Is it time to restore the Supreme Court to legitimacy?

Meh I'm feeding the dude with the most participation in the thread. Just sayin, don't post hurt feelings when you know(?) what you're getting into.

Ain't easy being popular. You should post a blog article from your favorites on how they do it.

 

responding to others

 

no. not talking about "a bunch of women" etc etc. I'm talking about people calling for the dismantling of political institutions because they didn't get their way.

agree 100%. Which is why the monkey poo-flingers should shut the hell up with the monkey poo-flinging

that may be true but it was by the dangling thread of Roe. Those rights should never have been left to dangle

yes

again, you are engaging in misdirection if you believe for one moment that I am calling "women" whiny b****es. Whiny b****es are the ones acting like whiny b****es. If the shoe fits, they should wear it

 

if you or anyone else wants to offer up a principled argument for restructuring the court, that's fine, I'll listen to that. But even your own original post at 7am this morning struck me more as a wide-eyed rant than a principled argument, hence my reaction and response one minute later.

two problems there: we don't really know what he said. If he said it, I'm not sure we know exactly what he means or who he is aiming it at. Actually three problems: it's also heresay, so that's another knock against it. I don't interpret either as (a) he is out to exact revenge on those people who made him miserable or as (b) he is vindictive towards 1/3 of the country.

disagree

don't think this is as horrible as you make it out to be. It was a gamble: if Republicans had lost the election, Hillary would have made that appointment and the next two after that. And Garland would have been a HORRIBLE replacement for Scalia. I don't think you can blame the Republicans for some gamesmanship there

disagree.

disagree. This is not a Rockets game thread where we call to "blow it up" after the opposing team goes up 20 points in the first quarter.

strongly disagree

if you are looking to "force" a compromise, well then that's not a compromise at all. it's an act of extortion

again, try a little "interpretive charity" when reading the Dobbs decision and concurrences

appreciate that. you're one of the few people who have abandoned that tactic and are now worth the time to respond to

 

Sure. Wouldn't be new to Republicans. They have both unpacked and packed the court for long-term federal judicial wins. Packing the court by Dem would not have been considered if not for Rep moving first. That train has already left the station. Biden has held off but with 3 members of this Court basically lying, they should just do it if Voters give them the power to do so. Heck, it would be quite irresponsible if Voters give them a super majority due to this ruling and they won't do anything to the Court.

 

Someone doesn't know history.

Congress has routinely changed the number of Justices. It was 6 under George Washington. 5 under John Adams. 7 under Thomas Jefferson. 10 under Abraham Lincoln... just listing the more popular Presidents.

Denying a President the ability to even have a confirmation hearing for a USSC nominee didn't happen until 2016.

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/lie-se...-casey-ginsburg-11656277455?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

The Justices Didn’t Lie to the Senate
No one in the Supreme Court’s Dobbs majority promised to uphold Roe v. Wade.
By The Editorial Board
June 26, 2022 6:16 pm ET

The reaction to the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health has been predictably vitriolic and often full of distortions. The Justices didn’t ban abortion; they said there is no constitutional right to abortion and left it to the states to decide. The majority also did not set up other rights to disappear; they explicitly said abortion is unique.

Perhaps the most unfortunate claim is that the Justices in the Dobbs majority lied during confirmation hearings. The charge is that they suggested that Roe v. Wade was a precedent that couldn’t be overturned. Coaxed on the point on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said this is grounds for impeachment, and don’t be surprised if other Democrats pick up that cudgel.

Sens. Susan Collins and Joe Manchin said Friday they feel Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch deceived them on the precedent point in testimony and in their private meetings with the Justices. We weren’t in those meetings, but we’d be stunned if either Justice came close to making a pledge about Roe.

The reason is that the first rule of judging is that you can’t pre-judge a case. Judges are limited under Article III of the Constitution to hearing cases and controversies, and that means ruling on facts and law that are specific to those cases.

No judge can know what those facts might be in advance of a case, and judges owe it to the parties to consider those facts impartially. A judge who can’t be impartial, or who has already reached a conclusion or has a bias about a case, is obliged to recuse himself. This is judicial ethics 101.

An authority on this point is no less than the late progressive Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as she explained in 1993. “It would be wrong for me to say or preview in this legislative chamber how I would cast my vote on questions the Supreme Court may be called upon to decide,” she said. “A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process.”

