Who here favors expanding the Supreme Court?

[Picaro]

As long as appointments are made by political parties what difference does it make how many there are, especially when none of them bother with the Constitution or precedent or original intent anyway and just make it all up according to ideological rubbish and partisanship? The Constitution died in 1861. Bury it already and do it over, or add a hundred judges and babble drivel for another 20 decades, won't matter either way; when your cultures and society are morally and emotionally bankrupt and infantile, so is any of your Courts going to be as well. All governments are almost perfect reflections of the majority of people they rule over, and the U.S. is no different.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Normally, when people say "power grab", they're talking about some underhanded way of consolidating power. When you say it here, you're simply referring to ANY maneuver that gains an advantage for one party or the other.

It is underhanded. You know this. It is only "acceptable" because we let them get away with it. So, what if the majority party in the Senate says, "no SCOTUS appointees in the last 2 years of your term" and lets the court go to 7 judges? Cool? Is that how we are going to play this now? I mean, what's 1 vs 2 years, for a lifetime appointment anyway? What's 3? How about, only in the first term? Still haven't broken any rules.

Or maybe the Democrats gain both chambers and the White House, and they all agree to have 17 judges on the court. So they appoint 8. ... Cool?

 

[Picaro]

We started out with five, we have nine now. See any big giant improvements in the quality of rulings?

Nah

India has 30. Why not have 30? Is India's legal system better? It has more judges, so it must be, right?

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

We started out with five, we have nine now. See any big giant improvements in the quality of rulings?

Nah

Your opinion is noted, Honorable Senator from LaLaland. The Democrat majority hereby confirms Judge Trannypants to the the 17th position on the court.

 

[Not2BSubjugated]

Normally, when people say "power grab", they're talking about some underhanded way of consolidating power. When you say it here, you're simply referring to ANY maneuver that gains an advantage for one party or the other.

It is underhanded. You know this. It is only "acceptable" because we let them get away with it. So, what if the majority party in the Senate says, "no SCOTUS appointees in the last 2 years of your term" and lets the court go to 7 judges? Cool? Is that how we are going to play this now? I mean, what's 1 vs 2 years, for a lifetime appointment anyway? What's 3? How about, only in the first term? Still haven't broken any rules.

Or maybe the Democrats gain both chambers and the White House, and they all agree to have 17 judges on the court. So they appoint 8. ... Cool?

I don't consider a republican senate majority implementing the same level of gridlock against a judicial appointment as a democrat senate minority exercised against multiple judicial appointments prior, to be the underhanded equivalence of shitting on the separation of powers in order to gain a political advantage, no.

Admittedly, this is a matter of opinion, since the latter isn't explicitly forbidden.

I would, however, like to see the constitution amended to make stacking the courts forbidden, while I consider it completely acceptable that a president, republican or democrat, might not be able to get their appointments past an adversarial senate if no compromise on those appointments can be reached. Better that the government does less when the nation is divided than that a system allows for one side to ride rough-shot over the other when there isn't a clear and significant majority.

 

[Picaro]

We started out with five, we have nine now. See any big giant improvements in the quality of rulings?

Nah

Your opinion is noted, Honorable Senator from LaLaland. The Democrat majority hereby confirms Judge Trannypants to the the 17th position on the court.

Was somebody talking to this deviant? I know it wasn't me, so he/she/it/mutant must be searching for male attention again.

 

[Picaro]

Normally, when people say "power grab", they're talking about some underhanded way of consolidating power. When you say it here, you're simply referring to ANY maneuver that gains an advantage for one party or the other.

It is underhanded. You know this. It is only "acceptable" because we let them get away with it. So, what if the majority party in the Senate says, "no SCOTUS appointees in the last 2 years of your term" and lets the court go to 7 judges? Cool? Is that how we are going to play this now? I mean, what's 1 vs 2 years, for a lifetime appointment anyway? What's 3? How about, only in the first term? Still haven't broken any rules.

Or maybe the Democrats gain both chambers and the White House, and they all agree to have 17 judges on the court. So they appoint 8. ... Cool?

I don't consider a republican senate majority implementing the same level of gridlock against a judicial appointment as a democrat senate minority exercised against multiple judicial appointments prior, to be the underhanded equivalence of shitting on the separation of powers in order to gain a political advantage, no.

