The Commons are a publicly elected body and the seats from it are used to calculate which party/coalition has enough of a majority to form the government.
The Lords are either appointed or hereditary. They can be members of the government (Lord Cameron is the Foreign Secretary, for example), but their seats don’t count towards party numbers.
I’m not 100% sure, actually. I know the Lords are still politically aligned, but while I assume that bills have to go through both houses, I’m not sure how that works in practice.
They don’t teach politics in primary or high school and I didn’t study it at university. The news mostly covers the Commons - it’s rare to hear about the Lords blocking a bill, but not unheard of.
The Lords are not elected , for starters. They are hereditary peers (aristocracy whose ancestors did favours for William the Conqueror). Or political appointments.
Agreed, but actually three of them are women. It's just that one is Amy Coney Barrett.
Still, I'm curious just how much of an overstepping of bounds the court would be willing to do here, especially since banning abortion seems to be a political death sentence for Republicans.
Well, SCOTUS is not expected to be an expert on everything it rules on. It's expected to rule on what it is an expert on (Constitutional law) and that could encompass anything. I think better phrasing would be "SCOTUS needs to gather the opinions of experts in the relevant fields, find the intersections of the Constitution where applicable, and issue a fair ruling." If the court had to be experts in every field for any issue that came in front of them, we would never get rulings on anything.
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