Jaguar
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- May 5, 2007
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However I am curious, to which degree blue president, senate and house could hold clearly red supreme court "under control" ?
There's talk floating around about adding seats, which we'd be able to do (supposedly) if we have control of Congress and the White House.
There's also talk of making DC and Puerto Rico both states, which would increase presence in Congress (which doesn't influence the Supreme Court, but it's worth mentioning if I'm commenting on ideas being floated around).
I lived in Florida during the 2000 presidential election - yes, the one famous for the "hanging chads". Pollworkers in largely poor, black precincts were turning away young black men for being felons - when many had never so much as been arrested in their entire life, much less convicted of anything. But how do you prove you are not a felon, when you are standing at the check-in desk to vote and you have to be at work in a half hour, and you had no idea you would even be accused of this? Hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters ended up not voting because of this, in yet another example of voter suppression.
It would not be the first time the number of justices on the court has been changed. I think FDR also tried to “pack†the court but didn’t have the numbers he needed to get it passed through Congress. It’s been at 9 since the 1860s
There’s no good reason it couldn’t be expanded if there was support for it in the Executive and Congress, but of course this could backfire on the dems some point down the road. Also, careful we don’t plant ideas in Trump’s head. If he gets re-elected and has the numbers in Congress to back it, he might try to expand the SC and create a conservative SC “supermajority†just out of spite for the dems even suggesting trying to do it. If you’re worried about how the current court makeup will affect policy over the next decades, that would be nothing compared to what it could do with said “supermajorityâ€
This is something I’d be careful with. I wouldn’t add more than 1 or 2 seats
I'd much rather increase seats in the house - somewhere in the 900 range if they want to be representative of the US population - and abolish the senate. Then the number on the court can stay 9.
I could get behind this but I don't think I'd outright abolish the senate, just seek to lessen their power and influence, as was done to the House of Lords in the UK. Ultimately I think their power should mostly be symbolic and the senate would ideally only vote on a few key or crisis types of matters. Most of the power in Congress should reside in the House, ideally I think it should be like 75/25 in terms of the power balance.
That is appalling and angers me greatly. That isn't being patriotic or being civil. IT IS AMERICA, EVERYONE HAS A VOICE.
I support this but I don't think it could remain a constant. There would continue to be increases in power - manufactured "crisis", national security, some other bullshit authoritarian measure - they can't be reformed. Most Americans don't care and won't be willing to grasp in large enough numbers to stand on them.
This piece was written in 2018. See how much of it has come to pass or will if he wins another term.
The Case for Abolishing the Senate | GQ
I could get behind this but I don't think I'd outright abolish the senate, just seek to lessen their power and influence, as was done to the House of Lords in the UK. Ultimately I think their power should mostly be symbolic and the senate would ideally only vote on a few key or crisis types of matters. Most of the power in Congress should reside in the House, ideally I think it should be like 75/25 in terms of the power balance.
I mean, I'm willing to go even further than this. Let's totally rewrite the constitution every 50 years or so. And supreme court justices should have a single "lifetime" term of 20 years, no more. Even that might be too long.
There should be no lifetime appointments for any position, imo. But I like Bernie's idea - especially rotating SC to the lower federal level.
Bernie Sanders’s radical plan to fix the Supreme Court - Vox
I mean, I'm willing to go even further than this. Let's totally rewrite the constitution every 50 years or so. And supreme court justices should have a single "lifetime" term of 20 years, no more. Even that might be too long.
wow. pretty sure guy at 1:46 just outed his grand parents as fleeing the Nuremberg trials...![]()