The Supreme Court is overblown

[User.45]

Seriously I think we'd just be better off being two countries. I apologize for offending any of you that live in one of "those" states.

Not that I live in any of "those" states, but it the nations leadership disproportionately represents "those" states at almost every level of the government, this is a legitimate concern...

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Seriously I think we'd just be better off being two countries. I apologize for offending any of you that live in one of "those" states.

It would be interesting to see something like a state draft. Have the obvious economically sound heavy hitters aligned and then move on to “and which side wants this welfare suck?” states. They’d have to really sell why you’d want to pick them and it would somewhat be free of traditional partisanship. Sure some states might politically align with the right or left, but this wouldn’t be about national votes. This would be about what the state has to offer to the new created countries. Being pro guns, anti abortion, or Christian God loving doesn’t contribute to the economy. If you have those things but are also a big welfare sponge I’m not so sure the new right wing country would welcome you aboard.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Seriously I think we'd just be better off being two countries. I apologize for offending any of you that live in one of "those" states.

Somedays, in a really bleak mood, I find myself thinking something similar, - reading US history of the 1850s makes sets my teeth on edge and - as a private citizen, rather than as a professional historian - I long to give the South a really severe booting - with the caveat that all women, and all people of colour retain their citizenship of the "proper" US with a right of access, asylum and refugee status.

White men who choose to remain in Those States and give their allegiance to such a world view, may have to face a citizenship test, should they wish to rejoin the human race, the kind that requires a successful candidate who sits it to make clear their support for principles such as the rule of law, separation of powers, basic human and civil rights (a category that includes workers, - labour - women, people of colour) and the radical idea that all ethnicities, races, social classes, and genders enjoy equal rights under the law.

 

[lizkat]

Except that this has become how they now operate. And justices (I use the term loosely) are now auditioning in advance for roles hoping to gain the attention of the president or someone in the Federalist Society who will point them out to the president. We need to return to the idea of fair and impartial. The one thing Gorsuch has going for him is that he takes the law as it is written, which is why he sided with the liberal justices on something I’ve now forgotten. But we’re getting to a point where this austere group is filling up with people who have a personal agenda that is not just fairly interpreting the law.

And yes. Term limits everywhere. There should be no such thing as a lifetime appointment.

I don't know how or whether term limits for the high court could be made retroactive, so the terms for current sitting justices and the one to replace RBG would probably be grandfathered? If not, we can expect that question to go to court, and how could the sitting justices not recuse themselves? A knotty problem. They'd probably have to agree to let a panel from the appeals courts decide what to do.

It will be interesting to see how Kavanaugh votes as time goes on. He tends to write narrowly focused opinions. So he may end up the swing vote in some surprising instances, which is probably another argument the GOP leadership is having right now over the nominee to fill Ginsburg's seat. As an originalist, Barrett is thought to be far more consistently "conservative" than Lagoa, and so far less likely to end up as a "David Souter or John Roberts" from the point of view of those who expect only right-leaning decisions from so-called conservative appointments to the bench.

But the political operatives from some swing states, especially Florida, have it in mind that a pick of Lagoa could make the election of Trump more likely. Not sure they understand Latinx politics... because anyone thinking that Puerto Rican exiles from Hurricane Maria are going to vote the same way that the American grandchildren of Batista-allied Cuban exiles will vote are perhaps willfully ignorant. Cubans and Venezuelans tend to favor Trump, but Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Mexicans not so much. Remains to be seen how that vote shakes out in 2020 but the polling over all lately is about 50-50 Trump v Biden. Not sure the court pick is high on their priority list.

Pick for the vacant seat aside, the possibility of Kavanaugh becoming the center of the Roberts court is problematic for that court's legacy (or else for Roberts himself, since he's also a conservative and may have taken some of his votes in the past in the interests of keeping the court from appearing too politically oriented).

Swing vote though he may be sometimes, Kavanaugh will not land there from the same considerations as Roberts may have entertained in certain key votes, so at best he becomes an occasional swing vote if the court takes a narrow view of a case.

The advent of another conservative on the court may make 6-3 the expected outcome for right-leaning Americans on cases that make national news, and Roberts siding with Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor cannot be expected to become a routine thing. The court is likely to be conservative for decades to come no matter if Barrett or Lagoa is nominated, barring a replacement for Thomas that is as upsetting to conservatives as the impending replacement of RBG.

Of course there's always the chance that Trump will make some other pick. He's Trump.

 

[lizkat]

Seriously I think we'd just be better off being two countries. I apologize for offending any of you that live in one of "those" states.

Not that I live in any of "those" states, but it the nations leadership disproportionately represents "those" states at almost every level of the government, this is a legitimate concern...

Sorry but I think the idea of the USA splitting into two countries is absurd. We haven't even done a truth and reconciliation process for our Civil War, never mind a proper reconstruction. The bitterness persists and will always be an undercurrent unless addressed in good faith as a national project.

