The usual suspects are grousing about President Biden's promise to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. That's racist. He should nominate whoever is best qualified!
Sure, sure. Everyone knows the truth here: there is no such thing as a "best qualified" nominee. There are dozens of well-qualified nominees, any of whom would do fine on the Supreme Court. All that really matters is that you restrict yourself to this pool.
So if Biden thinks it's high time that a Black woman served on the Supreme Court—and surely it is—he's not bypassing "better qualified" prospects. He's just picking from the pool of qualified candidates, the same way everyone else does. When he finds the person who fits his judicial philosophy best, that's who he'll nominate. And she'll be just as qualified as anyone else.
POSTSCRIPT: It's worth noting that nobody pretends to nominate the "best qualified" person. Unless, that is, you think it's just a wild coincidence that 5½ out of the six sitting justices nominated by Republican presidents are Catholic.
Of course that’s right, but the messaging is wrong. How can we move to the center when we embrace identity as a quality to consider? The center really hates that. So this just upsets the whole pivot. It’s been exposed as empty rhetoric.
Sure, if I were a voting Senator, I would refuse just a list of "black women" . White savior attitudes must change along with black denial of its own racism, which is holding back its people with its cultural rot.
There is no center. Unless you mean the low-info undecideds.
I was referring to Mr. Drum’s comment the other day.
“Move a little bit toward the center in order to attract votes from people in states like North Carolina, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, and so forth. This doesn't require abandoning any principles or making wholesale changes in our policy preferences. It just requires reining in a few excesses here and there to make us less scary.”
The identity qualification is, I think, one of those excesses which turns off these voters. That’s why republicans are all over it.
The identity qualification is, I think, one of those excesses which turns off these voters. That’s why republicans are all over it.
I think you're right, but Biden can't back out now. The problem was announcing a racial/gender litmus test in public in the first place. Disavowing that promise at this juncture would be politically untenable for the president.
In many ways I think Democratic politicians underestimate and infantilize Black voters. On the one hand the party is overwhelmingly reliant on their votes (a modest dip in Black turnout and vote share was positively disastrous for Hillary Clinton in 2016). On the other hand, it's pretty likely Kamala Harris wasn't a difference-maker on the ticket in 2020 (at least I don't think so). I believe the overwhelming majority of Black voters were galvanized to send Trump packing, and would have supported Biden no matter who he chose as running mate, and even without promises of a Supreme Court pick. It's the worst kind of pandering: the politically unnecessary kind.
Also, for the record, if anything I think the potential political benefit of nominating a Black woman to the court would surely be greater if it weren't so plainly telegraphed in advance. There will be no element of surprise when her name is announced!
"infantilizing" is a good way to describe a lot of identity politics. There is a point where, for me, it becomes insulting.
Nah.
Black voters deserve a little giveback for unfailingly boosting Democrat candidates in the years since the GQP went south. So, why not two BIPOC Californians with Kamala as VP & Leandra Kruger to the Supremes?
It's no different than Kennedy being the 1960 presidential pick, even though there were other, much less objectionably religious candidates to choose from. Catholics had been to that point a loyal Democrat urban base, & deserved a candidate. (Of course, it's too bad so many Papist voters since have been putting their ethnic identity (Polish, Croat, Hungarian, Italian) first & turned into Lester Maddox Democrats voting straight ticket GQP, but who could have known color was thicker than creed for those Slavic &/or Southern European mongrels?)
Black voters in the USA deserve not to be treated as an essentialised block by Left intellos hanging their indentarian political fads on them.
OK BOOM--... BERNIE.
Kruger has an outstanding resume, but she would be painted as a California liberal by the GOP and the media, plus progressives will turn on Biden and accuse him of colorism if Kruger is nominated. Better to stick with Ketanji Brown Jackson, who already works in DC and has been vetted for the federal courts twice with some bi-partisan support. She's the obvious pick, unless she's not interested for whatever reason. Biden can nominate Kruger to fill the then vacant spot on the circuit court, assuming Kruger is willing to relocate her family to the DC area.
