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Obdicut posted:I believe in a lot of cases, the corporations previously covered abortions without thinking about it, and the 'no abortion' policies are relatively new. Doesn't this mean that it's not an undue burden for those companies, since they shouldered that burden before? Thing is if they hadn't really examined their policy before they can convincingly claim ignorance of the effects of the health coverage they previously offered. You'd need to be able to make a convincing argument that they were at least properly aware of contraception being covered. Draw a parallel to say a new story coming out about Nike routinely using child slave labour to make it's running shoes. Would you call everyone that decided to start boycotting Nike hypocrites just trying to draw attention to themselves since they were perfectly fine buying those trainers before? After all the effect is the same and if they didn't spend time investigating the production processes involved in their clothing choices it must show that it's not something that troubles their conscience. Now of course I don't think that offering contraceptives as part of a general health plan does place an undue burden on Hobby Lobby as a corporation. It's still their individual employees' option to actually avail themselves of it. Although I wonder if you could draw an analogy to a summer camp run by buddhists that was required by law to provide meat options to guests/employees in their cafeterias? Does that cover similar legal grounds (assuming some similar legal question) especially if meals were part of an employees compensation? Obviously the impact on the employees would probably be less.
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Dec 6, 2013 07:45
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Spatula City posted:Judicial activism is a euphemism for actually caring about the consequences your ruling might have, instead of circlejerking about ideological purity. Conservatives tend to care about intent and principle, but the effect any of it has on the real world is irrelevant. It's not even that, it's just a derogatory term for decisions you don't like in 99% of cases. I'd say judicial activism would only be the case where a justice overturned all precedent and ignored all aspects of common law to suit their own interpretation. A conservative justice who overturned Civil Rights cases because he didn't believe the Founders would have wanted black people to have protections as a special class or something equally crazy would be judicial activism. Making a decision that fits with your ideology based on the written laws and precedent isn't activism so much as an unavoidable part of having human beings decide exactly what particular strings of words mean and how they apply to specific situations. So of course you combine case 1 with all the cases of 2 you disagree with because people with different opinions from you are factually wrong.
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Mar 6, 2014 03:15
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falcon2424 posted:I was under the impression that their presence was there to make it harder for people to organize against the government. For instance, one of the reasons the founders would meet with/at Paul Revere's house is that he had so many children that there just wasn't room for a quartered soldier. Actually the reason for putting soldiers into homes was a purely practical issue of housing soldiers to maintain order. You're looking at a period before modern police forces and the military/gendarmes were pretty much the only choice for central government. When they originally sent a force to Boston (I think it was) none of the locals would provide accomodation and the local legislatures didn't want to assist with housing troops they saw as there to impose central government control, so you ended up with a small army forced to spend the winter in tents. The obvious solution for the British government was to mandate that locals provide lodgings for soldiers (though I believe they were meant to be compensated, not sure on that). Of course the objection was to private citizens being deprived of privacy and control over their own property in order to provide housing for government soldiers. I don't think the 'foreign soldier' thing was a part, most colonists regarded themselves as British citizens at the time so it really wasn't a foreign army. Also if that had been the case they wouldn't have seen the need to put it into the US Constitution. It's really, I think, a guarantee that the state won't seed local areas with soldiers and that the right of citizens to control their own property trumps the convenience of the government. Which may be grounds for this particular case (forcing a citizen to surrender some control of his property to make the government forces' jobs easier).
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May 10, 2014 06:04
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I would guess it's a combination of factors. Protests in front of shopping area inconvenience/intimidate the general public so that's already one major difference. Large corporations also are much more effective at lobbying and being connected to local government so police failing to look after them will get politicians screaming. Finally there's a general bias in police type groups against anti-authoritarian types so I'd imagine the police are more inclined to take action against those sort of groups even if purely dire to subconscious bias.
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Jun 27, 2014 07:36
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CellBlock posted:Personally, I feel that if you're going to incorporate (legally distinguishing the company from the individuals), then you should have to take the bad with the good, but I can understand the logic here. I don't like it or agree with it, but I get it. I kind of see what the court's getting at as well but frankly this isn't a case of them saying that the individuals are being infringed upon as the individuals aren't being required to pay for or purchase the medications they believe are wrong. The corporation is (as part of a compensation package for employees that is required by the state in exchange for tax breaks). If you are going to say that these individuals and the coporation they represent are so closely tied that the actions of one are equivalent to the actions of the other in a commercial sense then why the gently caress should the individuals get the beneficial tax status of being a corporation?