Admittedly, this is a matter of opinion, since the latter isn't explicitly forbidden.

I would, however, like to see the constitution amended to make stacking the courts forbidden, while I consider it completely acceptable that a president, republican or democrat, might not be able to get their appointments past an adversarial senate if no compromise on those appointments can be reached. Better that the government does less when the nation is divided than that a system allows for one side to ride rough-shot over the other when there isn't a clear and significant majority.

We should change the qualifications and define reasonable standards, and then contract out finding suitable scholars for the posts to some country like Finland or some outside body rather then leave it to domestic political hacks to appoint and approve them.

 

[Not2BSubjugated]

Normally, when people say "power grab", they're talking about some underhanded way of consolidating power. When you say it here, you're simply referring to ANY maneuver that gains an advantage for one party or the other.

It is underhanded. You know this. It is only "acceptable" because we let them get away with it. So, what if the majority party in the Senate says, "no SCOTUS appointees in the last 2 years of your term" and lets the court go to 7 judges? Cool? Is that how we are going to play this now? I mean, what's 1 vs 2 years, for a lifetime appointment anyway? What's 3? How about, only in the first term? Still haven't broken any rules.

Or maybe the Democrats gain both chambers and the White House, and they all agree to have 17 judges on the court. So they appoint 8. ... Cool?

I don't consider a republican senate majority implementing the same level of gridlock against a judicial appointment as a democrat senate minority exercised against multiple judicial appointments prior, to be the underhanded equivalence of shitting on the separation of powers in order to gain a political advantage, no.

Admittedly, this is a matter of opinion, since the latter isn't explicitly forbidden.

I would, however, like to see the constitution amended to make stacking the courts forbidden, while I consider it completely acceptable that a president, republican or democrat, might not be able to get their appointments past an adversarial senate if no compromise on those appointments can be reached. Better that the government does less when the nation is divided than that a system allows for one side to ride rough-shot over the other when there isn't a clear and significant majority.

We should change the qualifications and then sub-contract out finding suitable scholars to Finland or some outside body rather then leave it to domestic political hacks to appoint and approve them.

If this were all purely academic, I would agree. Unfortunately values and bias play into the interpretation of the principles behind various laws and rulings, which in turn effects the interpretation of precedent for future rulings. Personally, I'd feel more comfortable with people grounded in the cultures and values that have developed with the American/English Common Law system. While, in the event of foreign scholars being appointed, the greater degree of emotional detachment would likely yield judges less apt to color their rulings with strong biases, those often less motivated biases might still make for even greater errors in judgement by way of minds developed in vastly different moral frameworks completely misunderstanding the specifics of the intent behind some of our legal mechanisms.

 

[basquebromance]

Mayor Pete!

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

don't consider a republican senate majority implementing the same level of gridlock against a judicial appointment as a democrat senate minority exercised against multiple judicial appointments prior, to be the underhanded equivalence of shitting on the separation of powers in order to gain a political advantage, no.

Okay. So, what's your time limit? 2 years? 3 years? Only in the first term? At what point does this annoy you? I mean, both parties get to play by the same rules, right?

Democrats win both chambers and the White House... they expand the SCOTUS to 17 judges and appoint 8. Cool?

 

[Not2BSubjugated]

don't consider a republican senate majority implementing the same level of gridlock against a judicial appointment as a democrat senate minority exercised against multiple judicial appointments prior, to be the underhanded equivalence of shitting on the separation of powers in order to gain a political advantage, no.

Okay. So, what's your time limit? 2 years? 3 years? Only in the first term? At what point does this annoy you? I mean, both parties get to play by the same rules, right?

Democrats win both chambers and the White House... they expand the SCOTUS to 17 judges and appoint 8. Cool?

There is no time limit that equates a senate majority stopping up a president's nominations with packing the supreme court.

Setting this precedent gives the potential, every time one party takes the presidency and the senate, for that party to completely bypass all constitutional bounds. You're talking about setting up an actual, literal oligarchy with unlimited power over the citizenry.

How you draw an equivalency between these concepts is beyond me.

 

[rightwinger]

That wasn't a power grab. The constitution already granted the senate the power to confirm or deny, and the voters put a republican majority in the senate.

if that is the case, then a Democratically elected Congress that adds seats to the courts is not a power grab

I won't deny that you have an argument, there, as there's no law explicitly forbidding it.