Earl Warren with a vajayjay.
Black voters deserve a little giveback for unfailingly boosting Democrat candidates in the years since the GQP went south.
Sure. But that would be accomplished without announcing it advance. Biden's campaign promise has turned it into a literal quota.
If this were handled like Obummer's appointment of Sotomayor, Yung Bibi from Georgetown would still call the Black jurist an intellectual lightweight.
Sadly amusing the Lefty intello sneering at everyone not in their fringe faction. Pre Trump this was a bonus, your political incompetence. Post Trump, a danger.
Yes, it seems unneeded fault, one can have the quiet internal rule of going for a black woman, but keep a public pretence of flexibility, and when your choice is a black woman, you have two wins.
This isn’t difficult at all, really. Trump appointed 57 judges to the appeals and supreme courts over four years.
Not one was Black. Zero.
Biden was right to promise to open the door that Republicans had slammed shut for four long years.
Democrats shouldn’t be ashamed of reversing the nasty bigotry of Republicans. They should be proud.
Yes. The center - made up of mostly suburbanites who in turn are made up of mostly white Americans - abhor identity politics. They also happen to be the biggest consumers of services like 23andMe and Ancestry.com, so they can brag about being exactly 27% Irish, 38% Italian, etc. Completely unrelated phenomena.
Pandering never looks good.
Bringing back Bill Climpton's Pander Bear nickname.
I like it.
“I am announcing today that one of the first Supreme Court vacancies in my administration will be filled by the most qualified woman I can possibly find. … It is time for a woman to sit among the highest jurists.”--Ronald Reagan
Sure. But it's okay when a Republican does it.
Also, Ronnie didn't know that Sandra Day O'Connor would blow it on Planned Parenthood v. Casey with the same panache as Nancy.
For the Republicans, qualified only means member in good standing of the Federalist Society.
Leonard-Leo groomed and approved, for sure . . .
Which is why I found McConnell's warning about not putting up a nominee farmed out to far left interest groups so rich. The last three were all put forth by the Federalist society. The only qualification? Being a right wing hack.
The other thing about expediting a nomination for a Black woman is you don't know when the next opening is. Sotomayor for instance was in the ondeck circle for Bill Climpton, but no one retired after 1994, & eight years of W. intervened until the next Dem.
Well, rules are for Democrats. And the non-rich. McConnell and his ilk have firmly established that law of Republican politics ... and it'll take a Democratic supermajority to change it. LOTS of Dem supermajorities.
Elaine Chao's shipping business did nothing wrong.
The Republicans would support the drunken lout at the local dive bar, if they were against gun control and abortion, over any person Biden picks.
They already did support the drunken lout at the local dive bar. He sits on the court right now.
👍👍👍👍
But he coaches his daughter's basketball team, & Ben Wittes said Barf's a sweet hang in the school carpool, too.
Kavanaugh deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Missed opportunity for Kavanaugh partisans: campaign buttons with the motto "Good Enough for Squi is Good Enough for Me!"
I couldn't understand why Biden made the promise during the primary. Was it really a factor in getting Black support? There are already Black justices, and female justices. I agree that if he wants to appoint a Black woman that's his prerogative, but he invited predictable attacks for announcing it in advance of the actual Black woman he's going to choose.
Well, in reality, the Republicans were going to attack anything Joe Biden did or said. That's just a given. Ditto for the right-wing-worked media. Gotta go after that Dem president, or they'll say we're "librulz!"
Why not announce you will pick a black woman, given that there are plenty of them who are totally qualified to sit on the Supreme Court? Women and folks of color form the backbone of the Democratic Party. Time to make sure they get a seat at the table ... and on the bench!
I couldn't understand why Biden made the promise during the primary
Politicians sometimes make own goals. In other news a dog sometimes bites a man.