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Jul 3, 2014 16:07
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ActusRhesus posted:well, since they were POWs, not criminal prisoners, he'd probably be right. I think the 8th amendment only applies to criminal prisoners, not war prisoners. If someone has a case to the contrary please correct me. It doesn't violate the Constitution, it violates Inernational law. Still illegal, just different source. I realise this doesn't really contradict Scalia's position but on this particular point, I was under the impression that treatie America has become a full signatory to became part of Constitutional Law with a status just below the written document itself or ammendments to it? Or is 'the Constitution' used in a very strict sense in US legal speak? (coming from the UK where basically everything written by or about government, or just regularly done by the government, is the consitution).
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Dec 13, 2014 02:52
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Forever_Peace posted:
That is a horrifically tortured analogy. I mean I don't think it's wrong, the past perfect is a tense we only use in reference to other events whether explicit or implied, much like a single passage in an act of law, but that is a terrible, terrible way of kicking off an explanation that is probably going to just confuse most people who read it.
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Feb 3, 2015 15:43
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From a complete non-American layman's understanding of this, if negotiation with government is considered political speech/lobbying (which as others have pointed out is ridiculous and would turn all government contractors into lobbyists, it seems like there is a need for a line between negotiating over the supply of services and agitating for policy/laws relating to an industry) then would unions have grounds for their collective bargaining to apply only to union members? After all they aren't representing in any way non-union members who may even disagree with their position. It would make sense that if certain employees show their disagreement with a position (that being the bargaining position as demonstrated by their choice not to help fund it) then those employees shouldn't be bound by the result. Obviously for unions this has a potential downside (needing to convince enough people to join that they can collectively bargain, short term school districts that don't want unions may ensure they offer equivalent deals to non-union members until the union dies off). It does have some potential upsides though, if they can create a strong enough incentive for the majority of people to sign up then they would have a greater source of funding for other political activities (if you're on board with collective bargaining you are now de facto on board with the other political speech). Of course that doesn't guarantee killing unions so I'm guessing the representation issue would need to be challenged in the Courts and it would probably be dicey that it makes it through before unions collapse/they'd be in a weak enough position the downsides may still finish them off.
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Jul 1, 2015 04:00
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Remember Thomas is pretty much an 18th century LARPer, it's entirely consistent to view property rights as a fundamental right for a well governed society but what you get up to in the bedroom is up for debate (and probably delicious gossip in the local Salon).
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Jul 23, 2015 04:40
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It would perfectly fit GOP thinking though in that it would be a 'right' enshrined in law but in practice the ability to exercise it would be limited entirely by one's personal means so basically only for the wealthy. It's pretty much what a large segment of the GOP seem to want to turn voting into.
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Jul 25, 2015 20:30
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FPtP doesn't necessarily mean 2 party system although it doesn heavily favour it, almost exclusively so in individual races, which the USA's presidential race heavily rewards. That said ne advantage of unpredictable election dates is that, as long as people deem it unseemly or a waste of money, running electoral campaigns is off the books until an election is called, so at least you'd limit it to 6-8 weeks of campaigns every few years. The dirty/proud secret of Westminster democracy though is how much of what is and isn't acceptable is based totally upon tradition. If people basically adapt to a new way of doing things like when to hold elections, hey, that's a constitutional change. Technically in the UK if MPs were happy to go along with holding PM Questions Time via Tweets, Twitter based debate would become a part of the UK constitution without any need for a vote. Of course if enough people laughed at it and everyone was sufficiently embarassed it would be like a consitutionaly ammendement failing and it would be rejects so back to laughing and jeering in Westminster Palace. Also I'm actually kind of curious about the idea Thomas could support the idea of people who are Federal Citizens without being citizens of an individual state. I mean based on all past legal ideas in the USA it's really not going to fly, or at least it would be very uncontroversial for a Federal citizen to gain or hold citizenship of a State. I'm wondering if such a stance would 1) be possible and 2) actually have any genuine impact. Or is it just so far out there (whether or not it's something he might hold to) that it wouldn't matter a whit.
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Aug 18, 2015 18:59
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Hey if you can't point to a meritocractic, objectively measurable and independently responsible factor for my selection/non-selection, I should be able to sue because that's reverse discrimination. What do you mean the school I went to has a much higher per-capita budget, teaching staff and facilities so that means the guy that got the same grades as me is more deserving? I can't control the school I went to! It's not my fault I had advantages which managed to propel me to the same testing levels as some darkie! Why should he get the place instead of me?