Whether or not one buys that argument depends on the importance that one places on the tradition of not resorting to breaking the system in order to gain advantage therein, in the absence of rules preventing such a move, and in comparison to breaking those actual rules.

Admittedly, this does expose a bit of a hole in my logic, and I appreciate that. Clearly this doesn't all fit as neatly into my own moral framework as I'd previously figured. Thanks for pointing that out.

Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.
Just because Republicans could block Obama from replacing Scalia, doesn’t mean they should have done it
It upset a long tradition of filling Supreme Court seats and started a war with Democrats that will not be resolved for a long time.

Same goes for Democrats packing the courts. Right now, I would advise against it. However, if Ginsburg were to die before the election and Republicans rammed through a replacement......I say all bets are off, do what you gotta do

 

[Seawytch]

2020 progressives open to adding justices to the Supreme Court, diminishing conservative majority

Some of the progressives vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination have said they’ll consider diminishing the conservative majority on the Supreme Court either by adding more justices or by imposing term limits.

www.washingtontimes.com

Long ago during the reign of FDR the nation experienced the Progressive attack on Constitutional law known as the Court Packing Scheme. Many of you probably have never even heard of it in school because schools only cast a favorable light on Progressives such as FDR, but it happened nonetheless. Essentially, SCOTUS had just struck down FDR's New Deal in many regards and he was pissed out of his mind, so he came up with a scheme to add Supreme Court Justices who would pass his legislation. Luckily, no one else wanted to go along with this blatant attempt to subvert the checks and balances set up by the Founders that stood in FDR's way. And Americans were overwhelmingly against the idea as well. This sort of corruption is what later prompted Congress to act to limit the terms of the President, with FDR who had just achieved his third term.

However, FDR is a Progressive god to Progressives today, and they are wanting to follow in his footsteps by trying to do what he tried to do long ago. The difference today is that you have about half the populace ready to follow the DNC no matter what it does or says, as opposed to Americans back in the 1040's who were aghast at the corruption of FDR and his Court Packing Scheme. Mark my words, once back in power they will attempt this because their agenda is so radical, they will need to rewrite the Constitution with the help of their Supreme Court Justice stooges.

So who here agrees with it?

The reasoning in the article was this:

“We can’t go on like this where every time there’s a vacancy, there’s this apocalyptic ideological battle,” he added.

But how would the ideological battle change with more Supreme Court justices? It makes not sense. Essentially, the battles would rage even more as more and more would need to be appointed.


This sort of thing is what we have to look forward to with a Biden win

I do support it...but in the way Mayor Pete described doing it.

He proposes 5 justices named by each of the parties then another 5 named by the justices themselves.

 

[JoeB131]

You know, when you had only said it twice, I really questioned the wisdom of your claim.

Now that you've repeated that claim a third time, however, everything seems so new and different. Thank you.

I doubt it, you guys often live in your own reality. You know, the reality that Dubya Bush knew what he was doing and Democrats were being mean to him.

 

[JoeB131]

Yeah, keep pushing irrelevant crap, that's all you commies have. The most votes only have relevance in the State where they are cast. But hey at least you admit you wish to destroy the federal system established by our founders.

Yes, a bad system designed by a bunch of dead slave rapists, should always be held as sacred.

The electoral college is a bad system designed by people who never intended for the vast majority to have a say in government to start with. Less than 1% of Americans voted in elections in the time of the Founding Slave Rapists.

The people clearly and loudly said no to Trump. But 68 Million Americans had their voices snuffed out by 306 Political Hacks, and you think it is a good thing.

167,000 Dead, 40 million jobs lost, Riots in the Streets, 33% drop in GDP... the people got this right and the hacks... well, I guess they got what they wanted, but that's another discussion.

 

[Not2BSubjugated]

You know, when you had only said it twice, I really questioned the wisdom of your claim.

Now that you've repeated that claim a third time, however, everything seems so new and different. Thank you.

I doubt it, you guys often live in your own reality. You know, the reality that Dubya Bush knew what he was doing and Democrats were being mean to him.

Lol, not a big fan of W, but he got fairly well brutalized in the press over the years. He got treated like an absolute retard on TV for a couple of gaffs that weren't all that crazy. Biden drops at least one worse gaff than any of the stupid W quotes, every time he gets in front of a camera these days. Even Trump says dumber shit than Bush did, from time to time.

