Good. We needed to hear this. How much can be done, we shall see, but a plan is a great starting point.
This whole “every two years” new justice thing is really bothering me. Did he say that or is the journalist taking liberties?
I wonder because that timing will fly straight out the window the minute someone retires early or dies. Does the next Justice get a shorter term? A longer one? Does the seat go empty for a time? Do we end up having cycles of presidencies that get to appoint 3 or 4 justices in one term?
Bah- this will keep me up tonight, I just know it.
Every 2 years the longest-standing justice would be replaced, if they have served at least 18 years. Since there are nine justices this means each will get an 18 year term exactly. Any early exits would just mean you skip the next cycle. That’s how I’d imagine it anyway.
I imagine it will be the seat itself is reappointed on a fixed schedule, that would function most similarly to the Presidency or Congress. The replacement be more or less an “acting” Justice to finish the term.
Not sure what the solution would be that is proposed by the legal experts but it seems to me that we already have a system for dealing with that for the office of the president in the form of vice presidents etc taking over if they die. Not that you should have to have an entire chain of people ready to take over for every SC justice but rather, if one dies or retires or whatever before their 18 years is up then a replacement can be appointed to finish the remainder of their term.
I don’t even know why we need specific appointments for the seats. Just rotate judges from the lower courts through.
I saw someone mentioned that if something happened and a seat was vacated early, one of the justices whose term had expired could be brought in to serve in that seat until it is filled with a new person at the next scheduled time. But that seems to mean that some other justice(s) more senior than the one who vacated might wind up serving more than the normal 18 years as they wouldn’t be replaced until the next cycle.
As far as a president getting to appoint 3 justices in one term, we just had that with trump. IMO there really should be more than just 9 seats. A common suggestion is 13, one for each District.
Step 1) Executive order that appoints fake judges to the supreme Court, bypass Congress by ordering the executive branch to treat the judges as legitimate.
There is no step 2.
i mean technically it’s an official act as president so it’s not illegal.
It can still be illegal, Biden just couldn’t be prosecuted for it.
Supreme Court: Who said you could do this?!
President: You did
“I learned it from you, Dads!”
You get it.
Alrighty then.
I’m a bit skeptical on the first bullet point: while I’m all for an amendment to the US constitution that spells out in detail the limits on presidential authority, it’s still an amendment that has to get passed. That means that it needs a 2/3rds majority in both the House and the Senate, or it needs to be supported by 2/3rds of the state legislatures. I don’t think there’s any way in hell that Biden’s going to be able to get that through while the prospect of Trump regaining the presidency is on the horizon. At the moment, 47% of the US Senate is Democrat, with 4% caucusing with the Democrats most of the time, 49% of the US House is Democrat, and 46% of State Governors are Democrat. While it’s not 100% certain that all Republicans would vote along party lines, I’m reasonably certain that all Republicans would vote along party lines, which means a constitutional amendment is dead in the water.
Now, if Harris wins the presidency, there’s a good chance that the Republicans would be willing to vote for an amendment to curtail presidential authority. But right now? Nuh uh. Not gonna happen. As for the other two bullet points, they’re certainly more possible right now than a constitutional amendment, but still unlikely. Dems don’t have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and I’m certain that the Republicans would filibuster the shit out of that. Even if that wasn’t the case, there’s no way it’d pass the House. Best case scenario, Harris wins, with a large majority in both houses, and is able to push some legislation along these lines through.
Edit: changed language from “ratified by 2/3rds of the states” to “supported by 2/3rds of the state legislatures”.
You’re 100% missing the power of a sitting president making this official statement in the first place. Further, then giving the House/Senate and the state governments a choice to publicly shot themselves in the feet, on the record, by opposing such a common sense approach to this obvious problem.
The goal isn’t the amendment, it would be nice, but it’s not the first/main victory here.
Presidents say shit all the time, though. Just saying that there is a major problem is newsworthy, but it’s all worth a hill of beans if it doesn’t lead to lasting changes. I believe that he was right in that an amendment will be the securest way to enumerate the boundaries of executive authority, as it will be much harder for the Supreme Court to fuck that up, but there is an extremely high bar to pass to get an amendment through. If he decides to go the legislation route instead, any new laws that are passed by Congress are potentially subject to being overturned by the courts.
As for the optics of Republicans opposing supreme court reform or curtailing of executive authority… meh. We all watched nearly every single Republican in the House vote to not impeach Donald Trump on two separate occasions, for incredibly stupid reasons, and most of those people won re-election. Relying on the public to make good decisions when faced with bald-faced congressional corruption is a losing proposition.