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Dec 12, 2015 03:25
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I am constantly astounded by how partisan and utterly ridiculous US politics currently is, how incredibly dull and uninteresting all the debate and discussion is. Everyone sounds bored. The only attempts to inject interest I've seen have been childish props. Edit: Ok I just got to 'The President serves a 4 year term. Scientists tell us that he has approximately 10 months left in his term.' Not entirely boring. MrNemo fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Mar 19, 2016 |
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Mar 19, 2016 00:28
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Merrick Garland is totally unacceptable as a candidate to sit on the Supreme Court and that is why I will not participate in hearings to advise the president that his candidate is unacceptable.
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Apr 3, 2016 08:36
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I can't fully disapprove of RBG commenting on Trump (and definitely don't disagree with what she said) but I think that she should really have considered retiring if she feels she needs to comment on this political race. Of course that's a way higher stakes move as it restores a conservative supreme court and would give Obama's successor 2 new appointments. Of course it would also put a poo poo load more pressure on the Republicans in terms of blocking nominations. Blocking 1 is pretty bad but 2 open spots would be tough to maintain.
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Jul 13, 2016 20:07
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I really, really hope Baked by a Negro is a black guy/gal making a poor taste joke for marketing purposes. Not because that makes it a better name but the alternative is just.... ugh.
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Oct 3, 2016 19:03
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Ok now I feel like a bit of a jackass. Nice history to that company then.
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Oct 3, 2016 23:07
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Yeah I don't think there's a danger from Trump (Or Pence through Trump) just appointing a Liberty graduate to the SC simply because, yes that guy (probably won't be a girl) will probably vote horribly each and every time but they won't be able to pull anyone else to their side. They'd probably be less successful than Thomas, they'd be far less damaging than Scalia and probably less damaging than another Roberts type appointment. The real danger lies in them getting 3 appointments (i.e. RBG and Kennedy as well) where even if their crazy conservative judges can't persuade anyone else they've managed to create their own bloc vote and all it takes is Thomas and one other judge joining the majority (with some additional commentary on how this totally isn't as insane as the majority opinion says).
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Nov 15, 2016 21:08
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What are the chances of Democrats blocking any SC nominations until there is an up-down vote on Garland? As in, arguing that he was a legitimate pick by Obama that Congress denied and they will block up the SC until he gets a full and fair hearing. It would be a gesture move since Republicans would almost certainly just vote against him so that Trump's pick gets in but it would force them to actually explain why they rejected a qualified and experienced centrist. The other alternative is just block anything in the last year so RBG only needs to make it 3 years instead of 4. On the Saudi thing, it absolutely is damaging to international law as a concept. It needlessly creates more tension and discredits bodies like the ICJ for no real material benefit. I'd say that Republicans were idiots for pushing it but they probably view that as a favourable outcome. You should wait for the fun shitstorm when a court orders KSA property seized, Trump has a phone call with the King and it's followed by an executive order to not enforce the court order and a new Trump tower opening in Jeddah.
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Dec 3, 2016 14:51
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Chuu posted:Isn't this more of a reason the EO should be struck down than it shouldn't? As in, not only does the CBP not have the right detain people under the EO, the CBP doesn't have a constitutional basis to detain anyone under federal law, period? An Executive order directs Federal Agencies how they should enforce legislation on the books. It can even advise them to prioritise or outright ignore enforcement of particular laws. EOs cannot instruct federal agents to carry out acts that are actually forbidden. An EO can be 'struck down' in the sense that if Trump ordered the CBP to forbid entry or exit for all passengers who had the ACLU's website in their browsing history he would be ordering those agents to violate the law. Likewise if he ordered FBI agents to begin conducting financial audits of all citizens they come into contact with it would be (I believe, happy to be corrected) illegal in conducting audits would be outside the scope of the agencies powers. I think that would might be ok if the EO also made all FBI agents also IRS agents and then ordered them to do that (within the legally defined scope of the IRS's powers).
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Jan 30, 2017 10:41
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Kloaked00 posted:I would think that given there's a decent chance of one of the liberal justices needing replacement in the next 4 years is fairly high, saving the filibuster for that situation, so that invoking the nuclear option is even that more of a Thing. The alternative is going with McConnell doctrine and accepting a reasonable Scalia replacement and hoping RBG lasts 3 years. Doing so would likely not be any better and shows an acceptance of Republican bullshit but it may actually be more impactful. Nah I'm kidding. No one would understand why the Republicans appointing Scalia 2.0 and then filling RBG's vacant seat in December 14th 2020 with Scalia 3.0 was even worse.
