More than half of the Supreme Court are corrupt liars. Expand the Supreme Court and institute term limits ASAP. If I thought there was a snowballs chance in hell of it working I’d advocate impeaching the rotten bastards as well but that ain’t gonna happen.
I’m less for term limits and more for age limits. At some point between 65-72 they get booted off the bench.
Honestly, though, it is unlikely either term limits or age limits would prevent shitstains like Thomas and Alito from being on the bench. They’ve been there and been shitstains this whole time. Now they’re enjoying an uncontested majority that agrees with them, that’s all that has really changed.
Term limits are more important. I’m all for age limits, too, but term limits are more important,
It’d absolutely suck to have a life time appointment given to an asshole- an asshole who would be in office for 40 years because he was appointed straight out of law school.
I’m would suggest setting up a rotation that sees one judge go per year…. Let’s set it in June… so that the incoming president has a few months to get people….
This gives them a 9 year term. Remember, they’re supposed to be established judges so by then they’d be at retirement anyhow…
The rotating retirement is good because it gives a known number of appointments I’m each set timeframe. I would change it to 18 years so that it is every other year, otherwise a 2 term president could appoint 8/9 justices and dominate the court
This is such a spurious connection lol but I read the article anyway
The pattern probably emerged as a result of Darwinian natural selection: cicadas that naturally matured in easily divisible years were gobbled up by predators, and simply didn’t live long enough to produce as many offspring. Those who, by chance, had long, prime-numbered life spans fared best, survived longest, and left the most offspring, becoming the dominant variation of the species.
I’m glad the author actually took the time to describe the evolutionary process accurately. When I was an impressionable youngin’ arguing against evolution, a big sticking point for me was how so many people described evolution as if there was some design or guidance behind it all. Nope, just common sense chaos and lots of death
Yes, I too get annoyed when evolution is described as an active process, e.g. “evolution got us to have legs to walk”, rather than a passive selection process “evolution means that those early humans that walked were better able to successfully procreate”.
It is noteworthy to me that a prime number based length of tenure might then cause the fewest number of retirements at the same time, over time.
This is definitely the better solution. We don’t need the court experiencing major political swings during nearly every presidency.
Edit: Also, the chief justice should either be chosen amongst themselves or be the longest serving member, not randomly chosen when that spot opens.
While I am thinking about it. if we really want to depoliticize the position, as much as possible, we should consider making them lifetime public citizens after they join the court. By public citizen, I mean they become wards of the nation and can no longer make or posses money or assets. They must divest all assets to family and will be provided food, lodging, and stipends for travel or leisure for the rest of their lives. After they retire they will become Justices Emeriti who should guest lecture at various law schools and may be called in to advise or assist the sitting court when particularly complex issues arise. Any money made by a Justice Emeritus should be funneled into the cost of providing for all the Justice Emeritus.
Term limits but no age limit means we’ll still have old out of touch justices.
What would work best is if we treated SC like a rotation, do your 5-10 or whatever years, then rotate back to a lower court if your still under an age.
There should be mandatory retirement ages, because power hungry people never step down voluntarily.
And the way it’s currently structured, a president will appoint someone that will stay in the longest. That’s why Republicans are nominating you inexperienced judges who will be there for 30 years.
I’d be more for capability limits? What happens if life extension comes along and we are frozen in the past (just like we are right now with things like EC and the way in which California is underrepresented with only 2 senators, WTF) with really stupid and outmoded rules?
Impeaching the bad actors is the correct solution, in my problem. Impeachment could also be used to remove elderly judges who are no longer sharp enough to do the job. The problem is that it is too hard to impeach them. The bar and number of votes required to impeach needs to be lowered. Right now, the GOP can block every attempt to impeach these obviously unethical justices. 50% in the House to impeach and 50% in the Senate to convict/remove them, without allowing filibusters, would solve this issue.
I don’t think the 50/50 “fix” would do anything but cause massive issues every single election. We seem to constantly end up losing and gaining that 50% so frequently that the courts would be upended every time the opposition got the majority.
I’d love to see it happen, but I don’t foresee it any time soon, and that’s a real issue. The “left” pols put off bringing articles of impeachment on too many right wing presidents: right wing pols brought impeachment charges against neolib, Clinton, for lying about cheating on his wife with a naïve intern (Bill Barr and George Conway took part in that), neoliberal pols failed to impeach George W. Bush for lying about Sadaam Hussein possessing WMD and manufacturing evidence (presenting fake evidence). Congress also notably did nothing about SCOTUS calling the election for W with the ludicrous “hanging chad” decision. Flash forward and the EC (which Congress has the power to abolish) appointed tfg. When Dems finally got around to impeaching someone, Bill Barr was AG, and he willfully lied about what was in Mueller’s final investigative report of tfg. So now tfg has installed numerous corrupt judges and other government appointees that can’t immediately be easily removed, Dems failed to stack the court under their own former guy, so we’ve got this. I don’t foresee neolib or traditional conservatives really being able to do anything about it, their own reluctance aside. I’m interested to hear what anyone could do, if the willingness and intestinal fortitude to do anything can be mustered. Anyone?
