Passing the power along to only anyone they agree with. Biden? Not an official act. Trump? All official acts. They just gave more power to themselves and the presidency.
The silver lining here is they have no power of enforcement themselves, and their decisions can be reversed if a sane court is built around them by leaders with enough spine to do so.
Democrats just need to get Biden out of the race so Trump can be kept out of office. And the house majority is very slim, so that can potentially be flipped too if the base can actually be energized instead of suppressed the way they have been. Democrats win when there is high turn out, so the name of the game needs to be showing people that Democrats are capable of listening.
…if a sane court is built around them by leaders with enough spine
Lack of spine isn’t the issue. It’s lack of political power.
And even then what would the new court do? If they go back to operating the way they did before this judicial coup, that wouldn’t actually fix any of the damage done. Or remove the traitor sitting on the SCOTUS.
A court with more judges would water down the influence of any extremists.
But yes, packing the court alone doesn't guaruntee the court can't be captured again. What Elie Mystal suggested way back when the court majority had flipped was basically two things that should happen:
expand the court by alot, maybe somewhere within 20-30, similar to the 9th circuit that's just below the Supreme Court. This helps dilute the power of individual crazies like Alito and then
Rotate judges out routinely to other federal positions. This allows for their life-time appointment still, but ensures also that, due to the high number of justices, every administration is getting an opportunity to appoint a few judges every time. That revolving door means it wpuld require multiple far-right administrations to pin the court down like it is now.
There's no reason the court needs to be nine justices, we've had more and less throughout our history as a nation, and there's no reason that the courts power needs to be concentrated into the hands of so few individuals, since the purpose of the court is suppose to be a moderating force of legal scholars, not an explicitly partisan body.
None of this addresses my point. There isn’t the political power to do it.
And even if there was, the court has already essentially overturned precedent as a concept. That can’t just be rolled back without completely reworking the court, which…see my first point…
That's the entire problem, full stop. This wouldn't even have gotten to SCOTUS if Congress would have held POTUS accountable via impeachment. The reason Congress didn't is partially due to political pressure from voters but mostly because the HoR is far too small to adequately represent 300,000,000 people.
Yes, it depends up getting people out to vote, especially in mid-terms.
Precedent is literally just a tradition that's agreed upon, there's nothing binding judges to adhere to it, which is why the supreme court was so easily able to ignore it.
So in that sense it's a double-edged sword, it's just as easy for judges to rule by precedent as it is for them to not, it's always been this way.
No, they get to decide what an official act is. So the only way this works out is Biden 66ing the extremist judges and the remaining vote that it was an official act. They get to decide what official acts are. So everyone Rubepublican has free reign and every democrat is boxed in.
The devil is in the details. If he just goes all willy nilly and not at the right people he wastes his opportunity. You can't assassinate Trump as official because they wouldn't deem it so. It matters because it means the only choice he is left with is to official order the extremists on the SC.
...which is why they're working in tandem with the corrupt GOP, which does have the power. There isn't a separation of powers in practice, just Democrats and Republicans.
Yes, what I'm saying is if you can keep the GOP out of power you hobble the supreme court. Like I said, it's a source of hope and a goal to aim your political effort towards, not a permanent solution.
People downvoting this seem confused. I made the assumption people were able to understand I was talking longer term fight.
Correct. I think that's the part many keep missing. SCOTUS just gave themselves the authority to determine if a Presidential act is immune from oversight. Which will no doubt be abused to help Republicans do whatever they want. But hamstring anything a Dem would attempt to accomplish.
If we can organize to that level, why not take it one step farther? We could have actual democracy. It'd be a lot more stable, and more people would be willing to fight (and die) for it than preserving a broken status quo that pretty much everyone hates.
Don't forget they legalized bribery long before making coups legal. That's when they were testing the waters. Now they know they can be blatent with their rulings and noone will hold them accountable.
We called for this on day 1 of Biden's first term...
He chose to put a bipartisan committee in charge of seeing if we should just let the corrupt Republican SC stay in power, and the committee waited two years till dems didnt have the numbers to fix anything, before recommending Dems don't fix anything.
and aren’t willing to ditch the fucking filibuster, there’s literally nothing they can do.
That's the rub.
We have things we can do, but party leadership don't want to do it.
So when they say they can't do anything, things like "get rid of the filibuster" come up. And they party has to acknowledge that would work...
They're just not willing to do it.
Which when that comes back to voters, makes them less likely to vote. Because they feel like even when we have the numbers, it won't change anything because party leadership wants to have the fight against fascism with at least one hand tied behind their back out of an outdated sense of honor.
