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.
Then maybe he should have packed the court with some good judges
I don’t think he’s exactly even capable of doing so. SCOTUS judges have to retire or die, and then vacant seats have to get confirmed by the Senate, and no self-respecting Republican Supreme Court justice would die while in office. Expanding the number of justices is also extremely unlikely to happen, and also, relevantly, not really in Joe’s hands.
The notable historical threat to pack the courts previously (which succeeded in moderating the court without packing) was done by a president. They don’t have unilateral authority, but they are the leader of the party. Stuff doesn’t happen unless leaders lead.
When has Joe Biden had the opportunity to replace a ring wing judge?
There’s no limit to how many supreme Court justices can be active at a time. Biden could have nominated more. Getting them approved is the hard part.
Then you end up with the next president doing it again. We don’t need that race today.
So we just give up without trying?
Not give up. Seeing a single solution as bad doesn’t mean we give up.
and also, relevantly, not really in Joe’s hands.
That didn’t stop FDR from trying and indirectly succeeding.
A system that appoints supreme constitutional judges for life and without even halfway serious democratic checks and balances seems to me the perfect recipe for disaster and corruption. But hey, I’m from Europe, so what do I know… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Article V of the the Constitution.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artV-1/ALDE_00000507/#
Amending the Constitution was intended to be much more usable, but over half the country doesn’t vote.
on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention
Always wondered what the legal definition of “several” was, as it applies to that clause.
It’s the adjective form. It just means separate or distinct.
I always took that phrase as expressed in the Constitution to be a quantitative factor? Several as in three to many.
Nice, ty.
Definition & Citations: Separate; individual; Independent. In this sense the word is distinguished from “joint.” Also exclusive; iudi- vidual; appropriated. In this sense it is opposed to “common.”
Still confused though, quantity wise. Basically, the point being made here:
By definition, several means three or more (but often less than many, which we will cover next.) So, if several party-goers out of a group of nine were intoxicated, several could correctly be translated as three or four. If five party-goers were intoxicated, that would usually be stated as most. However, if several party-goers out of 100 people were intoxicated, that wouldn’t be three or four, but a slightly higher number. So again, this term is challenging to interpret under time pressure because its meaning can change, depending on the size of the group.
Yes but you fail to consider that some guys wrote on a paper like 250 years ago and we’ve decided that everything needs to be viewed through the lens of either “does this agree with an incredibly pedantic and stilted reading of this document” or “what would those historical dudes think about this” - whichever happens to be more politically expedient for you at the moment, but the second one tends to give you more flexibility.
Yup, I see. A bit like with the Bible and other holy books then. Even here in Europe, there are many who see the wording of those as the ultimate truth. No need to adjust anything, they say. It’s all good. It’s god’s will or whatever - if it helps their agenda, that is. Jesus, that must be frustrating.
That’s kind of what it’s devolved into, tbh. The confluence of Christian fundamentalism and politics is a scary fucking thing, because when you’re “doing god’s work”, you can justify literally anything to yourself and your fellow “good Christians”.
For better or worse, it’s next to impossible to successfully modify the Constitution without significant support. It has to be ratified by about 38 States (3/4 of the State legislatures or 3/4 of the conventions called in each State). That’s after either 2/3 of both Houses of Congress (2/3 of the House of Representatives and 2/3 of the Senate) propose an amendment or 2/3 of the State legislatures request one via a convention.
In a way, it’s a good thing since it keeps the Constitution from being able to be changed on a whim, and it mostly keeps it from being affected by the political tug-of-war that happens every few years in the US.
It’s also a bad thing, though, as it makes it very difficult to adapt to certain situations that wouldn’t have happened 200+ years ago.
It’s also a bad thing, though, as it makes it very difficult to adapt to certain situations that wouldn’t have happened 200+ years ago.
I would argue though that if it’s something that truly needs to be changed by the majority that it would get done.
The problem is the way our politics are today (those in office care more about gaining money to stay in office than their constituency, etc.), and the population being split almost down the middle and adhearing to that mindset (‘my team is always right’) over the common good, makes getting that type of majority almost impossible.
But again, that’s still on us, not our forefathers.
Not anymore. They are just making shit up now. The check is congress impeaching them. That will not happen if enough people demand it.
It’ll never happen as long as republicans control either half of congress. People have been sounding the alarm on their power grabs for decades and only now are some people starting to listen.
I expect the American experiment to fail in my lifetime.
I’m not sure that I see the American Collapse happening in my lifetime as a certainty, but I would agree that it’s a very strong possibility if we don’t get our shit together pretty fucking quick.
It’s won’t collapse. We’ll become another authoritarian state.
It’ll be isolationist so only Mexico should be worried.
Yeah if we go that route, I absolutely expect some Christian Nationalist administration to decide that it’s time to take over Mexico, which to be clear is an apocalyptically stupid idea.
Some of the MAGA folks are already saying that we should bomb/invade Mexico to stop the drug cartels and immigrants. Of course, they hand-wave how horrible a war would be. They assume that Mexico would thank the US for such a great bombing and ask for more. Because MAGA.
For anyone who was downvoting the above comment: It’s absolutely a real thing that Republicans have been talking about for a while now.
This should concern you. Only a complete imbecile would think that conducting unilateral military action against Mexico is a good idea. We would rightly be cast in the same light as Russia vis a vis Ukraine. We would destroy any remaining semblance of geopolitical soft power we still have. We would be unambiguously turning away from even trying to be the “good guys”. We would be global pariahs, just like Russia is now, and we would deserve it.
everything needs to be viewed through the lens of either “does this agree with an incredibly pedantic and stilted reading of this document” or “what would those historical dudes think about this”
To be fair, they did expect us to modify the constitution from generation to generation.