Biden was VP when Obama appointed two Supreme Court justices and over 50 appellate court judges. Having served on the Senate Judiciary Committee for over 15 years and having chaired it for seven years, he knew the judiciary backwards adn forwards and was an important advisor to Obama for judicial appointments.
When he made the promise to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court, he had a deep knowledge of all the potential candidates, including their races and genders. He wasn't saying, when the time comes I'll pull a Black woman's name out of a hat. He was saying, I know who I want and, if I'm elected, when the time comes I'll appoint her.
El Pepe Maximo is not Skee-lo: confirmed.
I just assumed when he said that that he had a particular person in mind. If I knew I were going to hire Kevin for a job, I could say with 100% certainty "my next hire is going to be from California." Instead, everyone seems to be assuming that he's now coming up with a short list with like 10 black women on it where they have to find the Best Black Woman to meet his promise from 2019. But I mean, when they did the Merrick Garland nomination late in the Obama administration (just 3 years before he made the promise) there were presumably other candidates that got short list vetting and considered but ultimately not picked (perhaps because they thought they couldn't get through the R-controlled Senate as easily as Garland- ha!) and now are available.
Kagan was a meh pick, Sotomayor a brilliant one. Nothing especially useful in Obama's lists.
Obama wanted the white guy. The elite wanted a jooie friend.
Just say ( ( ( Garland ) ) ).
It's fewer characters, like how NFL scouts predraft reduced UCLA (sorry, USC fanboi Drum!) qb stud Josh Rosen's Kaepernick tendencies to an echo.
Kagan was a "meh pick"? That's a really ignorant comment. You know nothing about her, the court, or her role on it.
She was. She was a comity pick.
Srinivasan should have been the call... that time. (God, I wish Ilya Shapiro were a time traveler from 2010 & not a racist Heeb from Crown Heights c. 1991.)
Thanks for posting this. At any given time you have to think that among our 330 million people there are tens of thousands across the country who have the training, experience, and overall chops to be at least excellent SC justices, and probably several thousand who could be superlative. This isn't a process of sifting the legal profession for judicial chops alone.
It could have been more that way back in 1789 when we had about 4 million people and legal training and experience were far less common, but even then it wouldn't have been a herculean task to find a handful of people suited to the positions.
It's Affirmative Action, dummy.
The deeply cherished excuse for the failure/stagnation of your career plan. You'd be head of the company if it wasn't for that Black/Brown/Asian/female who got the job instead.
It'll take three days tops before you hear "Affirmative Action candidate" on Fox.
They'll say that to entertain the MAGAs, but it won't resonate much with the average white American, who isn't about to grit his or her teeth about the Supreme Court seat that should rightfully have been theirs.
And the fact that not one of the 57 judges Trump appointed to the appeals and supreme courts was Black . . . Just a coincidence.
Someone needs to call out the hateful bigotry of Republicans who slammed the door shut on Blacks for four long years.
I disagree in that I think it's bad to pre-limit the pool.
You are looking to nominate a black woman yeah okay. But what if a not black woman blows your socks off with how they can obliterate federalist society or undo the republican revolution? I don't want to miss the outside chance we can get a super star. If everyone is just greatly qualified sure pick the black woman.
"what if a not black woman blows your socks off with how they can obliterate federalist society or undo the republican revolution?"
Whoever Biden appoints to replace Breyer will help change the 6-3 conservative majority on the Court to . . . a 6-3 conservative majority. Nobody appointed to this seat will be obliterating or undoing anything. We need to replace 2 of the republican appointees while not losing any more liberals in order to be able to swing the court. No conservative justice has been replaced by a liberal in decades, and we're unlikely to get the chance for a long time, as even Thomas and Alito still have likely ten years or more on the bench (and conservative justices don't tend to make RBG-level mistakes by failing to strategically retire).