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Jan 30, 2017 22:22
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I was left with the impression after that episode of Opening Arguments that the EO would have been within the President's power if it had applied only to the process of granting visas, the later 1965 law being designed to prevent consulates/embassies loving with application reviews along discriminatory grounds. This EO ran into trouble because it was written to apply to people who have had visas/green cards issued already and the President doesn't have the power to revoke legal permission to remain. I guess it will see the court striking the whole thing down and telling them to try again with a legal EO? Or they fight it to SCoTUS and hope Goresuch is in place and that's enough for them to win. I'm also curious what, if anything, is happening regarding the Nepotism laws. Like, Trump is specifically barred from appointing his daughter or son-in-law from any official or paid position and he's done just that with Jared Kushner. Is anything going to happen with that ever?
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Feb 6, 2017 18:16
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Holy poo poo, it's like someone appended an Avshalom post to a court document.
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Feb 8, 2017 17:21
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Sinestro posted:Yeah, as someone who has been accused of being a traitor to their minority group for my political views it'd be pretty great if we could just kinda not do that poo poo. Seems reasonable to call him out for consistently ruling against the interests of black people, the term traitor seems unfair though as it assumes that simply being part of a group should mean you have that group's interests first and foremost. Much like calling working people who vote to disband unions and for tax cuts on the wealthy class traitors doesn't really work as a persuasive or even necessarily accurate depiction of their actions. Of course that assumes treason is kept as a purely legal concept, where you can only really betray your country/sovereign. Which I don't think is unreasonable although I could see people finding that problematic.
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Feb 23, 2017 18:07
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Number Ten Cocks posted:Except what he's actually doing is consistently ruling in favor of the rights adhering to all US citizens and limiting their government through their constitution. Ruling that a man whose own defence called a witness who said black people were more likely to reoffend (and thus justifying a death sentence) was adequately defended is protecting the rights of US citizens and limiting the government in accordance with the constitution? Well carry on I guess.
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Feb 23, 2017 18:18
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That Roman law could be acceptable only if the dog, cock, viper and ape had been found equally guilty surely? I'm confident that's what Founders intended.
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Mar 9, 2017 21:11
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I'm not an American legal scholar so happy to be corrected but coming from the UK, Originalists seem pretty scary radical to me as a judicial philosophy. At its core it's a rejection of common law and stare decisis, it basically relegates precedent and the most fundamental principles of common law to cases where the wording of the Constitution and laws don't directly apply. Which is probably not the majority. If fully applied generally it would make legal outcomes dependent on which judge you got because of they read a law as saying X they should totally ignore that everyone has treated it as saying Y for the history of the law. It's utterly radical and seems like a pretty massive shift from how law has operated in the US since its founding. How the gently caress does such a philosophy get labelled conservative when it's throwing out one of the longest existing principles of government?
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Mar 22, 2017 16:48
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Maybe i should rephrase, i get why it is attractive from a political viewpoint how there are political and financial pressures in the US judicial system we don't have to anything like the same degree in the UK. I was seeking to check if my understanding of originalism was broadly correct and if it was, how does that come to be labelled a conservative judicial philosophy? It's radical, like super radical. I've always had a great sympathy for Burkean conservatism and i cannot reconcile in any way with wanting to throw out the whole foundation of Common Law.
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Mar 22, 2017 17:02
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I ducked out for a bit and may not be able to reply immediately so apologies if all this seems a bit driveby. Discendo Vox (targeted as the only person in this thread who seems to be open to textualism as a legitimate school of judicial philosophy, I'm not counting MAGA trolls) would you say Textualism has a genuine problem of internal incoherence? That is it cites the intent of original drafters of laws as the primary factor and bases this in a system that seems to have been based on the Common Law idea, that laws are, while not entirely bound, certainly driven by precedent and interpretation. The inductive issue seems pretty minor compared to the fact that the entire basis of the position seems flawed, rather like the issue with logical positivism. The claimed foundational tenet is actually self refuting (for those who aren't familiar, logical positivism basically claimed philosophical problems only mean anything if they can be solved by logical analysis. Which was great until you tried to apply logical analysis to the question of which philosophical problems were meaningful.) The analogy would be if the original drafters of the law envisaged a British style system of Common Law, that doesn't allow for any sort of strict textualism. I mean I'm not going to argue against it in a practical sense, it obviously can be used to achieve political ends (and even if that's mostly right wing currently that doesn't mean necessarily) and can be popular. That doesn't make it coherent. I mean would you accept that it's a strong departure from the norms of precedential common law? Is this a wrong reading of it? Obviously it can be more nuanced than just 'I think the plain meaning of the text at the time of writing was X' but in the case of precedent around anything constitutional it seems bizarre to me that a judge can with a straight face insist that there is 50, 100 or 200 years of bad precedent to this and the original writer meant X therefore X. If you don't want to turn this into an 'explain to me what else there is to Originalism' for the next page or two I can appreciate that but would at least appreciate a summary answer and some sources to check. It just seems like a really radical departure from British style jurisprudence it seems crazy to me find it in a Common Law system and moreso to find it defended as a non-radical approach.
