I think this quote from the below article basically sums it up: "With President Trump’s third appointment to the court, Republican presidents have picked 16 out of the last 20 justices though the Democrats have won more votes in six of the last seven presidential contests."
Opinion | How to Fix the Supreme Court (Published 2020)
Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation has tilted the high court's ideological balance. What should the court’s future be, and who gets to decide it?www.nytimes.com
90% of SCOTUS cases are narrow, specific, and draw little attention. If we look at the publicly prominent ones (abortion, marriage, 2A, political funding, civil rights, affirmative action, and the like) there has been a 70 year trend towards finding individual liberties and limiting government action/regulation in these areas. Along that path, in some cases they had to reverse prior cases (think, Plessy), but in others their rulings were new enough in nature to not require formal reversal of an earlier case, and in still others they were just tweaking (rather than reversing) earlier rulings.
Setting aside whether the court is "broken" or not, this proposed solution is so full of holes I don't even know where to start. But in brief, (i) a new court would also be politicized (Dems are already talking about "stacking the district and appellate courts" since "stacking SCOTUS" is not polling well) - the parties, pundits and power brokers on both side will figure out how to game a new court too; (ii) many matters have mixed statutory and constitutional elements - having to align the rulings of two different "supreme" courts is at best highly inefficient and at worst simply impossible; (iii) while Congress undoubtable can set up various courts and set various appellate rules, under Marbury v Madison SCOTUS declared itself the sole and final arbiter of the constitution - it would take decades of litigation and reversal of our oldest court precedent to entertain a congressional creation of a constitutional court above SCOTUS; (iv) and many more minor quibles.She did an excellent job during the hearings. She was assisted in this, by the fact that she had absolutely nothing to worry about. She was able to sidestep/not answer any potentially controversial questions and knew that the Republican Senators had her back no matter what.
It's hard to predict what a justice will do on every case. I'll reserve judgement, but honestly, I'm losing faith in the court's ability to do its job. I think this quote from the below article basically sums it up: "With President Trump’s third appointment to the court, Republican presidents have picked 16 out of the last 20 justices though the Democrats have won more votes in six of the last seven presidential contests." You can like this current court, but you cannot pretend that the court's ideology is representative of our country (and you're kidding yourself if you think there's no ideology on the court).
Opinion | How to Fix the Supreme Court (Published 2020)
Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation has tilted the high court's ideological balance. What should the court’s future be, and who gets to decide it?
More insightful opinion coming from the View than the NYT these days.She did an excellent job during the hearings. She was assisted in this, by the fact that she had absolutely nothing to worry about. She was able to sidestep/not answer any potentially controversial questions and knew that the Republican Senators had her back no matter what.
It's hard to predict what a justice will do on every case. I'll reserve judgement, but honestly, I'm losing faith in the court's ability to do its job. I think this quote from the below article basically sums it up: "With President Trump’s third appointment to the court, Republican presidents have picked 16 out of the last 20 justices though the Democrats have won more votes in six of the last seven presidential contests." You can like this current court, but you cannot pretend that the court's ideology is representative of our country (and you're kidding yourself if you think there's no ideology on the court).
Opinion | How to Fix the Supreme Court (Published 2020)
Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation has tilted the high court's ideological balance. What should the court’s future be, and who gets to decide it?
cough...Garland!...cough, cough!Too bad the Democrats can't find a way to have them die off or retire when they have the Presidency...
I agree. And with Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and now Barrett on the court together, this is what I fear is about to happen. I fear that Roberts and Gorsuch will both have to be playing the long game at the same time, or we'll get some pretty radical rulings. I hope I'm wrong.
Not to lose sight of how well this thread has proceeded, I believe it is due to the avoidance of political talking points. To suggest another political party would have acted differently is myopic in my humble opinion.
I more or less agree with this too, but I think he's accurately pointing out some of the problems we have now and that opening quote is pretty striking. Really, it's just another example of progressively minded people getting more and more frustrated with the ways in which our country was set up to give a political leg-up to rural folks.
It certainly is going forward, I fear.
My understanding is that RBG made her own decisions, despite what others may have talked about... no argument on the arrogance of the Clinton ascendancy though.
Well said
Judge Barrett tried to explain this over and over, apparently to no avail. The whole "packing the court" issue is the attempt to create another political entity. That's the whole point of originalism; what did the founders mean at the time? If you don't adhere to that, better get your muskets handy, because, as we all know, that's the position of many on the left on the Second Amendment.
