Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/30/can-the-profoundly-corrupt-supreme-court-be-fixed.html
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All good ideas, and necessary, but first we have to fix the Senate, and that won’t happen until the Dems can get over 60 secure votes to overcome the filibuster. Until that happens, it’s just pissing in the wind.
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Raskin just yesterday had an OpEd in the New York Times that is a really interesting idea. I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that it ever happens, but it should. I hope it does.
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The best solution I’ve heard for that is having them vote with the House instead of separately. Nothing about it violates the Constitution, and extra weight is still given to lower-population states (albeit at a far reduced but more appropriate rate).
As long as we have a duopoly system in which one of the parties has acted in constant bad faith since at least 1992, though, reform in the legislative or judicial branches are as likely as abolishing the equally rotten Electoral College from determining who runs the executive branch.
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IIRC, it only takes a majority to get rid of the filibuster.
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“ Can the profoundly corrupt Supreme Court be fixed?”
I think that’s considered unethical to do to humans without their consent.
But I won’t stop you.
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He’s got genuinely sound solutions.
I’ve enjoyed Raskin, so far, because in what clips I’ve seen of his arguments, he’s not grandstanding, he’s just stating, clearly, the facts as they sit and genuinely calling out the heavy spin that goes on.
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Vote with the House on what?
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I like the idea of one justice from each of the 13 circuits. As bad as Gorsuch is generally, he voted in favor of indigenous rights in the McGirt v. Oklahoma ruling a few years ago because he came from the 10th circuit and understood the issue better than the rest of the justices. Raskin is right that the SC can and should be reformed. But as llamaspit says above, until Dems get a solid hold on the Senate, it’ll never happen.
I used to tell people that climate change is the most important issue in the election. It affects everything. EVERYTHING. But now I’m telling people that electing Biden to a second term is essential because if Trump is elected, Thomas and Alito will certainly resign (as, frankly, Sotomayor should have already done), and he will appoint two young, even more radical justices to the Court. It will set back civil, voting, environment, worker, and women’s rights for DECADES to come. Trump must not win.
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Everything except matters specifically reserved to the Senate. Yes, I know that one of those matters includes voting on SCOTUS nominees. However, fixing the Senate by having them vote with the House as a unified body on the majority of matters that come before both chambers would – like the abolishment of the Electoral College – bring the country a big step closer to being the beacon of democracy that both parties crow about.
Those are general suggestions. Here, the only real short-term solution is for Biden to dilute the toxicity of Alito and Thomas by packing the court. Which I doubt he’ll try, and which would likely fail due to Republican bad faith and centrist Democrat hand-wringing that would make the debate of FDR’s reform bill of 1937 look like a tea party.
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I don’t think it’s clear that that is allowed by the Constitution. It’s certainly never been tried, and there is realistically zero chance of either party trying to do something like that.
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From what I’ve read, voting as one body isn’t disallowed, which makes it realistic from a Constitutional viewpoint. In practise, though, I agree that none of these suggestions will be acceptable to either party’s establishments, if only as a matter of self-preservation.
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Packing the court should have and could have happened in 2021 when Dems held both houses. Yes, Mansema were resisting it but as we all know, they could have been bought.
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It may not be disallowed explicitly, but I don’t think there’s any evidence that the framers intended anything like that. In fact, the legislature under the Articles of Confederation had only one house, and they were trying to get away from that because it wasn’t working. Obviously, there were a lot of other reasons that government didn’t work well, but the framers of the Constitution made it pretty clear they wanted a bicameral legislature, not a unicameral one.
And after McConnell trashed the tradition of requiring it for judicial appointments, it hasn’t been applied since.
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There are a lot of things the Framers didn’t intend when they drafted the Constitution. And yet, now, women and PoC can vote in federal elections as full people (to give one example).
The bicameral legislature was a compromise, and many aspects of how it functions are – absent clear language in the Constitution – matters of custom. Customs can be and have been changed over the country’s history, and a lot easier and faster than amendments passing. But again, I don’t see any interest from either duopoly party in shaking things up. Raskin is an exception in that regard.
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I don’t disagree with you, but as Raskin pointed out in this interview (it’s actually from a live version of Slate’s Amicus podcast and I can’t recommend listening to the whole episode highly enough…it’s great), we live in the reality that current Constitutional Law analysis is all about the original framers’ intent (not just the Revolutionary framers, but framers of the various amendments over the years). It happened relatively recently, but that’s how Constitutionality is determined now. Even Kagan has embraced that idea. Raskin and retired Justice Breyer would both like to see it die in a fire, but that’s the world we live in for now. And we have to “fix” the Supreme Court before that can change.
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Orange minas delenda est!
(My Latin is terrible, but you get the idea.)
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And getting worse as more time progresses. That we act and pretend that they’re just like the others is a huge part of the problem.
That so much of our government is run based on customs, civility, and personal responsibility plus embarrassment is something that has become starkly clear over the last decade.
When you combine bad faith being treated as equal to facts and eliminate all consequences of custom, the systems fail.
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Yes, but the real problem is the even split in the Senate. Insecure Dems don’t want to be the deciding vote to get rid of the filibuster when there is any chance that the next election will put the GOP in a tiny majority. Thus we need a significant majority so that no one senator will either have the huge power to control the vote, and no one senator will be held accountable in his state for creating a very close count which can be used against him. The key is having a 5 or 6 vote majority, even better would be a 60 vote majority. Now that Trump is convicted, it could happen.
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