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Mar 23, 2017 02:56
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I would imagine they meant something that could be generally understood with the also implicit understanding that judges rolling on it would be able to grasp that and that as new cases emerged judges would be able to adapt or expand upon precedent until such time as retiring of the laws became necessary. I would imagine they would view a world where judges had to tackle the legislative challenge of overturning precedent as one where their vision of government had failed. I do need to fully look at discendo's points though so i may be more stress than this suggests.
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Mar 23, 2017 05:01
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I can see the tactical play here but strategically, if their position is that Obama was wrongly denied an appointment (that is that denying him a hearing was a legal but illegitimate tactic) then any approval for another appointment is a tacit renunciation of that claim. By voting for Gorsuch to have a hearing without one on garland first they are acknowledging what happened as a legitimate tactic. So i guess it's a question not just of whether dems will be in a position to use it but whether they think it's something that should be left in place so that it can be used by either side in the future, that it contributes to a well functioning system of government.
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Mar 30, 2017 22:19
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twodot posted:This doesn't make any sense. Even ignoring the obvious bad outcome that this strategy demands Senators vote against good nominees (supposing Trump accidentally nominated someone good) who aren't specifically named Garland. How is this supposed to scale? Do we have to wait for Garland to die before we can start voting on Supreme Court nominees other than Garland? You know what? I'd be willing to make an exception if they could get the support of the president who had been denied. In that case though there wouldn't have been any point in performing that kind of obstruction in the first place.
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Mar 31, 2017 02:22
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Listen if you think that Congress not beating it to porn all day would mean government functioned then it sounds like that just gets you the result you desire. Sounds pretty partisan to me.
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Apr 5, 2017 03:25
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If Gorsuch was an eminently qualified and totally uncontroversial pick with nothing to be held up against him then why would a democrat filibuster be useful against literally anyone republicans put up who was not grossly unqualified in a man meet early understood by a partisan layperson? Gorsuch is an Originalist in the vein of Scalia with the advantage of being 49. Unlike Garland he is a controversial pick. If he is to strong a candidate to filibuster then your position seems to be the Democrats should save their filibuster for a candidate that admits to wanting to overturn roe v Wade and doesn't think religious protections should be extended towards Muslims because Islam is inherently political and because they're brown. Literally a candidate that doesn't exist.
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Apr 8, 2017 04:06
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If you totally change the meaning of the term packing them sure! I mean, they stole a seat yes but i don't think anyone vaguely imperial would consider that the same as packing the court. There's a difference of degree in those terms, qualitatively they may be doing the same thing but quantitatively they are not the same.
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Apr 14, 2017 14:54
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Honestly? Nuking it this way has been way, way too nakedly political. The GOP had their fig leaf for obstructing garland, they then made no attempt to compromise or otherwise deal with democratic obstruction and went straight to nuking the filibuster. The democrats had the argument that vacancies had been unfilled for too long and it was affecting the operations of the court system. If republicans make that argument now it's pretty hollow since democrats were obstructing for about a day before republicans decided compromise was impossible. They ensured the seat was empty for 11 and half months. If McConnell had made some attempts to compromise with more centrist appointments and the democrats had insisted on only garland, i would at least feel somewhat better about getting rid of the filibuster. I'd still think the republicans were awful but they'd have been justified in nuking. This was all part of the same game though.
