due process (a more reasonable inference), is quite a silly arrangement. Better for the legislature to simply do their job.
Not that this is in any way “simple”. It would require a complete ground-up rewrite of the American constitution. And that’s obviously never going to happen.
The Supreme Court idea of judicial review was, essentially, created by an early Chief Justice using the classic children’s excuse “the rules don’t say I can’t do this so therefore I’m doing it and you can’t stop me”
I do think that the idea of judicial review itself makes sense. After all, what’s the point of a constitution if the legislature can just makes laws that go directly against it? The problem, in my view, is that the constitution covers too many things, and does so in far too unspecific terms, which makes for an incredibly broad range of possible political interpretations.
They ostensibly weren’t until… Well, let’s just say “recently”
Nah, there were plenty of dog shit rulings in the runup to the First Civil War
Exactly.
SCOTUS justices need to be elected and have term limits. Give them three total 4 year terms max.
EDIT: I know this would take a Constitutional amendment to change, which given our current political climate, is functionally impossible
As a Canadian, that sounds even worse to me, lol. Ejected judges? That’s insanity. Judges should never be making decisions based on political expedience.
Judges should be chosen by people who are experts in the law based on their knowledge and experience.
In Canada, I suppose it’s loosely political, but it’s several steps removed from direct political appointment. The PM and cabinet appoint someone to be the head of the judiciary, confirmed by the Governor General, and Supreme Court judges can be held accountable by the Senate and House in cases of misconduct.
Ejecting judges would make it worse, but better, imho.
The best solution I’ve heard for the US wouldn’t require a constitutional amendment, it’s to make the Supreme Court position last 18 years before becoming a Justice Emeritus (or whatever) that’s mostly ceremonial. That takes away the incentive to stuff the judiciary with young judges, and adds stability that each presidential term is 2 justice appointments on a slowly rolling basis.
Problem is that requires good faith from both sides. If only one side adheres to that then the other side uses it as ammunition and inputs their politically appointed judges anyway.
Case in point, Senator Mitch McConnell crying out in 2015 about Obama wanting to appoint someone at the end of his term, saying that he would be robbing the next president of that legacy and it would be a political appointment. And then Mitch McConnell said nothing as they appointed and Trump approved three blatantly political nominees.
Both sides have to agree that those positions be apolitical or one side just ends up getting screwed. And of course we are not going to see that because Republicans don’t have a shred of decency left and the whole party.
Texas has elected judges, and we’ll, I’ll let you decide how that’s gone.
because that would require changing the constitution and good luck getting republicans to go along with it
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President Joe Biden has suggested he will appoint progressive justices to the Supreme Court if he wins a second term in the White House in November.
The conservative justices appointed by his rival, former President Donald Trump, are “already gutting voting rights, overturning Roe, decimating affirmative action, and so much more,” Biden said.
The comments serve as a warning about the high stakes of November’s election, given Trump’s appointment of three justices in one term in office cemented the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority.
If Biden wins in November and has the opportunity to nominate justices to replace any who retire, his appointments could affect the county for decades.
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has promised to appoint more conservative justices if he wins back the White House.
Biden’s comments on Wednesday were part of a renewed effort to mobilize Black voters ahead of November’s election.
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Two of the court’s conservative justices—Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—are in their seventies, while Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal, will turn 70 next month.
So we need to replace Thomas and Alito with progressive justices and either keep Sotomayor or replace her with a progressive justice as well to get to 5 non-conservative justices.
That’s a big IF. 4 years for 4 SCOTUS justices to retire? And the conservatives know this? I bet Alito and Thomas won’t retire just to fuck the country up longer. Especially Thomas. He hates this country and every non-rich person in it.
either keep Sotomayor or replace her with a progressive justice
No, we need to replace her. The ability to replace justices is often a limited time offer.
RBG did the same thing. If shed have retired earlier things would be different now.
If she retired earlier, then Mitch would have just blocked her replacement. Unless you mean like early early, like Obama’s first term. I don’t really remember hearing calls for her to resign until after Mitch showed his plan as ”the party of no."
The next president, they’re going to be able to appoint a couple of justices
That being the case, maybe Biden should stop trying to throw the election
I hope if he has a red line for the SC, it’s actually real and unlike the fake one that Israel totally didn’t cross.
Pack that fucking court already.
Add 4 now, or they’ll add 4 later.
Yet another blatant, pandering lie.
?
I’m referring to this, in the article.
The conservative justices appointed by his rival, former President Donald Trump, are “already gutting voting rights, overturning Roe, decimating affirmative action, and so much more,” Biden said. “Are we going to let that happen? We can’t.”
The Democrats are, in fact, letting it happen.
oh nooo a warning whatever will they do
you can pack the court at anytime Joe, how about now
He’s telling them they better “cut the malarkey” or else he’ll say something else that makes him sound comically old.
Is the suggestion that you think he alone can change the size?
any president can
He can ask congress to add another judge, but congress has to actually approve the appointments.
Misinformation. CONGRESS decides.
He’s had 4 years to do it. But surely he’ll really do it just after he wins the election he looks likely to lose.