So buckle up; no matter who Biden nominates, we're likely in for a quarter-century of neo-Lochner era fundamental reframing of how this country works.
Unless/until Democrats someday find the stones and the votes to expand the court and/or or limit its jurisdiction, yes.
I must agree with you, regretfully. IANAL, but I just skimmed Biden v. Missouri, the case that decided health care workers can be required to be vaccinated against Covid-19. I’ll cite just one example from Justice Thomas’ dissent, in which Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Barrett concurred. It concerns 42 U. S. C. §1395x(e), which ‘provides that a “hospital” must also “mee[t] such other requirements as the Secretary finds necessary in the interest of the health and safety of individuals who are furnished services.”
Justice Thomas really wishes Congress had written ‘like requirements’, meaning requirements very similar to some the law enumerates in preceding subsections, so that he can construe this provision in the narrowest possible way. So he insists that we must read ‘such other’ to mean ‘like’. This deliberate misreading doesn’t stem from a set of judicial principles or a judicial philosophy, but from an agenda - an agenda to drastically limit the power of the Federal government. In my opinion, Justice Thomas would cripple the Federal government fatally. It is simply not possible, given the complexity of the modern world, for Congress to anticipate the details of every action that may be necessary to fulfill its obligations to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”. The expertise to apply the law by developing detailed regulations resides of hundreds of thousands in Executive departments and agencies. That is the system that Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Barrett want to tear down. That is radicalism, not conservatism.
Sorry, forgot to close italics tag after case.
Basically, fools like Bill Kristol & Miles Taylor & Charlie Sykes want Biden to use a reverse Rooney rule & interview a coupla white jurists, for appearances, even if the decision was already made to pick a Black woman.
Same reason the Broncos asked permission to interview Brian Flores (how fucking stupid is Stephen Ross, anyway?) even though the truly merit-based hire of second generation NFL offensive assistant Nathaniel Hackett was already baked in
Hyperbole but look, Scalia almost made the mistake in 2016. Even other republicans probably wouldn't have the imagination+lack of soul to hold together the GOP caucus like turtle. Prosecute Ginni Thomas and who knows what might happen?
And from a jurisprudence standpoint the groundwork should be laid for a complete repudiation of opus dei/federalist society doctrine the way the right did it. Sotomayor can't do it alone besides she has diabetes and hispanic women die fast.
She does have Supremes healthcare coverage, though.
Plus, look at Clarence: Black, over 70, & obese. But still kicking.
Pretty sure Alito's blood is at least 50% aioli, as well.
"And from a jurisprudence standpoint the groundwork should be laid for a complete repudiation of opus dei/federalist society doctrine the way the right did it."
That's a 50-year plan, man.
Huh? Biden has known for years there are several superstar candidates. It’s not like he woke up yesterday and said, “Oh, gee, I’d better find out if there are actually any qualified Black women to serve on the Court.”
In fact, he nominated the leading candidate to the Court of Appeals.
There is no super secret star that would somehow change the direction of the current court. It's a myth Republicans like to trot out whenever a Dem nominates someone they don't like for the court.
This is the same reason why I think Biden ought to pick someone outside of the East Coast Elite system. SCOTUS is a fraternity of cronyism, a self-perpetuating mythos of the brightest and most qualified.
What do you think would happen if SCOTUS rotated its location between regions? I think the East Coast Elite system's hold on the judicial network would fall apart and we would witness true diversity.
You seriously think the judicial reasoning of exhaustively-vetted Yale and Harvard grads will be magically transformed by moving them to Kansas City or Huntsville?
No. I think the locally available talent will be physically closer to where the action is, providing them access to SCOTUS as law clerks, etc.
Bam!
"I think the locally available talent will be physically closer to where the action is, providing them access to SCOTUS as law clerks, etc."
That's kind of silly. SCOTUS clerks are already drawn from a national pool. Your argument is akin to suggesting that if we moved the White House to Lincoln Nebraska there'd be a lot more wheat farmers in the Cabinet.