If the Republicans take the Senate and White House, they will ditch the filibuster the first day the next Senate leader takes the gavel. Count on it.
The Judiciary Act of 1869 should be amended today, and 4+ justices should be confirmed before January. It's a hell of a lot easier to confirm them now than it will be for Republicans to remove them from the bench next year. Not easy, mind you, but easier.
As long as the Dems have less than 60 votes in the Senate, and aren't willing to ditch the fucking filibuster, there's literally nothing they can do.
*and even the number of democrats minus 50 don't want to. So even one (plus Harris helping) in the first two years of the term or even two (if Harris helps again) in the second two years of the past term. It's not like all democrats are unified about the filibuster, most voted to bypass it. You need either more than 60 dems total, or more than 50 dems that support bypassing the filibuster.
Or you know, even a single republican that doesn't want to be a facist helping to transition the country to authoritarian rule. But that seems less likely unfortunately.
There are a few ways to reform the court without a Constitutional amendment:
Increase the number of justices on the bench. The Constitution sets no limit or requirement for the number of seats, only the process by which they are filled. Nomination comes from POTUS and will need to be "consented" to by the Senate. The number of seats has changed in the past and will change again, just a matter of when and who stuffs the court.
Establish bounds of "good Behavior" and define means of removal. The Constitution isn't very cut and dry on the removal process of Justices (with impeachment being reserved for the "President, Vice President, and all civil Officers" the latter group being left undefined), but it does say that the Judges shall "hold their Offices during good Behavior." Historically impeachment has been the process chosen for removal of Judges, but discussion about Congress' role in defining "good Behavior" and the means for removal have persisted even into the late 1900s. It is entirely feasible that Congress imposes a code of conduct and simple majority review to remove those found in violation. That code of conduct doesn't just have to be about taking free vacations, either. It could assess the quality of judgement and find that if you clearly ignored the facts of a case to push your own narrative (such as with KENNEDY v. BREMERTON) you're in violation.
Establish a term limit for the Supreme Court and rotate Justices into lower courts when that limit is reached. This one is probably the longest shot as it would depend on whether or not a Justice's "Office" is literally the Supreme Court or the federal Judicial system as a whole and that interpretation would almost definitely be seized by SCOTUS if Congress even attempted this. But, so long as Congress and the Executive are in agreement on the specific interpretation, SCOTUS' opinion here can be suppressed. Worth noting, however, that that is very rarely how the US operates.
Remove Judicial Review. The idea that the courts have the sole authority to determine the constitutionality of legislation passed by Congress is not found in the Constitution itself, but was manifested by the same court that benefits from granting itself that power. It's the executive branch's job to enforce the law and both Congress and POTUS are elected to represent the people. SCOTUS's job is to resolve conflicts involving the States and those who work with them, they are not accountable to anyone and are not elected. A new law ceding the ability to review constitutionality to some other branch would reset SCOTUS' job to the original intent (a move which I'm sure the 6 textual literalists will gladly embrace).
Tailor bills to undo recent catastrophic rulings. Congress makes laws. They can make laws that close "loopholes" or perceived ambiguities that SCOTUS uses to derive their rulings. Congress can (and should) undo presidential immunity, Dobbs, judicial review of government agencies' actions, etc.
These will all take work to achieve, and are very unlikely to even be tried, but because they all address shortcomings manifest outside of the Constitution they can all be implemented without amendment to the Constitution.
And 2/3 of both houses is easy mode compared to State ratification. We couldn't get states to agree that the sky is blue at this point in the collapse of the country.
Thanks for the link. Here’s the least bad news from the article:
Even more dispiriting for Americans who want to see real reform? The most optimistic view any of the campaign surrogates could offer Monday was a promise that Biden would at least “have conversations” about court reform that would be non-starters under Trump.
Crockett is part of a group of Democratic lawmakers advancing three separate pieces of court reform legislation — bills that would expand the court, implement term limits, and impose a binding ethics code on justices, respectively. “If we get the House, these are bills that we are going to try to push forward with,” Crockett said Monday. “I can guarantee you that if Trump is elected, he will never sign these into law.”
She added: “If Joe Biden is elected, we can at least sit down, have conversations and talk about why it’s important to institute these court reforms.”
For now, the prospect of future conversations is the most that Biden campaign surrogates can offer American voters — which is more than than the campaign itself was offering.
Even more dispiriting for Americans who want to see real reform? The most optimistic view any of the campaign surrogates could offer Monday was a promise that Biden would at least “have conversations” about court reform that would be non-starters under Trump.
This is the same language they used in 2020 for all the progressive stuff. That he then did nothing substantive on.