Iirc constitutional ammendments have to pass both congress AND the states. It’s not an either or
Technically, it’s an either / or process. It either needs 2/3rds of both houses, or 2/3rds of state legislatures have to call for a constitutional convention. You are right, however, in that after either hurdle is passed, it still needs to be ratified by 3/4 of the state legislatures in the union. That’s where the equal rights amendment is now. It passed both houses, but has not yet met the 3/4 state legislature hurdle, so it’s still in the pipeline 81 years after its proposal. Yay government!
Fun fact, it doesn’t have to be an amendment - it can just be a normal law. The check on judiciary is if Congress and the President both say, " you got it wrong SCOTUS" and pass a law that specifically says things are different.
Now I’m basing that on my 9th grade civics knowledge which could be wrong… But I thought that’s why there were pushes for contraceptive laws post gutting of abortion rights. Basically telling the high court, this is what we’re doing now.
SCOTUS can simply rule the law unconstitutional…
Laws for contraceptive right are needed because SCOTUS ruled there weren’t any laws saying it was a right, because they have the constitution backwards.
Rights not enumerated… are no longer rights.
They don’t give a shit if the rights are enumerated lol
We need to just ignore Marbury at some point. These fuckers gave themselves judicial review, it’s not an actual power they have.
That’s a bit trickier, though, because SCOTUS already ruled on this, which means that their fucked ruling is now precedent. So any future challenges to a law passed by congress would be interpreted with that precedent in mind. If the composition of the supreme court changes, they could reverse their earlier rulings, but it’s much less certain of an outcome than if there was an amendment to the constitution guiding future decisions.
Laws override precedent. The court’s job is explicitly to interpret the laws made by congress. Precedent is simply the way that previous courts have interpreted the laws at the time. If the relevant laws to the case haven’t changed since the previous case, that is where precedent comes in. If there are new laws written by congress then those are more important than precedent.
Another user brought up the idea that they might still try to rule the new law unconstitutional but that would be a much harder bar to achieve legitimately since the constitution is intentionally rather succinct. Of course if the court is corrupt and no one actually challenges their power I suppose they could say anything they want- precedent overrules laws, anything they don’t like is unconstitutional, for the low low price of a vacation getaway you too can influence my rulings, etc. But legally speaking laws override precedent and doing away with a law because it is unconstitutional is an extremely high bar which can’t realistically be met by the vast majority of laws unless the law directly goes against the few rules that the constitution establishes.
All Biden needs to do is threaten to use his newfound powers to meddle in the red states’ crusade against lgbtq.
Maybe he could change the rules of voting in congress from “Yea/Nay” to “Yes, harder daddy/No, don’t fucking stop daddy” that’s probably within the role of his office.
I mean, thanks to Obama, the president has the authority to kill any US citizen they deem as a threat. The ACLU brought a case against the government about that, but that case was dismissed on procedural grounds, so it’s still constitutionally untested. But regardless of it being tested, there is precedent for it, thanks to Obama’s murder of Anwar Al-Awlaqi. And since the precedent says that the murder by the executive branch of any US citizen it deems a threat is kosher, well that would fall pretty nicely under the heading of “official acts of office” that this latest supreme court case showed would be absolutely immune from prosecution.
So I guess the question is: does Biden feel like murdering a bunch of citizens?
You’re asking this question for no reason as the answer is clearly no.
And I don’t really think you’ll garner much sympathy for Anwar Al-Awlaqi’s “murder”. He left the United States and was orchestrating terroristic plots to murder innocent civilians in the United States. He was involved in two high profile incidents of terrorism as a commander for al Queda. Nidal Hasan’s mass shooting at Fort Hood and an attempted bombing of an intentional flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.
I’m not looking to garner sympathy for Al Awlaqi. But it is a really fucking bad precedent to allow the president to kill people with no oversight, and if you’re not sure why that’s the case, maybe think on it a bit.
Up until the recent Supreme Court decision there was already oversight. Al Awlaqi was deemed to be an imminent threat and his killing was authorized by the National Security Council which would include 10-20 other individuals with access to superior knowledge of Al Awlaqi’s actions and includes the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Homeland Security advisor. All people tasked with positively identifying imminent national security threats. The country he was seeking refuge in had even ordered him to be captured dead or alive. And if you’re questioning his involvement in al-Qaeda, he appeared in a video bearing al-Qaeda’s emblem praising the two prior mentioned terrorists and called them students of his.
I think you misunderstand me: I’m not questioning his involvement in al-Qaeda. But the fact remains that he was a US Citizen. Being a citizen typically entitles people to certain perks, like due process in a court of law. This was denied to him, which is why the ACLU took up the case. The state has the power to execute someone, but up until this precedent was set, it was only able to legally do so after they had been convicted in a court of law. Intelligence agencies do not fall under that umbrella.
The country he was seeking refuge in had even ordered him to be captured dead or alive.
This is entirely irrelevant to US law. If, say, I was in Bolivia, and the Bolivian government had an active dead or alive warrant on some US expat, it would still be a capital crime for me to kill that man on Bolivia’s behalf.