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Apr 17, 2017 14:18
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If the republicans succeed in filling the court with guys like this then i greatly look forward to a Derridean style breakdown on exactly why firing a gay guy doesn't actually constitute the recently passed statute saying it is illegal to mistreat someone sure to their sexual orientation as the term sexual and orientation can be read as protecting one's right to recognise the sexuality of others since orientation refers to navigating an outside environment rather than personal identification. The court is sorry for the harm such a ruling may have and recognises this was not the principle guiding that law but they're not in the business of legislating from the bench and it is a legislative fix if the wording was unclear and failed to achieve its intended outcome. Also while some might say that this is a radical departure from previous interpretation of the terminology and concepts of protected classes this court isn't in the business of considering legal Frameworks or bodies of law. This case is just about this one bill. Also this counts as precedent that gay people are icky and/or don't exist.
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Apr 18, 2017 18:51
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FAUXTON posted:If you read the plain text of the constitution it doesn't even mention god. But if you'll just consider the plain meaning of the text at the time, a contemporary dictionary gives an example of welfare as a pastor caring for the welfare of his flock. From this we can conclude that spiritual welfare was a commonly understood component and so allowing for the welfare of the people requires religious worship. Also religion clearly means Christian sects so we don't need any Non Judeo-Christian things mentioned here. It's the plain meaning, gee willickers this judging lark sure it's easy!
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Apr 20, 2017 02:15
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I would say that a congress that is actively abdicating powers, in this case authority over voting systems in states, by allowing them to be taken away by the SCotUS rather than trying to actively remedy a legal situation they don't like is one that is being weakened. The fact that Republicans and Democrats both don't have the votes to accomplish anything through the legislature and so are seeking other branches of government to achieve policy goals is precisely a weakening of Congress. In the case of the Democrats it was a reliance on a strong executive to accomplish policy goals through effecting laws and regulations. In the case of Republicans it is ensuring the makeup of the SC stays tilted. Neither side is willing to do anything about these mechanisms when they're in power because both know they won't be able to achieve anything in terms of effective rule. I'm not trying a 'both sides are equally bad' argument here either. The strong executive has become the only way to actually accomplish anything and the SC is a sacred cow the Dems really aren't willing to be seen undermining because they care about the legitimacy of the court. The Republicans are flat out looking for total control. Unfortunately the total control side are willing to watch everything burn if they don't have it and the Dems are desperately trying to keep the government functioning. Congress is being weakened by both sides precisely because the Republicans won't really let it work.
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Apr 20, 2017 15:49
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Quick thought regarding the US supreme court and the threat of 'court packing'. Is this actually a legitimate policy a future US presidential candidate and/or party should pursue? I don't mean the whole 'we're going to cancel out the stolen seat, this isn't really court packing but totally non partisan' bullshit that's been mentioned earlier. That's an attempt to preserve the status quo that is a clear invitation to a side that has fewer scruples to engage in far worse court packing the next time they can. I can see the motivation behind such an approach and appreciate it but strategically it will result in the next Republican appointing 5 Originalists to the court in a nakedly partisan move that will really, really damage the SCotUS' legitimacy. I really can't see that turning out any other way. Instead I wonder if a more radical approach might serve to defuse the SCotUS situation somewhat. Currently one of the major reasons a SCotUS appointment is so important is because of how relatively few there are. Any random president gets a pretty random number of appointments in his term and thanks to Republican precedent there's now the potential of a good 11-13 months where they may not get one at all every 4 years. It turns SCotUS into a political football and encourages not only the appointment of more extreme justices (if you're a Republican, the Democrats still don't seem to be willing to play that game hence this idea). A more radical approach might help moderate the court. The basis of the idea would be following through FDR's proposal and expand the court to 21 justices. Obviously this fever dream requires Ds in the Senate and the Presidency, this is easy to spin as partisan court packing so for genius part two. Putting forward a constitutional amendment to change the selection of SCotUS appointees from a Presidential power to one by a committee with a randomly selected representative from each federal court circuit and two from each major political party. They would select a replacement candidate or in case of a failure to get a majority backing after say 2 weeks of consideration, the 2 nominations with the largest plurality would be selected by a tie break vote by the President. The actual mechanism of step 2 is something I have no idea about but I'm wondering as a theoretical exercise in reducing the politicisation of the court if there may be a way forward that isn't picking up the fractured pieces and going 'it's still good! Look we can fix it, it's still good!' or accepting then dehumanising and facing to court packing. I think Dems using the threat of court blocking to effect a structural change has the possibility of working. With the worsening politicisation of the other branches of government I'm not sure if the US system will continue to function well without a serious intervention. I'd hope that the threat of essentially MAD with one whole branch of government would be a big enough threat to engender some level of co-operation.
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Apr 24, 2017 02:37
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