If you are interested in having fewer Yalesters and Harvardis on the court, the tactic should be nominating people from other schools to fill vacancies. Although I'd prefer nominating folks who have had careers as defense attorneys, working for nonprofits, and/or served as trial court judges as a balance to the benchful of resumes chockablock with BigLaw partnerships, academia, and appellate-only careers.
And yet, the East Coast Elite system is a feeder program directing its members into SCOTUS and the positions within -- a closed loop.
Oh sure, the occasional outsider gets in, but that's not disruption; that's tokenism (if you're cynical).
As for the wheat farmer analogy, c'mon. Are wheat farmers qualified by the fact that they are wheat farmers, to serve in an administration's cabinet? That is not what I suggested, and you know better.
And yet, the East Coast Elite system is a feeder program directing its members into SCOTUS and the positions within -- a closed loop.
That's true. But again, why does physically moving the court change that? Planes and trains have existed a long time! The only way to reduce the influence of the Ivy legal establishment is to prioritize nominating people from different backgrounds. Washington has no stomach for that, because, if anything, the massive increase in the political importance of the Supreme Court ensures a high level of (small c) conservatism with respect to filling vacancies: you can't afford to screw up the process—which means tapping only those jurists who possess highly conventional backgrounds. Which in turn means the ticket-punchers and resume-builders who have graduated from fancy law schools, done prestigious clerkships, worked at DOJ, taught at fancy law schools, etc. Going for a "conventional" background is essentially a vetting mechanism to maximize the likelihood you've chosen a reliably confirmable nominee, as well as one whose future decisions are deemed predictable with respect to ideology.
As I said, Biden should appoint someone from outside the East Coast Elite system. That's my first choice.
But it is absolutely true that economies of agglomeration matter. If SCOTUS moved to SLC as Monty suggested, we're not just talking about the law clerks; it's a whole industry and firms located within physical proximity to SCOTUS. Even if those East Coast Elites choose to move themselves to the proximity of SCOTUS in SLC, who benefits from that? SLC, the Rockies, and the west coast generally.
I'm sure there are more feasible means to achieve something similar. I'm all ears.
I already said move the Supremes, physically, to Salt Lake City.
Even ignoring improved knowledge, education and the Flynn Effect there are 130 John Marshalls in the US today. Ditto any other of the founders.
As I understand it, the person that Biden is most likely to pick is Ketanji Brown Jackson. In another non-Trumpian time she would have gotten a lot of bi-partisan approval. Not nowadays. Do Republicans even consider Paul Ryan a “Republican” any more:
Ryan even testified on Brown’s behalf when she was nominated to the district court in 2012, offering his “unequivocal” endorsement of her qualifications in recommending her for the bench.
“Our politics may differ, but my praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, for her integrity is unequivocal,” Ryan said at her December 2012 nomination hearing. “She’s an amazing person, and I favorably recommend her consideration.”
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/potential-supreme-court-nominee-family-house-speaker-paul/story?id=37187861
Ah, but things are very different today. She was confirmed to the DC District Court by a voice vote in 2013. Eight years later she only got three Republican votes when she was promoted to the DC Circuit.
To be fair, Brown is an in-law of Ryan. So he had nothing to lose by being gracious and everything to gain—like being able to eat Thanksgiving dinner at the table instead of in the basement rec room.
I second what Kevin said, and chuckling at raino2's post re Reagan.
The usual suspects are grousing about President Biden's promise to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court
I think Biden indeed ought to place a Black woman on the court. Why not? It's high time! Not going to lie, though: the announcement in advance strikes me as unseemly. I mean, there's never been an Asian-American of either gender on the court, either (right?). Sorry, Ms. Zhang, no need to apply!
