imagine creating a button that makes you win, but makes the process far more complicated.
now imagine, once you’re out of power the other guy can also push the button.
once pressed, neither side will ever stop pushing the button when in power.
That’s the thing though, the Republicans already broke that machine by refusing to consider Obama’s appointment, with no repurcussians of any kind.
At this point, obeying rules and norms and not doing what you can get away with in federal government to achieve your goals just makes you a sucker.
Exactly! The Court is being used as a tool to permanently constrain American politics for the next 50 years, no matter what party is in power. A year ago, there were legitimate concerns they’d gut American democracy by enabling state legislatures unchecked power to run their own elections, which would have enabled outright single party rule, mask off.
(One could argue that large parts of the US already qualify as a single-party theocratic dictatorship, looking at you Florida)
I mean, the GOP will start stacking once they lose the Supreme Court and win the presidency. It’s not if, but when.
The GOP had the opportunity to do so in the recent past and specifically chose not to due to the destabilizing effect it would have. The idea they will do it is not consistent with history.
No they didn’t do it cause they didn’t need to
Yep. If the goal is to de-politicize the courts, court packing makes it exponentially worse.
Maybe this is exactly what needs to happen to force some larger better change in the future. Certainly doing nothing seems to be plenty dangerous and regressive on its own.
I think in addition to the other points on this page, the thing that keeps coming to me is because I think deep down inside, Biden knows where the fault is.
The Supreme Court’s primary role is to decipher existing laws, existing precedent, and figure out how it should be interpreted in a different era. Yes, I know due to how politicalized everything is, sometimes questionable outcomes come from the Supreme Court. But at the core, their job is to interpret existing law and precedent.
Congress’ role is to actually pass new laws for a new era. It can be argued, they’ve done a terrible job at that because they’re busy trying to appease their base. Because they’re so divided, very little acts, with any substance, are being passed at the federal level.
Expanding the court might result in the outcome you want today, it may not result in the outcome you want tomorrow.
But expanding the court also continues to give Congress a way out of making tricky compromises and laws, so they can continue fundraising on outrage, and yet do very little about things by blaming the other side.
This is the sort of thoughtful comment that is making Lemmy so valuable. Thank you.
It sucks to type that because I’m all for helping young adults get higher education. But I do agree with the court, it can’t be at the expense of executive orders because then we’ll be on a crazy hamster wheel with every president. Congress needs to do their dang job and create a college bill that everyone dislikes and likes.
The debt relief was absolutely within the Executive branch’s delegated authority to do. The law Congress wrote and passed was very clear, and in very plain language.
The case before the Court was absolutely ludicrous. A state has standing to sue the federal government because some private company within that state could potentially suffer a financial loss? Even when that company wanted no part of, and did not file suit in the first place?
If I loan my sister who makes decent money $50, and then she applies for Medicaid and is denied, with this Court’s decision, I would have standing to sue the State because she would suffer a potential financial loss in having to pay healthcare premiums.
Further, if the State did approve her for Medicaid, the insurance company could sue the State because they might suffer a financial loss in having my sister no longer need to pay them those same premiums.
It’s absolutely wrong on even the most basic level.
undefined> Expanding the court might result in the outcome you want today, it may not result in the outcome you want tomorrow.
Excellent insight. Look at the impact a 6-3 conservative majority can do. Imagine if events shake out to where you now have an 9-2 balance in either direction.
Non-american here so I could be wrong.
Because that would lead to a cycle of each party packing the courts everytime they gain office, massively politicising the judicial system and damaging the system of checks and balances currently in place.
This is more or less the argument you’d hear from a Biden supporter against packing the court. The counterargument is that the judicial system is already massively politicized so 🤷♂️
Politicizing is one issue, the other issue is that where do we end up after repeated court packing? We will all be supreme court justices on that blessed day.
I don’t know that I actually agree with that but it’s at least a realistic fear.
This concept that politicization is somehow a bug and not a feature always bugs me. Was there a point in our history when we weren’t politicized, outside of a state of mobilization for war?
Politics is simply how people make decisions outside of rigid authoritarian structures.
Trying to eliminate politicization is trying to eliminate representative government by the populace, aka, democratic rule. The people are free to be political, that is all there really is to it.
This really reminds me a lot about what Yanis Varoufakis (former Greek minister of finance) said abouth the EU. It’s been a while, but the gist of it was exactly what you say, that they have depoliticized the political system of the EU. Leaving a technocracy that is completely immune to debate, regardless of who is right or not.
This is an apples to orangutans comparison. The USA is a country that operates under a single representative government. The EU is a multi-nation body that cooperates on economic matters.
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That is a gross and dumb oversimplification. How many armies you got?
I hate this hand-wringing over “b-but what if we break the rules for a good thing?” Meanwhile every time the GOP comes into power they trod on rules and norms in their crusade to bring American political and civil rights back to the 1800s.
Like, this court wasn’t just politicized, it was hijacked when they refused to consider Merrick Garland at the end of the Obama presidency, only to ram through appointments under the Trump presidency.
Packing the court to better align with where American society actually is, when specifically in retaliation for the GOP’S attempts to force millenials and zoomers to live in a Christian Theocracy for the next 50 years strikes me as the only way for Democrsts to actually govern successfully.
We were dangerously close to the gutting of American democracy this past week, but we got lucky the court rejected Independent Legislature Theory.
How is that a fear? That would be awesome.
In any case, as long as the supreme court is gonna be a bunch of clowns, no reason not to turn it into a circus.
I think the issue is packing SCOTUS isn’t even a band aid fix to the problem. You’d have to completely overhaul the way the Court works to get a meaningful impact on the way it operates currently. I’ve seen ideas floated like expanding the judiciary and then choosing a certain number of justices randomly to preside over each case, but that is probably worse than our current system because you could end up with an even more radical Court presiding over a very impactful case.
Wouldn’t packing the SC realistically break the SC so hard it would have to be overhauled?
Biden can’t just expand the size of the court by himself. Congress has to give him the authority to do so.
The House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans, so any court expansion plan is dead in the water. Even if the Democrats controlled the House, they only have 51 (out of 100) seats in the Senate. There are two Democratic members of the Senate who are basically Republican-lite (Manchin of WV and Sinema of AZ, who is technically an independent). Those two would kill any bill that allowed any sort of progressive change.
If you don’t like it, then you need to do everything you can to fight for Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress.
TL;DR: Blame Congress, not Biden.
Specifically, the Judiciary Act of 1869 limits the court to nine members. It’s not a constitutional issue, but it also can’t be done by the President alone.
It’s a dangerous idea because then either party could do it, but the problem with operating like that is the same problem the democrats have faced over and over again. They’re acting like the other side will have follow the same rules, which is so blatantly false. It doesn’t matter if the democrats expand the courts or not, the Republicans would happily do that if they had the power and the need.
But to really answer your question, Joe Lieberman is the reason. He’s the needed vote to make this happen and he refuses over and over. If he would change his vote and vote with party, we would have already expanded the court and we would still have abortion protections.
Because that is not within the president’s authority. Congress determines the size of the supreme court.
Democrats can’t just DO THINGS silly.
How is he supposed to do that?
because biden can barely keep the seat warm for trump, he’s less than useless and almost as bad.
