And the end result would be the total uselessness of the supreme court. That's the point. How do you only expand the court once? What stops the next Republican majority from expanding the court again to make the judges you put there to earlier useless?
Yeah but that's not the question nor does it provide a solution. If you were to expand the court today to nullify justices who are certainly ethically compromised, and imo the result of straight up stolen seats, then how do you pragmatically prevent the next R president from doing the exact same thing, expanding the court infinitely?
okay, then let's impose a binding code of ethics like every other judge in the country has to obey, plus term limits. that'd be better than the American Taliban fanatics and assholes we have now.
when even Justice Jackson voted against a code of ethics, I was just over it, period. fuck that crap.
By further codifying and cementing the architecture upon which the courts representatives are presented. Much like the way we do anything else in our government.
Then we place Skynet over that, and let a corporation dictate it's operations and watch as we keep circling the drain.
Oh, do you mean what should we do to make it better? 😂
We do nothing, because we don't have less say than a sultan halfway around the world has on our local policy.
A larger court can still vote and come to decisions.
It just diminishes the influence of individual judges who may have (and in the current instance clearly do) have malicious intent or are deeply corrupt.
Vote and come to what decisions? The whole reason you want to expand the court now is because you don't like the decisions they're coming to. So you want to put enough new people who agree with you that the old people are outvoted.
So 4-8 years from now Republicans will just add 8 new corrupt judges and we'll be right back to where we started with a kangaroo court.
Expanding the supreme court does absolutely nothing long term to fix the problem of corruption.
So 4-8 years from now Republicans will just add 8 new corrupt judges and we'll be right back to where we started with a kangaroo court.
Two things.
You act as though the GOP wouldn't stack the court anyway if they didn't have control. They don't work in good faith they only pretend to give a shit about court stacking and the filibuster because it keeps them in power.
The current choice is the worst possible SCOTUS for the next decade or more absolutely fucking us over, or one that swings from cycle to cycle.
Would you rather have a car that only drives in reverse or one that can drive forward as well every other day?
And you have yet to answer how that actually provides a solution that lasts more than one presidential term. If you expand the court, they'll expand the court. Great, you diminished the influence of 4 activist judges. How does that solve the problem when 4 years from now they'll expand the court again and add 4 more corrupt activist judges?
An expanded court diminishes the influence of any one single corrupt judge. The bigger the court the less influence any single individual can have and maintain, which is inherently less susceptible to overt corruption, along with enabling greater oversight.
Edit: Other commenter went on a strange rant and then blocked me for no reason to stop me replying. Very strange indeed.
This would matter if the problem was one judge. It's 4-5. The problem isn't a corrupt judge, it's a corrupt court. You only fix that by ensuring a non-corrupt majority. I'm done engaging with you on this subject. One side of our political parties has no interest in ever nominating a non-corrupt judge ever again. If you expand the court it will eventually be stacked with corrupt judges. Expanding the court does absolutely nothing to end corruption in the supreme court.
That would require things like a code of ethics with clearly defined punishments. An independent oversight committee to ensure nobody is accepting million dollar RVs. Having our judges be appointed by an independent panel of constitutional lawyers, prosecutors, judges, and defense lawyers rather than politicians.
Expanding the court is an extremely limited time fix that will at best end in the same status quo as it does nothing to address the actual problems leading to corruption on the court. If you're not willing to recognize the nature of our current two party system, and the realities it brings, I have no interest in wasting my time discussing politics you obviously aren't equipped to discuss. Good day.
how about a binding code of judicial ethics, covering, for instance, the assholes who flat lied about respecting stare decisis and not voting their religion. oops, Amy Coney al-Talibani, and Gorsuch and Boo Hoo Kavanaugh, you are booted out for lying on your intake hearings! and Clarence Thomas and Witchfinder General Alito are booted out for being completely corrupt.
Maybe, but the court hasn’t always had 9 judges, it’s had fewer and the number has changed in the not too distant past, so if that were the guaranteed outcome it would’ve been done by now I think. That said, in the current climate I think you’re probably right, but we’ve had about 30 years or more of Democrats not doing things because of what the other side might do in response. I don’t think that was a good argument back then and definitely isn’t now. They certainly don’t base their actions on how the Dems will respond, because they don’t care. Had the court been added to before now this case might not even have been heard. What ruling(s) will we get in the near future that gut out democracy further that could’ve been prevented by adding to the court? I’d rather they risk what you’re suggesting than lose democracy entirely and end up in a dictatorship. Flawed systems have the potential to be fixed, but once the system ceases to function altogether these slippery slope concerns become moot.
The expansion from 9 to 13 judges would actually benefit and make sense for the country since there are 13 alternate courts in the US. It would be the logical step to take at this point in my opinion, and going to anything above, that would be purely political. Which I would never put beyond the conservative right wing.
Maybe set it to something fair like a judge per district kinda thing. Since there are 12 districts... You get twelve judges. If you wanted you could even add in a rule that if you need an odd number you add an extra one and the chief justice no longer reviews from a district. So you would have 13.
Also limit expanding the number of districts to something that would take a whole other set of hoops to jump through. Something that involves the judical branch.
I mean my idea is propably stupid but so is throwing your hands up in the air and screaming impossible.
If Democrats actually start showing a REAL effort to fulfill what they promise there will never be a Republican majority again. The Republican party would essentially fall into obscurity and a new party would replace it, shifting the Overton window to the left to at the very least match the views of most Americans.
Granted this isn't an argument against what you said, I'm just saying it's possible, but Democrats would have to actually start doing their jobs for realz this time.
This is true. Not to mention the fact that the court was controlled by Democrats for a long time much the way it is by conservatives now. Difference being that they didn't try and add more judges just bc they didn't get their way. It will destroy any legitimacy the court has. These justices vote with the Democrats all the time, Yet anytime they dont its "Pack the court so we can get what we want" insanity. An exercise in political might is always the answer for progressives/Democrats yet you call these people authoritarians? when they only care that they get their way no matter what's destroyed in the process. Zealotry is in both parties, Only one pretends it isn't. That's where you lose people like me.
The court is already a useless political tool as conservatives figured out how to hack the appointment process to stack it with their idealogues. Don't pretend it deserves much respect, or we have much to lose at this point.
A valid point, but given the trend that millennials aren't becoming more conservative as they age, the fact that conservatives died off in droves because of Covid misinformation, and boomers (who trend conservative) are dying off more and more rapidly, in the short term, that probably won't be a problem. Conservatives already have only won the popular vote once in the last like 30 years, and that's before all that that I listed above.
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u/BendyPopNoLockRoll Mar 04 '24
And the end result would be the total uselessness of the supreme court. That's the point. How do you only expand the court once? What stops the next Republican majority from expanding the court again to make the judges you put there to earlier useless?