Unless, that is, you think it's just a wild coincidence that 5½ out of the six sitting justices nominated by Republican presidents are Catholic
I'm not sure what Kevin is implying here. It seems to me the reason the court is packed with right wing Catholics is that Catholics are overrepresented amongst the ranks of conservative legal scholars (possibly owing to the comparatively weak tradition of scholarship associated with modern evangelical Protestantism. And mainline confessions, of course, are filled with liberals). In other words, the Catholic-packing by GOP presidents isn't a play for Catholic votes but rather a quest for ideological reliability.
From context, I think Kevin was referring to proportion of Catholics in the general population vs proportion of recent Catholic nominees of republican presidents, as in "yeah, we're only nominating the best people out there without regard to anything else at all." Just coincidence that they've all been vetted by Leonard Leo, Opus Dei-affiliated Catholic activist, with the Federalist Society as his force multiplier.
Actually, if one were really trying to choose only the best qualified jurists, we'd expect to see a court that's non-representative of the composition of the general public. Attaining a highly representative court would require ignoring objective qualification standards in favor of, well, quotas.
I suppose I might have to go along with that as a hypothetical at the extremes, but we have to recognize that "best qualified" and "objective qualification standards" are doing a lot of work here. Is, for example, the "ideological reliability" you mentioned earlier among those objective standards?
Kinda sorta like how many more Trills were suitable for joining with symbionts than the Trill establishment was willing to let on…
Ah, the classics! Thanks for the reminder.
The "best qualified" Supreme Court nominee in the past few decades was probably Merrick Garland (24 years, including 7 as Chief Judge, on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the most important appellate court in the nation) and he didn't even get a hearing. There's no way Gorsuch (10 years on the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver) was more qualifed, but he got Garland's seat. So if a Republican asks why Biden isn't picking the "best qualifed" nominee, ask why the best qualified nominee didn't get a hearing in 2016.
+1
Lindsay Graham's existence is already awkward enough. Don't make him have to twist even more.
I hope so because he's definitely not qualified to be AG.
LOL.
RE: your postscript.
GW Bush announced Clarence Thomas as the "best candidate" to replace Thurgood Marshall on the SC in 1991. On that day I rolled my eyes and I still wonder how the hell such an inexperienced and, given his record on the court, incompetent, pardon the phrase, Oreo, could have been considered a suitable replacement for Thurgood Marshall.
Good god, the man has turned out to be one of the foremost enemies of civil rights in the last couple of generations. He never saw a precedent he wouldn't like to overturn unless it was Dred Scott.
So sometimes presidents do put up manifestly ill qualified candidates for the court. To this day I cannot fathom how in the hell 11, yes 11 Democrats supported him in the final Senate vote, which he survived 52 to 48., even after the committee passed him out 13-1 without a recommendation. God fucking god.
Biden convinced them, remember?
Of course he didn't. He voted against him both in committee and on the floor.
Thank you.
I used to be like SpecialNewb & think joebiden voted yea on Thomas to the Supremes. But as I was later about Gov. Jolson of Virginia, I was wrong.
That would have been George H. W. Bush, not "Bush the Lesser."
And yes, Judge Clarence has been an awful choice. Didn't he go without speaking for a couple of decades? Just sat there on the bench during hearings, looking hostile and angry? (Maybe there weren't enough pubic hairs on his Coke can?) And, off the clock, running around with his GOP operative blonde wife, giving hostile, angry speeches to the extreme right wingers?
Although, as a Republican justice, Thomas has been perfect.
Thomas was perfectly well qualified to serve on the Supreme Court at the time of his nomination. In 1991 he was a federal judge who held a degree from Yale Law, had worked as an assistant AG in Missouri, done a stint in corporate law, worked in the US Senate, and then DOJ.
I think what you mean is you didn't like his ideology. I didn't either. And still don't. But he was plainly qualified for that job.
I was amusing to watch some lefty cable news talking heads try to explain / justify the black female requirement. I think this is what the right wingers call “owning the libs”. Why do these bloggers, pundits, tweeters, and talking heads always take the bait? It’s kid of embarrassing.
