The current president could name six Supreme Court Justices today, if the Democrats were better at this.
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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I know it feels good to say "Pack the court", but it would turn it into a clown show with every new president adding double what the previous president added.
Yes yes this is where you say it's already a clown show, and then I say it'd be even more, etc.
The Republicans will do whatever benefits them anyway. They haven't needed to expand the court because there's been a conservative majority for basically forever.
Limiting your actions because the Republicans will act in bad faith in the future is never going to get you anywhere.
"We go high when they go low." Has been the dumbest fucking slogan. Sorry, not sorry but that tactic backfired so badly that is hilarious. With these gullible fools we need to fight fire with fire. They don't respond to logic or reason. They respond to false "gotcha" moments and memes.
Should have been they go low we kick em in the teeth.
Yup. Until at some point the American people got fed up with the clown show. But some of us have been waiting for them to get fed up with it for quite some time. Maybe this would exasperate the issue to the point where we actually do something.
Accelerationism is certainly one ideology dumber than the current status quo.
Please give me a hypothetical example of how "the American people" can actually change the fundamental structure of the 3 branches of government. Like seriously, I would love to know how.
Constitutional Convention enacted by State Governors and State Legislatures with the support of the majority of each states population.
So if enough people in every state complained about SCOTUS to their state legislature, the state legislature can force the people's opinion up to the Governors who can do something at the federal level? I guess I'm just not seeing the actual legal mechanism that would be used to force any kind of change.
My understanding is any change to the structure of government at that level requires 2/3rds congressional majority.
And people act like "the people" want this in the first place. Nearly half of "The people" voted for Trump, and probably will again. The US is not united against the fascists. Hell, in this thread itself, you have someone blaming the Dems for not waving a magic wand and somehow assigning 6 more scotus memberswhen we don't even have a majority in either the house or the senate, and taking such a drastic move with obvious dangers would certainly be objectionable to many.
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Not quite.
If you mean that all six conservatives could be impeached today, there really is only damning evidence against two of them right now and impeachment has to start in the Republican-controlled House and get a 2/3 vote in the Senate, none of which have a chance of happening.
If you mean that Democrats could expand the Court to 15 today, that also has to go through the Republican House first, as well as centrist Democrats in both houses who might view that as too extreme. I am an advocate for expanding the Court, but I would stop at 13.
I also think 13 is a good number because that would be 1 Supreme Court justice for each circuit court
But getting to that will be hard and not to mention unless a cap is put in place (I prefer tying it to the number of circuit courts) then the next person who scoots in could expand it further with less push back due to it having been done just recently
The last thing we need is every president who scoots into office appointing more and more justices until it gets out of hand
I think an "arms race" that forever expands the court -- and thus dilutes the individual relevance of a single Justice -- is a good thing.
A single Justice dying or retiring should not be the sort of thing to reshape the entire country.
"A good thing" is too strong a statement, but I could agree with "not worse than the status quo."
The way you do it is to - BOOM! - expand the Court to 13 on Day 1 of the next Biden administration, if Democrats also have both houses of Congress, nuking the Fillibuster if necessary, but delay it's effect until September 2026.
Then, go to Republicans and give them a choice. Either we can reform the SC and institute meaningful reform, or Republicans can watch Biden appoint four judges in their 40's to lifetime appointments, and they can wait until they have the Presidency and both houses of Congress to make a tit-for-tat response. (Biden's appointments would only be subject to those term limits if the amendment passes before he makes the appointment.)
We can do a lot in an amendment, including instituting term limits, a firm code of ethics, a better process for confirmation where the Senate can't just ignore an appointment, and formally fixing the size of the SCOTUS to match the number of appellate courts.
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Or if he'd have six Justices assassinated as an official act, making him immune to prosecution according to the Republicans.
Obviously that's a terrible idea, but what is stopping a dictator from doing that in the US? The Supreme Court is the arbiter of whether things are legal. Literally what is stopping a dictatorial president from killing or threatening the Justices and replacing them with cronies?
Yet another argument for term limits on Justices.
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One, they haven't had the votes since Biden became President. Two, that doesn't fix anything. If we had 6 more liberal justices today they can't just say, "Hey, let's undo the bad decisions from the last 15 years." They need to address the issues that come before them in regular fashion. If the Democrats had the votes they need to just start codifying everything we take for granted AND institute reforms (e.g. no more fucking filibuster, no stock trades for elected officials, and a SCOTUS code of ethics).
Adding justices does fix one thing: more justices mean that for billionaires to bribe them it requires bribing a lot more of them.
You clearly underestimate how much money a billion dollars is. There's always enough money to bribe officials.
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It’s only around $100,000 to bribe justices. One billion dollars could bribe 100,000 justices at that rate.
And that rate is only that high because Clarence Thomas skews the numbers with how vast the bribes he has accepted have been.
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Weve got to implement term limits on justices now that people are starting to figure out lifetime appointments are easily gamed with younger justices.
That will take a constitutional amendment, which... Good luck
Yeah thats never happened before.
Certainly not in the current political climate. You think a good chunk of Republicans can get on board with that when they have a 6-3 majority in the court right now?
you are the political climate. If you folks would put half the effort you put into trying to convince people everything is hopeless into fighting for reform like the people of the past who successfully achieved reform
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Just think, if some sit home or vote third party like they did in 2000 and 2016, we could hand over at least two more SC seats and our rights and privacy with them.
Letting good be the enemy of perfect is a fool's errand. And we have an illegal war, a slew of bad rulings, and five lost opportunities on the SC to prove it. So, yeah go vote for Jill, Cornie or Bobby. Just don't come bitching to me if Trump wins.
BoTh SiDeS tHo
All of them should be retired and let an entire new crew have a shot at it. Term limits for ALL
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Hell, he may name 5 if he guns down 5 of the current ones. Crime doesn't matter when you're the president, and the next 5 you name can agree with you. Or they can also be gunned down.
Is Dark Brandon planning something?
According to his opponent, Brandon can murder people to get the job done, so ... maybe?
There is no limit, stop pretending.
Not if the republicans have anything to say about it.
I wouldn't put it past them to say it's too close to the 2028 election to appoint any new justices if a Democrat wins.
based on the ages of the two presidential candidates, we are also looking at the best chance in recent memory for a vice president to become president
The next president, not the current one, since the ones we have will wait decades before letting a Democrat replace them.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
LOS ANGELES – President Biden on Saturday night said he expects the winner of this year’s presidential election will likely have the chance to fill two vacancies on the Supreme Court – a decision he warned would be “one of the scariest parts” if his Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, is successful in his bid for a second term.
The event featured Hollywood stars like George Clooney and Julia Roberts, as well as former President Barack Obama.
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel moderated a conversation with Biden and Obama, and the two presidents talked about the impact that Trump had on issues like abortion rights by naming conservative justices to the Supreme Court.
Trump named three justices during his term – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanagh and Amy Coney Barrett – cementing the conservative majority on the bench.
Biden, who flew to Los Angeles on the heels of attending the G7 summit in Italy, did not expand upon how the two vacancies on the court would come about.
“The next president -- they’re going to be able to appoint a couple of justices,” Biden said in Philadelphia at the launch of an effort to court Black voters.
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