Every Supreme Court nominee since has followed that Ginsburg guidance. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who will soon join the Court, hewed to it on every question she was asked about precedent. Our guess is that she’d vote to overturn all of last week’s rulings on religious liberty, guns and abortion if she gets the chance. But that doesn’t mean she lied to the Senate.

The same goes for the confirmation record of the conservative Justices. Here’s Justice Gorsuch: “Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, is a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court. It has been reaffirmed. . . . So a good judge will consider it as precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court worthy as treatment of precedent like any other.”

He added that “If I were to start telling you which are my favorite precedents or which are my least favorite precedents, or if I viewed precedent in that fashion, I would be tipping my hand and suggesting to litigants that I have already made up my mind about their cases.”

And here’s Justice Kavanaugh: “Roe v. Wade is an important precedent of the Supreme Court. It has been reaffirmed many times. It was reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood v. Caseyin 1992. . . . So that precedent on precedent is quite important as you think about stare decisis in this context.” He made no specific pledge about either case that we have seen. Justice Amy Coney Barrett expressly rejected the idea that Roe was a super precedent.

The claims of deceit are especially unfortunate because they suggest that the Court is no different from the political branches. This is damaging to the Court’s credibility, whether the majority leans to the left or the right. The current majority won’t last forever, perhaps not even many more years, and Democrats deriding the current Court as political won’t be pleased if Republicans make the same claim when their appointees are back in the majority.

The fury of the left’s reaction isn’t merely about guns and abortion. It reflects their grief at having lost the Court as the vehicle for achieving policy goals they can’t get through legislatures. The cultural victories they achieved by judicial fiat will now have to be won by persuading voters. We understand their frustration, but they ought to try democracy for a change. They might even win the debate over abortion.

Appeared in the June 27, 2022, print edition.
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The answer to the thread title (but not the poll) is yes. Fortunately they are doing just that right now, with the NYSRPA and Dobbs decisions. Hopefully they continue to do so. It would be great if we not only got rid of the Substantive Due Process/find new hidden rights in the penumbras doctrine and everything that came from it but also returned to a sensible, plain text reading of the Interstate Commerce Clause and overturned all the nonsense that came from saying any action that in combination with any number of other people taking the same action that may in some way affect interstate commerce or the channels of interstate commerce is fair game for the Federal Government to regulate. Commerce involves trade and interstate commerce involves trade across state lines. If you are not engaging in trade across state lines (say you are growing your own pot or wheat or selling meth on a street corner) then the Interstate Commerce Clause should not empower regulation of your activity.

Routinely? There have been 9 seats (sometimes one is vacant until another justice is confirmed) on the court since 1869. Constitutional Amendments have happened much more frequently. Hell, Presidential assassinations/assassination attempts have happened more frequently. I wouldn't say people routinely try to kill the President of the United States. Grant added two justices after the Civil War when the Republicans had essentially unlimited power because they won the war. No one has changed the number of justices since then.

 

Republicans have not "packed the court" unless you want to change the traditionally understood definition of "packed the court." Controversly FDR took a hard look at it but never did it. The number of justices hasn't changed since 1869.

If Democrats want abortion to be the law of the land then they can codify it through the legislative process. Roe was always an extremely tenuous thing to depend on, liberal legal scholars recognized this.

It has been open and obvious conservatives were working hard at shaping the judiciary for the last 50 years with the intent of overturning Roe vs. Wade. It's not a surprise to anyone who has paid attention. RBG and other Democrats bear plenty of culpability.

If you want to break the filibuster and pack the supreme court, well, then be prepared for a never ending spiral of court packing, which, will in fact destroy the legitimacy of the court and may destroy the country.

Democrats should just work on winning elections in the current framework we have which will allow them to effectuate their policy desires.

 

Democrats allowing this one of their biggest failures
The first one was PURE ARROGANCE AND HUBRIS
They thought Hillary would win easily
So they did not press it . . .. when she lost they **** bricks

Then RBG died - not overly unexpectedly
While no one wants to speak ill of the dead but
Her refusal to step down basically opened the flood gates
to undo EVERYTHING she alledgely stood for

Rocket River

 

Well, good thing 1. Democrats don't have the votes to pack the court and 2. You aren't in charge. If you think a court packing death spiral will end well... that's something.

 

Most of our institutions have lost their legitimacy. It's far beyond the court. This country doesn't favor the will of the majority of its people. The concept of the Senate is a joke.Congressional maps are rigged. The electoral college is laughable. If these are the "institutions" people are clinging to, then its time to make new institutions. Innovation is an American institution. Running a clown government is not an institution I give a **** about.