So in case of a 21st century breach of our federal republic: which war shall the two new countries fight first? The one with each other, finish the Grey v Blue war? Or the one where the New Greys take on China and the New Blues take on Russia?

Mind you, China and Russia are both laughing their asses off if they are reading this drifty departure from a thread topic about the Supreme Court and a replacement for the late Justice Ginsburg.

We can't even agree on how to prevent a politicized minority court from overriding the will of the majority as expressed in selections of a president and Congress, so we decide instead to think about dividing the country in two and having two courts, two presidents, four houses of Congress... and no money,,,, thanks to covid-19 and a bunch of unfunded tax cuts?

 

[User.45]

Sorry but I think the idea of the USA splitting into two countries is absurd. We haven't even done a truth and reconciliation process for our Civil War, never mind a proper reconstruction. The bitterness persists and will always be an undercurrent unless addressed in good faith as a national project.

So in case of a 21st century breach of our federal republic: which war shall the two new countries fight first? The one with each other, finish the Grey v Blue war? Or the one where the New Greys take on China and the New Blues take on Russia?

Mind you, China and Russia are both laughing their asses off if they are reading this drifty departure from a thread topic about the Supreme Court and a replacement for the late Justice Ginsburg.

We can't even agree on how to prevent a politicized minority court from overriding the will of the majority as expressed in selections of a president and Congress, so we decide instead to think about dividing the country in two and having two courts, two presidents, four houses of Congress... and no money,,,, thanks to covid-19 and a bunch of unfunded tax cuts?

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Of course we shouldn't break it up. It doesn't change the fact that some states get disproportionate as per all objective measures.

 

[chagla]

Really unfortunate for America. accidental president picking so many for courts. He'll be gone soon or worst case in few years. but these people will be there for life. i think there should be term limit for all roles. senators, reps, judges.

 

[lizkat]

It would be interesting to see something like a state draft. Have the obvious economically sound heavy hitters aligned and then move on to “and which side wants this welfare suck?” states. They’d have to really sell why you’d want to pick them and it would somewhat be free of traditional partisanship. Sure some states might politically align with the right or left, but this wouldn’t be about national votes. This would be about what the state has to offer to the new created countries. Being pro guns, anti abortion, or Christian God loving doesn’t contribute to the economy. If you have those things but are also a big welfare sponge I’m not so sure the new right wing country would welcome you aboard.

If that right wing country had the mentality and bubblewrap around itself that the right has currently, it would figure that being correct on the core platform issues would qualify one for residence, and the only reason that a state blessed by such residents now might have some welfare recipients is those folks' benefits review hadn't come up yet to straighten them out about working for food, and anyway the US laws aren't tight enough to keep immigrants and other free-money-seekers out in the first place plus the Supreme Court still has too much say about a lot of things even if it is 6-3 in a godly direction now by the grace of almighty Don.


Fun facts department:

These are 28 American states that during the Great Depression had criminalized bringing an indigent person into the state if not a resident. Those states could, would and did arrest and incarcerate you for doing it. So no, you could not fetch your broke brother-in-law and sister from Texas to live in your California home when she wrote to say she was pregnant and her husband had no job.​

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When the Supreme Court finally ruled that law unconstitutional in 1941 (Edwards v California) it was not, however, based on violation of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th amendment but that the state law violated the Commerce Clause, i.e. interfered with states' rights of exchanges with each other that had potential for economic impact, including the movement of people.​

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At least the Court in their ruling on Edwards though did go one step towards destigmatizing poverty; the majority opinion also chose to assert that it was not true that “because a person is without employment and without funds, he constitutes a ‘moral pestilence'. Poverty and immorality are not synonymous."​

Good to know, huh? If you're broke in America you're not necessarily equal under our rule of law, but you are not automatically a moral pestilence either. Not sure they teach that any more in civics classes. Nonetheless the Court has yet to consider the poor a protected class per se under the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Of course this has bearing on the USA's unsustainable gap between the haves and the have-nots with respect to income and even more problematically, wealth. That gap exists in all US states, if not equally.


(Source on the references to Edwards v California = Adam Cohen's book Supreme inequality : the Supreme Court’s fifty-year battle for a more unjust America.)

 

[leekohler2]

Seriously I think we'd just be better off being two countries. I apologize for offending any of you that live in one of "those" states.

The problem is, if those states became a separate country they would be very poor. There would almost certainly be a war fairly quickly.

 

[Huntn]

I think it's time Democrats stack the court, Republicans have re-written the playbook and stacked everything in their favor without a second thought. If we get enough seats in Congress and Biden is up for it, we just change the landscape by adding more judges.

Fron NPR

How hard would that be? I assume control of Congress, a regular vote or a super majority needed?