Ultimately the failure is ours.
It’s amazing to me the way we’ve elevated the constitution to near biblical proportions. And just like the Bible where every church and pastor interprets it in their own way, so too do our 9 oracles in black robes interpret the will of our village elders from ages past.
And just like the Bible where every church and pastor interprets it in their own way, so too do our 9 oracles in black robes interpret the will of our village elders from ages past.
“So shall it be written, so shall it be done”, eh?
There are parallels in your example because it all comes down to governance of people, but I truly don’t think that people look at the Constitution/Courts like they do at the Bible.
If only you were in a position to do something about it…
Honest question here … what would you have him do?
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.
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.
Limit how many years they can stay there?
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 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?
Lol, man your trigger was sensitive.
Joe Biden worries that the “extreme” US supreme court, dominated by rightwing justices, cannot be relied upon to uphold the rule of law.
If he really worries about that, and is not just scaring people to vote for him, then he has a responsibility to enlarge the court.
How?
Are you under the assumption Joe Biden is some sort of wizard?
The supreme court is supposed to be based on certain numbers, when those numbers increased the SC could have been increased, but hasn’t been.
Basically all it would take is for the president to decide “hey this court is supposed to be bigger, because the rules it wrote for itself say so” and sign a few things and boom. Increased court size.
What? Where did you find executive branch authority to regulate the Supreme Court?
Even if they did, how would a president appoint justices without Congress?
I don’t know the details, from what I understand FDR was contemplating the same thing, so it does seem like the power to do this is an electoral branch power and not in the legislative branch.
But I honestly don’t know the details so I could be wrong, its just something I heard of before.
“so it does seem like the power to do this is electoral branch power and not in the legislative branch”
Quite poor evidence for your conclusion. FDR tried to pass legislation to expand the SCOTUS, and was interpreted as trying to manipulate the court by his own party, which is why it was blocked.
Court expansion has always been done by Congress, it’s interpreted as an extension of it’s power to create courts.
Quite poor evidence for your conclusion. FDR tried to pass legislation to expand the SCOTUS, and was interpreted as trying to manipulate the court by his own party, which is why it was blocked.
Fair enough. Just a friendly reminder…
But I honestly don’t know the details so I could be wrong, its just something I heard of before.
It was an off-the-cuff comment and I mentioned in the comment I could be wrong and that I was not certain, so, /shrug.
Other than political gain for one team or the other, what is the argument for expanding the supreme Court?
To correct for the explicitly political gain one team is solely interested in for their own authoritarian redefinition of established precedent that also had their nominees lie their way into their SC positions at the expense of the Constitution and our freedoms. That’s the argument.
you don’t think by expanding the court the “other side” isn’t just doing the same exact thing you just described? so where does it stop?
The problem is that we’re at a point where Republicans are not hesitating to lie, cheat, and steal their way to power. They have demonstrated quite clearly that they no longer have an interest in playing fair.
We need Democrats who aren’t afraid to fight back or we’ll lose our Democracy in America and eventually fall to fascism.
There may not be a good ending here, but it’s time to draw a line in the sand.
It’s a sad state when people actually believe one party has a better moral compass than the other. The reality is one party lies better than the other, but it’s two sides of the same coin. I blame gullible people that can’t do anything but parrot what the media tells them to. Sadly, that’s the majority of society.
If you look at the history of people who were put up for nomination as a Supreme Court member, you’ll see that what you said is not true.
The persons being submitted have a distinct qualification for fairness that one side puts up, versus the other.
I’d argue this should have been the immediate response to Mitch McConnell blocking nominees half a term away from an election, but if the court can’t uphold the rule of law, it should be fixed (and expansion seems like the obvious solution) or replaced.
The procedural question on this one is whether he could shrink the court to boot say… Thomas, then expand it again to replace him with someone less obviously corrupt. Republicans fail to confirm a replacement? We’ll shrink the court a little more. Obviously, this won’t happen, but I’m interested to know if it’s possible.
I’d argue this should have been the immediate response to Mitch McConnell blocking nominees half a term away from an election
Honestly I feel like that needed a civil war level response, that really should not have been allowed/normalized, regardless of which party initiated the block.
whether he could shrink the court to boot say… Thomas, then expand it again to replace him
I couldn’t agree to that, that’s way too manipulative and dishonors the previous selections from previous presidents.
I would expect him to just expand the court by two seats, if he was going to try to do something along these lines.
dishonors the previous selections from previous presidents.
To what degree should prior selections be honored/respected if the presidents in question won under questionable circumstances, e.g. George W. Bush’s election in 2000 and the stopping of the Florida recount, or Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016 after his call for foreign interference, alongside James Comey reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton just before the election?
To what degree should prior selections be honored/respected if the presidents in question won under questionable circumstances
It would depend on the circumstances, but it would have to be very unique and extreme circumstances. The goal would be to avoid a Tit for Tat downward spiral to Civil War.
George W. Bush’s election in 2000 and the stopping of the Florida recount,
I believe that the mob that raided the office should not have allowed the vote counting to have been stopped. IMO it gave a green light to whomever set that up to go forward and do something along the lines of January 6th.
Having said that, no I wouldn’t for this situation. Almost, but no.
or Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016 after his call for foreign interference, alongside James Comey reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton just before the election?
No. Simple political interference wouldn’t be enough, we’re talking about extreme circumstances only.
“Joe Biden worries that the “extreme” US supreme court, dominated by rightwing justices, cannot be relied upon to uphold the rule of law ACCORDING TO DEMOCRATS.”
Fixed if for you.