That’s because the American “left” is center-right. That is why Democrats never do shit to hold Republicans to account: They’re politically aligned enough to not really care.
Americans HAVE to learn that the Democrats are also not good. That doesn’t make them useless when fighting far-right fascists, but it makes them useless for solving the US’s problems that allowed the rise of fascism in the first place.
its more our FPTP system only has one degree of freedom. We need multiwinner elections for the house, senate, electoral college where anyone who gets 10% of the vote gets 10% of the reps. Then the politicians can’t hide all the shit under wedge issues. They can do that now because our electoral system is infinitely gameable as long as there’s only 2 choices
That is indeed a possible solution, but do not doscount how true my statements are: Democrats are NOT an ally of anyone wanting actual radical change. Maybe if they ever start taking climate change seriously, but even then… Democrats (the party leadership more specifically) are not good people. There are some good Democrats, but the party is not and does fight change.
While you’re absolutely right that a SCOTUS justice won’t be removed via impeachment and trial in the Senate, the impeachment and the trial itself grant Congress WIDE lattitude to perform investigations and the trial, a spectacle in its own right, means all that evidence is brought into the light for the people to see.
Again, while removal is unlikely, the remaining corrupt justices along with their handlers, will almost certainly want to prevent such a trial, and would pressure the impeached justice to resign to avoid it.
If the trial happens, though, a huge portion of the country gets to learn and understand just how corrupt and fickle our court is, which is something almost no one in power wants. That, alone, should be reason to push for impeachment as hard as possible.
I tell everybody prosecutions against both hunter and trump will benefit everyone if even a portion of discovery is made public. We get to see the sausage being made and its gross.
Exactly. I’d come to say, “ Wrong on the facts, wrong on the history, on the wrong side of honesty and ethical standards, Justice Alito and his colleagues need to be reined in. Since Chief Justice Roberts won’t do it, it is time for Congress to step up and save the court from itself.” ‘sif.”
Expanding the courts because we aren’t happy with the current lineup would set an extremely dangerous precedent. Assuming that the Republicans in the Senate would let any of Biden’s nominations through, what would stop the next Republican president from expanding SCOTUS again to make sure they are back in the majority?
More than half of the Supreme Court are corrupt liars. Expand the Supreme Court and institute term limits ASAP. If I thought there was a snowballs chance in hell of it working I’d advocate impeaching the rotten bastards as well but that ain’t gonna happen.
I’m less for term limits and more for age limits. At some point between 65-72 they get booted off the bench.
Honestly, though, it is unlikely either term limits or age limits would prevent shitstains like Thomas and Alito from being on the bench. They’ve been there and been shitstains this whole time. Now they’re enjoying an uncontested majority that agrees with them, that’s all that has really changed.
Term limits are more important. I’m all for age limits, too, but term limits are more important,
It’d absolutely suck to have a life time appointment given to an asshole- an asshole who would be in office for 40 years because he was appointed straight out of law school.
I’m would suggest setting up a rotation that sees one judge go per year…. Let’s set it in June… so that the incoming president has a few months to get people….
This gives them a 9 year term. Remember, they’re supposed to be established judges so by then they’d be at retirement anyhow…
The rotating retirement is good because it gives a known number of appointments I’m each set timeframe. I would change it to 18 years so that it is every other year, otherwise a 2 term president could appoint 8/9 justices and dominate the court
A prime number might be better, as shown by cicadas
This is such a spurious connection lol but I read the article anyway
I’m glad the author actually took the time to describe the evolutionary process accurately. When I was an impressionable youngin’ arguing against evolution, a big sticking point for me was how so many people described evolution as if there was some design or guidance behind it all. Nope, just common sense chaos and lots of death
Yes, I too get annoyed when evolution is described as an active process, e.g. “evolution got us to have legs to walk”, rather than a passive selection process “evolution means that those early humans that walked were better able to successfully procreate”.
It is noteworthy to me that a prime number based length of tenure might then cause the fewest number of retirements at the same time, over time.
This is definitely the better solution. We don’t need the court experiencing major political swings during nearly every presidency.
Edit: Also, the chief justice should either be chosen amongst themselves or be the longest serving member, not randomly chosen when that spot opens.
While I am thinking about it. if we really want to depoliticize the position, as much as possible, we should consider making them lifetime public citizens after they join the court. By public citizen, I mean they become wards of the nation and can no longer make or posses money or assets. They must divest all assets to family and will be provided food, lodging, and stipends for travel or leisure for the rest of their lives. After they retire they will become Justices Emeriti who should guest lecture at various law schools and may be called in to advise or assist the sitting court when particularly complex issues arise. Any money made by a Justice Emeritus should be funneled into the cost of providing for all the Justice Emeritus.