But yeah, never liked the Patriot Act, and in retrospect it's hard to argue that the Iraq war wasn't a horrific idea.

 

[Votto]

You know, when you had only said it twice, I really questioned the wisdom of your claim.

Now that you've repeated that claim a third time, however, everything seems so new and different. Thank you.

I doubt it, you guys often live in your own reality. You know, the reality that Dubya Bush knew what he was doing and Democrats were being mean to him.

Lol, not a big fan of W, but he got fairly well brutalized in the press over the years. He got treated like an absolute retard on TV for a couple of gaffs that weren't all that crazy. Biden drops at least one worse gaff than any of the stupid W quotes, every time he gets in front of a camera these days. Even Trump says dumber shit than Bush did, from time to time.

But yeah, never liked the Patriot Act, and in retrospect it's hard to argue that the Iraq war wasn't a horrific idea.

Trump is the repudiation of the Bush era and Obama eras.

But Progs love them both.

 

[Votto]

2020 progressives open to adding justices to the Supreme Court, diminishing conservative majority

Some of the progressives vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination have said they’ll consider diminishing the conservative majority on the Supreme Court either by adding more justices or by imposing term limits.

www.washingtontimes.com

Long ago during the reign of FDR the nation experienced the Progressive attack on Constitutional law known as the Court Packing Scheme. Many of you probably have never even heard of it in school because schools only cast a favorable light on Progressives such as FDR, but it happened nonetheless. Essentially, SCOTUS had just struck down FDR's New Deal in many regards and he was pissed out of his mind, so he came up with a scheme to add Supreme Court Justices who would pass his legislation. Luckily, no one else wanted to go along with this blatant attempt to subvert the checks and balances set up by the Founders that stood in FDR's way. And Americans were overwhelmingly against the idea as well. This sort of corruption is what later prompted Congress to act to limit the terms of the President, with FDR who had just achieved his third term.

However, FDR is a Progressive god to Progressives today, and they are wanting to follow in his footsteps by trying to do what he tried to do long ago. The difference today is that you have about half the populace ready to follow the DNC no matter what it does or says, as opposed to Americans back in the 1040's who were aghast at the corruption of FDR and his Court Packing Scheme. Mark my words, once back in power they will attempt this because their agenda is so radical, they will need to rewrite the Constitution with the help of their Supreme Court Justice stooges.

So who here agrees with it?

The reasoning in the article was this:

“We can’t go on like this where every time there’s a vacancy, there’s this apocalyptic ideological battle,” he added.

But how would the ideological battle change with more Supreme Court justices? It makes not sense. Essentially, the battles would rage even more as more and more would need to be appointed.


This sort of thing is what we have to look forward to with a Biden win

I do support it...but in the way Mayor Pete described doing it.

He proposes 5 justices named by each of the parties then another 5 named by the justices themselves.

Increasing the numbers of justices does NOTHING about the fact that they are still political stooges with way too much power.

 

[JoeB131]

Lol, not a big fan of W, but he got fairly well brutalized in the press over the years.

5000 dead soldiers in Iraq and 1800 people who drowned in Katrina got "brutalized"... W just had people criticize his incompetence.

He got treated like an absolute retard on TV for a couple of gaffs that weren't all that crazy. Biden drops at least one worse gaff than any of the stupid W quotes, every time he gets in front of a camera these days. Even Trump says dumber shit than Bush did, from time to time.

Here's the thing. I voted for Dubya twice, and frankly, never really thought much about the dumb things he said. Or Biden. Or even Trump. Trump says dumb things, I usually ignore them. It's when he says racist things or callous things I worry. You know, like "It is what it is" when someone reminded him we have 160,000 Dead from TRUMP PLAGUE.

But yeah, never liked the Patriot Act, and in retrospect it's hard to argue that the Iraq war wasn't a horrific idea.

Yes, those were dumb things... and we all went along with them at the time. So shame on all of us.

 

[rightwinger]

I don't consider a republican senate majority implementing the same level of gridlock against a judicial appointment as a democrat senate minority exercised against multiple judicial appointments prior, to be the underhanded equivalence of shitting on the separation of powers in order to gain a political advantage, no.

You don’t consider denying a President the right to fill a vacancy to be a problem?