Fair enough. I just feel as though there are extenuating circumstances surrounding his specific case. I believe that his due process was rather not denied, but expedited due to his own behavior. His due process took place in a briefing room of national security advisors discussing what violence he could be capable of before international police were able to capture him. I believe that he knew that his status as a US citizen would shield him from military action for some time and would be willing to use that time to orchestrate further attacks on western civilians for as long as possible.
I liken it to a hostage situation at a bank. A group of people commit armed robbery and 2 of the 3 have killed civilians. So in response they were killed by a SWAT team. The ring leader is the only one left and is holding hostages in a room with no windows, but is able to communicate with a negotiator. The orchestrator tells the negotiator that he has no intention of killing people but is holding hostages to ensure his safety. There’s already been lives lost so how willing are you to allow him to negotiate an arrest without further casualties? He’s holding hostages with the threat of violence but hasn’t killed anyone yet. Eventually he is killed without incident by law enforcement and the hostages are brought to safety. Is that situation a denial of due process by a court of law?
Wasn’t that guy fighting for ISIS? Like actively engaged in the fight against US forces and killed in a targeted drone strike?
I’m all for Biden using his newfound kinghood to say, lock congress in their chamber until they vote the right way, but I don’t think your example is comparable.
He was alleged to be the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula. But, of course, he was a US citizen, and the drone strike happened in Yemen, a country we were not at war with. So it raised a significant number of ethical and procedural questions. Also, we killed his 16-year-old son (who was also a US citizen) with a drone strike several days later, also in Yemen.
but I don’t think your example is comparable.
Well, that’s the thing. Precedent is a tricky mistress. Sure, Obama had what he considered very good reasons for crossing that line, but it set a precedent that any subsequent president could follow. It’s like how George Washington set the precedent for presidential pardons by pardoning two men who were sentenced to be executed for protesting a tax on whiskey, and then a couple hundred years later, Trump was just straight up selling pardons to people for two million bucks a pop.
The point is, what seems reasonable when justified by a good president could easily be turned into something horrible by a bad president. The precedent set by Obama is probably not going to be as narrow as: “the US president is free to order the killing by drone strike of any US citizen who US intelligence agencies believe is a high ranking member in a terrorist organization (or a member of their family), as long as they are currently located in a middle eastern country”, just like the precedent set by Washington wasn’t: “The US president is free to pardon anybody who is accused of protesting a tax on whiskey”.
They’re not citizens if they’re Nazis, but murder isn’t the answer, let’s grab one of the for profit prisons the right so loves to build, in the middle of Oklahoma or Missouri and invite the traitors to stay a good long time.
Can we just step back for a minute and look at the big picture here? We’re at a point where passing an amendment that says “the president cannot commit crimes” is seen as something that has no chance in passing, because one party is dedicated to protecting a criminal. The founders would be ashamed of us.
I mean, no argument from me. The fact that the Supreme Court basically just ruled that the President can operate independently from the law, like a fucking king, would have every single one of those guys spinning in their graves fast enough to power a city. It’s just the latest milestone in a decades-long quest by the Heritage Foundation to convert America’s government into a Christian theocracy.
This is huge
Is it? I am ready to believe it is, but i guess i was hoping headlines about passing the court
I don’t get the appointing of a new judge every two years for 18 years. Does that mean that the courts are gonna like fill up with a bunch of justices or is it just every two years you can replace an empty seat?
Still 9 justices. The justices would have an 18-year term limit, so one seat opens and is then filled every two years.
Ha. Good luck with that, seeing as it’ll be the supreme court ruling on the constitutionality of any law that’s passed. In short it’ll take a constitutional amendment to do anything, and that’s not happening in this political climate
He can kill them all and declare it an official act
If it’s not an official executive order, it’s all bluster. Actions, not words.
You seem confused on what an executive order is (or you’re not confused and are just saying this in bad faith). It’s not just the president randomly saying I order this to happen like some kind of dictator. It’s the executive laying out his/her interpretation of specifics on how a law should be implemented, a law already passed by congress. So unless congress has passed a law already, saying congress gives the executive the power to increase the size of the court on a whim, or decide to impose term limits on a whim (and they most certainly have not), then the power still rests with congress. Setting up and regulating the courts is a job expressly delegated to congress in the constitution. An executive order is meaningless here. What law would it derive its authority from? A congressional law might not even be enough for all of this, that’s why part of the plan talks about a constitutional amendment.
And “No words” ?! How on earth are we supposed to build a concensus to do something, if in your opinion no one is allowed to even talk about it or express their support until it’s already happened? You make no sense. The sitting president endorsing supreme court reform is a huge step. And Harris is endorsing it too. Now we just need enough members of congress to get on board, and that’s how it could happen. Not talking about it because it can’t happen this second doesn’t make it any more likely to happen. Comments like yours if anything make it less likely, and discourage support for the people trying to actually get it done.