Term limits but no age limit means we’ll still have old out of touch justices.
What would work best is if we treated SC like a rotation, do your 5-10 or whatever years, then rotate back to a lower court if your still under an age.
There should be mandatory retirement ages, because power hungry people never step down voluntarily.
And the way it’s currently structured, a president will appoint someone that will stay in the longest. That’s why Republicans are nominating you inexperienced judges who will be there for 30 years.
What if life extension radically alters what is thought of as “old”?
We can cross that bridge when we get there
Then we should celebrate that, and re-calibrate accordingly
I’d be more for capability limits? What happens if life extension comes along and we are frozen in the past (just like we are right now with things like EC and the way in which California is underrepresented with only 2 senators, WTF) with really stupid and outmoded rules?
No, don’t expand it. Impeach the judges for being corrupt. Don’t let them just hang around like a turd floating in the pool.
Impeaching the bad actors is the correct solution, in my problem. Impeachment could also be used to remove elderly judges who are no longer sharp enough to do the job. The problem is that it is too hard to impeach them. The bar and number of votes required to impeach needs to be lowered. Right now, the GOP can block every attempt to impeach these obviously unethical justices. 50% in the House to impeach and 50% in the Senate to convict/remove them, without allowing filibusters, would solve this issue.
I don’t think the 50/50 “fix” would do anything but cause massive issues every single election. We seem to constantly end up losing and gaining that 50% so frequently that the courts would be upended every time the opposition got the majority.
I’d love to see it happen, but I don’t foresee it any time soon, and that’s a real issue. The “left” pols put off bringing articles of impeachment on too many right wing presidents: right wing pols brought impeachment charges against neolib, Clinton, for lying about cheating on his wife with a naïve intern (Bill Barr and George Conway took part in that), neoliberal pols failed to impeach George W. Bush for lying about Sadaam Hussein possessing WMD and manufacturing evidence (presenting fake evidence). Congress also notably did nothing about SCOTUS calling the election for W with the ludicrous “hanging chad” decision. Flash forward and the EC (which Congress has the power to abolish) appointed tfg. When Dems finally got around to impeaching someone, Bill Barr was AG, and he willfully lied about what was in Mueller’s final investigative report of tfg. So now tfg has installed numerous corrupt judges and other government appointees that can’t immediately be easily removed, Dems failed to stack the court under their own former guy, so we’ve got this. I don’t foresee neolib or traditional conservatives really being able to do anything about it, their own reluctance aside. I’m interested to hear what anyone could do, if the willingness and intestinal fortitude to do anything can be mustered. Anyone?
That’s because the American “left” is center-right. That is why Democrats never do shit to hold Republicans to account: They’re politically aligned enough to not really care.
Americans HAVE to learn that the Democrats are also not good. That doesn’t make them useless when fighting far-right fascists, but it makes them useless for solving the US’s problems that allowed the rise of fascism in the first place.
its more our FPTP system only has one degree of freedom. We need multiwinner elections for the house, senate, electoral college where anyone who gets 10% of the vote gets 10% of the reps. Then the politicians can’t hide all the shit under wedge issues. They can do that now because our electoral system is infinitely gameable as long as there’s only 2 choices
That is indeed a possible solution, but do not doscount how true my statements are: Democrats are NOT an ally of anyone wanting actual radical change. Maybe if they ever start taking climate change seriously, but even then… Democrats (the party leadership more specifically) are not good people. There are some good Democrats, but the party is not and does fight change.
While you’re absolutely right that a SCOTUS justice won’t be removed via impeachment and trial in the Senate, the impeachment and the trial itself grant Congress WIDE lattitude to perform investigations and the trial, a spectacle in its own right, means all that evidence is brought into the light for the people to see.
Again, while removal is unlikely, the remaining corrupt justices along with their handlers, will almost certainly want to prevent such a trial, and would pressure the impeached justice to resign to avoid it.
If the trial happens, though, a huge portion of the country gets to learn and understand just how corrupt and fickle our court is, which is something almost no one in power wants. That, alone, should be reason to push for impeachment as hard as possible.
I can already hear the cacophony of people shouting rigged and fake news.
I tell everybody prosecutions against both hunter and trump will benefit everyone if even a portion of discovery is made public. We get to see the sausage being made and its gross.
Exactly. I’d come to say, “ Wrong on the facts, wrong on the history, on the wrong side of honesty and ethical standards, Justice Alito and his colleagues need to be reined in. Since Chief Justice Roberts won’t do it, it is time for Congress to step up and save the court from itself.” ‘sif.”
You think there’s more of a chance for expansion and term limits?
Expanding the courts because we aren’t happy with the current lineup would set an extremely dangerous precedent. Assuming that the Republicans in the Senate would let any of Biden’s nominations through, what would stop the next Republican president from expanding SCOTUS again to make sure they are back in the majority?
Edit: Questions get question marks.