Oh yeah… ratings and click bait. Well, I hope it was worth it.
To think we have to argue about this stuff so these media hacks can get paid by Amazon selling some worthless piece of junk… it’s sad and pathetic.
Kevin is right, and almost everyone else here is wrong. Biden announcing his intentions is a trap the crazies are already storming into. Again - it's a trap that will yield a lot of political benefit for Biden and Democrats. A lot, and it's going to hurt Republicans badly, especially the harder they fight which they will, and they're going to get ugly, very ugly, in part because they know they;re trapped, and the only tool they have is to fight as dirty as they can. It's a trap, and a very well layed one.
A dozen "likes", sir!
Opposing the nomination is what will cause Republicans political harm. They'll oppose her (whoever she is) whether or not Biden announces his nominee's race and gender in advance. Doing so, as he's done, doesn't add or detract to the opposition we're going to see out of the GOP.
No country in the world does judicial appointments quite like the United States. Where else do individual high court judges so often become household names, or the subject of breaking news, or grist for the political mill?
The selection process for the U.S. Supreme Court appears unusually political compared to other democracies and there are no term limits on the U.S. Supreme Court
France’s Constitutional Council has nine permanent members, of which one-third are replaced every three years by the executive branch, Switzerland’s top judges face six-year terms before facing reelection.
In Germany, a committee of 12 members representing all parties in Parliament selects a nominee behind closed doors. The parties take turns in proposing candidates, a mechanism that ensures even smaller parties with as little as 5 percent of popular support can propose a nominee every few years, usually without facing resistance from the government.
A two-thirds majority of Parliament is needed to confirm a nominee, which requires broad consensus between parties
U.S. Supreme Court justices hold more power than all of their foreign counterparts . It is the justices who now decide the controversial issues of our time. Issues like abortion and same-sex marriage , gun control, campaign finance voting rights
That much power in the hands of single persons is an abomination in a democracy of the 21th century
Your Supreme Court was supposed to be the “apolitical” branch of the government. The framers of the Constitution intended the Court to be insulated from the chaotic process politics was at the time and still is .
They totally misjudged it … on this also.
The unfortunate truth is that the polarization of your Supreme Court will have dire consequences for the Court if it persists
If the justices remain this polarized, how can one possibly separate Constitutional law from normal politics?
Greetings from your favorite Swedish troll
PS …this was a tricky one to write, it sure took me some time.
You are free to completely thrash my rudeness but please don’t complain on my English
Most of the issues you cite are the result of the two party system except term limits which could only be fixed by constitutional amendment.
It's why I always say a proportional parliamentary system is generally superior.
But elections are just bad, lol.
Us elations is a never ending farce….
Sigh…
Auto Correct!
I usually write my comments elsewhere, not directly in this square
It should have been:
US elections are a never ending farce!
Have a nice day
Hey, we're so depraved here in the U S of A that in most places, we actually elect our judges! Per Charlie Pierce, this is the Second Worst Idea in American politics.
The first worst is a Balanced Budget Amendment.
…and prosecutors, that’s also “only in the US of A “
Permanent = replaced every three years?
How about commenting on my comment instead?
The US is a common law system, which gives judges far more power than the European civil law systems.
New Zealand, Canada , UK , Ireland is just some examples of countries that has positive ratings by World Justice Projects, they haven’t deteriorated in the same way … I guess one cannot blaming “Common Law”
There is also an intersection with the inability of the us legislative system to implement policy.
So many veto points.
The supreme court is simply the least accountable veto making it an ideal tool for a negative policy agenda.
We could set it up so that a Justice is appointed every 2 years. And maybe revise the "advise and consent" so ignoring is not an option....
It’s easy to be against identity politics when all the groups you identify with are overrepresented in all the best neighborhoods, schools & jobs.