I’m tired of all these nonsensical, “why doesn’t Biden just become dictator right now” comments. We’re voting against Trump because we don’t want a dictator.
”Mankind soon learn to make interested uses of every right and power which they possess, or may assume. The public money and public liberty, intended to have been deposited with three branches of magistracy, but found inadvertently to be in the hands of one only, will soon be discovered to be sources of wealth and dominion to those who hold them… They [the assembly] should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when a corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price. Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same causes. The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.”
Thomas Jefferson
I understand the limits of Executive Orders, but the Supreme Court has overstepped its bounds. How can you reel in a branch of government that decides which laws will be enforced? Congress is feckless and stilted and captured by interests.
Pretending that America can litigate itself away from fascism is foolish. Republicans and the conservatives will not give up power willingly. It has to be taken.
If the Democrats, who claim to want to uphold the conventions of democracy, will not act dictatorially, the Republicans, with the help of the Supreme Court, surely will.
I know what I am saying seems extreme, because it is. We are experiencing turmoil because of unchecked power. If the Democrats do not ACT the republic will be lost, if it is not already too late.
I fundamentally disagree. I think if you invoke authoritarianism to supposedly prevent it, you’ve already lost. I don’t think that’s the case yet though. I still have hope. Our country has been much less democratic than this before and managed to improve, it can happen again.
“What makes us happy is not to get what we want, but to dream about it.”
Slavoj Žižek
I mean this very practically, if Biden actually began acting extra judicially like you said, he’d just shatter norms faster, make all the false things Republicans say about democrats wanting to destroy democracy true, and lead to a landslide election victory for republicans in the fall (unless Biden went truly authoritarian and stopped the fall elections too). And it’d be obvious what would happen from there. I’m sorry but you just can’t fight fascism with fascism. It doesn’t work. You just get more fascism.
An executive order would just be revoked by the next republican president
When there’s another Republican president, this will be the least of our worries. The Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society have captured the courts. There are no judicial means to enact this. If it is challenged in court, it will lose. Waiting for Congress to act is hopium. Do it, then apologize for having to do the right thing.
What do you suppose the president has the power to do in this case?
That doesn’t seem like a reasonable or well thought-out idea.
I’m open to other ideas. But, we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas won’t cut it with fascism looming. Act in a utilitarian manner, and sort out the deficiencies later.
Why not? As an originalist constitutionalists, conservatives should laud a president who reduces the court back to its Constitutionally mandated 6 justices.
Point of order: the Constitution doesn’t set the number of justices, it gives that power to Congress.
Somehow the writers of that Wikipedia article managed to fit that information into the first sentence.
It sets a reasonable bar for discussion, and makes a great case of you read it. Maybe that last part is the problem…
I’m a 2A Loving Republican getting my Guns ready in case the Government gets TOO BIG and I HATE the idea of Term Limits. We need LIFETIME APPOINTMENTS in ALL Parts of the Government with NO WAY to recall or otherwise Punish people who are Corrupt!
I’m here for this satire. The random capitalization is what sets it off.
🥱
new favorite account 💖
“No one is above the law” seems a bit of circular with the fact that the law is what the Supreme Court says it is. Similarly, who would decide whether a Supreme Court judge violates the purported Code of Conduct?
I guess it would all come to the legislation branch, but even if the reform goes through, I’m afraid that the political division in the Congress would limit its effectiveness.
Similarly, who would decide whether a Supreme Court judge violates the purported Code of Conduct?
Congress could impeach them, but the bar is high and Republicans have proven they will vote for party over country multiple times.
I think the trick with the term limits is the way this also has teeth. My understanding of one way the term limits thing could work is by moving justices to a senior status… Still technically appointed (and for life) but just not in the starting lineup.
I would guess that if the above method is the approach, a binding ethics code could have as punishment moving a justice to senior status, effectively benching them.
Who would enforce the code of conduct on the supreme court would they have to be charged by a lower court? Or would it be congress or the president?
If this doesn’t pass, Biden should declare martial law until it does. He has the power, and he needs to use that power so that can lose that power. It needs to be dropped for future presidents, Democrat or Republican.
This has been a long time coming. here’s hoping the US gives Kamala a blue Congress so we can enact these changes.
Would have been nice to add insider trading by anyone in government to this list
Or any trading that isn’t just a basic market tracker.
Add term limits for all government leadership and legislative positions, too. Go back to making Congress a volunteered position where they hold a regular job back at home.
I disagree with the volunteer part because the boss could hold their job over their heads if they don’t vote how they want
And throw in an age limit too … start off with anyone over the age of 70 shouldn’t be allowed to continue in political office.
True. If we’re expected to retire at 65, so should they.
“You can now only retire at 90!”
