KarmaKarma wrote:
 
what part of right (and wrong for that matter) do you not understand? 

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:
 
Republicans are only playing with the rules as inherited from Reid's term.  They didn't change the rules, Harry Reid & his Dem majority did.  Why should Republicans give back what Reid handed them?  

Court packing isn't right either, but the Democrats are threatening it - if they win.  Many Dem voters understand that court packing also isn't right.  Court packing is not necessarily a guaranteed vote getter - Dems are once again playing with fire.

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:
 
Indeed, they do.

 KarmaKarma wrote:
 

Indeed, but it still doesn't make it right, does it?

 R_P wrote:
 

Other countries seem to manage it

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:
 

Hahahahahaha!

Blame Harry Reid.

Can't say he and the Dems weren't warned that his actions would come back to haunt them.

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:
 
Or, with possible obstruction, so impossible.

 Red_Dragon wrote:
 

why on earth don't the two main parties agree on the need for a majority vote for each new member to the SC?  Like 75%? It would make life so easy. 

 Red_Dragon wrote:

 

Since 1969 Democratic presidents have appointed 4 Supreme Court justices, Republican presidents have appointed 15 (4 of them by presidents who lost the popular vote).

Who's "packing" the court?

 KarmaKarma wrote:
 

I saved time by not caring what James Woods or Chuck Woolery or Jon Voight think. For that matter, all the other celebrities don't matter much to me.

What does matter? how about someone who understands how the government works (when it worked well during a crisis): The Secretary of Labor...

What would Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, mean for abortion rights in the US?

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GOP senators confronted by past comments on Supreme Court nomination

More on US exceptionalism in matters of the highest court of the land. -w

September 25, 2020

By David Leonhardt

Good morning. Congressional Republicans say they will respect election results. The Pac-12 will play football. And you can expect a heated debate over “judicial supremacy.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg lying in repose at the Supreme Court on Thursday.Oliver Contreras for The New York Times

The other Supreme Court fight

The idea of an all-powerful Supreme Court — a court where justices with lifetime tenure have ultimate authority to resolve society’s toughest questions — has come to seem normal in today’s United States.

It’s not normal anywhere else. In no other democracy do judges serve for as long as they like. In most other democracies, the highest courts are less aggressive about striking down entire laws, as Jamal Greene of Columbia Law School told me. The courts instead tend to direct legislators to fix specific parts of a law.

An all-powerful Supreme Court has also not been constant in American history, largely because the Constitution does not establish it. The balance of power between the judiciary and the other branches of government has oscillated. The past two decades, when the court has intervened to decide an election, legalize same-sex marriage and throw out multiple laws, represent a high point for what scholars call “judicial supremacy.”

All of which suggests that the future of the Supreme Court does not depend only on who the justices are. It also depends on whether future presidents and Congresses choose to accept judicial supremacy.

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has moved that question to the center of American politics.

The Constitution certainly gives Congress and the president ways to reclaim authority. Jamelle Bouie, a Times Opinion columnist, has explained how Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln both fought their political opponents’ attempts to lock in power through the courts.

“If the policy of the Government upon the vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by the decisions of the Supreme Court,” Lincoln said in his first inaugural address, “the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.”

In recent years, conservatives were often the ones criticizing judicial supremacy, especially after Roe v. Wade restricted voters’ ability to decide abortion policy. Today, liberals are alarmed: The Republican Party, despite having lost the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections, may use the judiciary to dictate policy on climate change, voting rights, economic inequality and more, for decades to come.

The option for Democrats that has received the most attention is an expansion of the number of justices. But there are other options that seem less radical, Richard Pildes of New York University notes. Democrats could also pass a law restricting the court from reviewing some areas of the law — a power that the Constitution explicitly gives Congress. Or Congress could pass a law requiring six or seven justices’ votes for any decision striking down federal or state laws.

If Democrats choose any of these options, Republicans may retaliate in the future, setting off a destabilizing political arms race. On the other hand, the acceptance of judicial supremacy brings big downsides, as well. It may be tantamount to forfeiting political power for the majority of Americans.

“If protecting the right of the people to govern for themselves means curbing judicial power and the Supreme Court’s claim to judicial supremacy, then Democrats should act without hesitation,” Jamelle argues. “If anything, they’ll be in good historical company.” Of course, it’s all academic if Democrats don’t win the White House and both houses of Congress.

Other ideas: The historian Julian Zelizer has made the case against court expansion. The Economist magazine favors term limits for justices (which may require a constitutional amendment), and Maya Sen of Harvard has summarized the arguments for term limits.

Unlike US, Europe picks top judges with bipartisan approval to create ideologically balanced high courts

“It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds.”

 rgio wrote:
 
But can't win without Evangelical nutjobs. Expediency wins the day...

“He has no principles. None. (...) All he wants to do is appeal to his base .... And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”

 kurtster wrote:
 
Says the pot to the kettle...

 kurtster wrote:
 
Of course, whether a Justice is pro-choice on the issue of abortion, as many Catholics may be, should not have a bearing on that Justice’s determination of whether to overturn Roe v. Wade. Even if a Justice believes Roe v. Wade should have been decided differently, there still is the matter of stare decisis. Roe v, Wade was decided in 1973.  47 years as precedent.

Still, as we all know too well, people like Senator Hawley are stating openly that committing to overturning Roe v. Wade is, and should be,  a litmus test for a nominee. Hawley  (a Federalist Society member) says he will not confirm a nominee unless he is convinced that the nominee has made it plain that the nominee will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. He says Amy Coney Barrett passes that test.

This fervor has little or nothing to do with appointing federal judges who will follow the Constitution, respect the rule of law, and not legislate from the bench.

 kurtster wrote:
 
Time to add some atheists...