2 years he might come to regret that decision in January when Trump usess his new powers to lock his ass up.
If fucking Biden lose in November he better use that new gift to stop Trump. Dumbass really wants to use this to fundraiser on, Biden so out of fucking touch he got no clue that we are just this vote away from a Christofascist state.
He knows, but the thing is that the Democrats are about as afraid of fascism as you are gasoline in your car. They use the threat of fascism to help scare people to the polls and to donate money, which is partly why they never seem to be in a big hurry to squash it. Problem being, of course, that people eventually get fear fatigue and stop paying attention. Kinda like how in the wake of 9/11, the government would announce terror threat levels, and they were always orange or red, indicating super double plus serious danger, and eventually people stopped caring because life must go on. Well, people get fatigued of it and then the fascists win again, which provides another big, though temporary, shot of support to the democrats. Meanwhile, the democrats don't have to make any real, serious campaign or policy commitments besides "don't be fascist". Everything else they do (and don't get me wrong, they do some good stuff sometimes) is just running up the score. So, for the centrist democrats that run the DNC and Biden campaign, this feels like a pretty good Wednesday for fundraising, even though we all see it as the literal end of the Republic. They've been walking on the ice so long, they're convinced that while it is thin, they couldn't possibly fall through.
Plenty of the sitting Dems in Congress are millionaires who think they will do well under fascism anyway.
The Dems LARP as an anti-GOP force while secretly being OK with the GOP policies. It's all theater for the plebs, to convince us the lesser evil is keeping a larger evil at bay. All lies.
That's why the Dems are so goddamn anemic. The Dems love the status quo too, they just want little tweaks here and there, nothing disruptive.
Gavin Newsom (D) is why California does not have single payer healthcare today.
Id follow that logic right up until the part where rich people get consequences. No one is more prepared for either outcome of the election then they are. Democrat fundraising was all time high under Trump, Biden may see his personal fundraising go up and his stocks grow if he loses. No one is less invested in the real consequences of their own actions then politicians.
Not just suicide at this point. We're looking at massacres. If Trump takes power by any means, political prisoners are guaranteed. It's the only way they stay powerful. And political prisoners have a very short lifespan.
Once political prisoners are taken, it's all downhill from there.
Is she viable with our current first-past-the-post system? No? Then she's not a realistic choice. All she can do is pull votes from Democrats, handing the election to Trump.
Its a weird self fulfilling prophecy thing. Its entirely up to vote whether or not she wins, but people wont vote for her only because they dont think she'll win.
anything besides her consistent calls for less US military interventions? The green party is a lot less military focused than republicans and democrats
Unless that propaganda is something other than "the US should have less military presence in other countries", then this is just...the platform of an actually progressive party that has always called for being less of a militaristic nation. You'll see her calling for the US to stop aiding Israel in its genocide as well.
I feel like you still aren't getting it. It's not these reasons, it's because we have a 2-Party system. I don't like it, and we desperately need election reform, but until then, no one can win without being the Republican/Democrat Nominee. Bernie Sanders, Jon Stewart, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, not one of them could win as a 3rd-Party candidate...
I don’t like it, and we desperately need election reform
these words are hollow in the face of actions actively perpetuating the 2 party system. Im looking enviously at Peter Magyar in Hungary forming a party in March and now being elected to EU parliament because people wanted an alternative after a corruption scandal. This shit aint enough for you?
Some real "Curious... You criticize society, yet you participate in it" vibes here. "Perpetuate" the 2-party system!? What are you actually talking about? People should not vote, or throw it away until they magically give us ranked choice voting?? Absolute nonsense.
If you want to walk the walk, start a grass roots effort to reform the system, and I'll support you. Until then, I'll assume you're just trying to get people to not use our only real power currently: voting.
Oh, the audacity of that woman to go and get pictured with Putin like that, in public, at a larger conference, in the interest of actual diplomacy.
Surely this is on the same level of treachery as a closed door meeting with no American translator. Or the eternal fanning of war flames by neolibs in order to fund the military industrial complex.
Ive seen it before, the article is some nonsense about...her trying to win an election against Biden? Biden is shit and I agree with her criticisms. Then it's trying to say she never criticizes Trump when most of her criticisms of Biden are pejoratively comparing him to Trump. Trump being shit is a given.
And his die hard supporters on here wonder why people don't want to vote for Biden just because it keeps Trump out of office. Biden isn't fighting this fight. The democrats are asleep at the wheel, another 4 years of, "oh no, poor me, SCOTUS said we can't do this, we just have to executive order the most conservative policy in 60 years." Does not excite the people who are willing to go vote.
