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The Supreme Court is the only branch of government that still has legitimacy — bringing it to the Senate will make it just another political football.

by ponker 6y ago

MiroF 6y ago
> the only branch of government that still has legitimacy Legitimacy w.r.t. what? What is it that the Supreme Court has that congress is lacking?
- crocodiletears 6y ago
  Respect? A basic perception of goodwill and competence? The Supreme Court has a very narrow mission statement, and it generally executes on it well. Congresspeople sabre rattle on TV, submit symbolic legislation with poison pills and take turns abstaining on legislation they don't want passed but their constituents do, and hide whatever they want to pass in unrelated legislation (budgets, usually). They eagerly devolve every responsibility they can to the executive branch, and seem incapable of voting against their own or the intelligence community's interests. The only principled one seem to be single-issue legislators who couldn't tell the ass-end of a horse from its head if it was unrelated to their obsession. During depositions they spend more time chasing soundbites and executing partisan jabs than trying to extract any information in the public interest. Many of them seem to care more about the rest of the country than they ever could about their district or their states. Edit: As a punctuation, here's the late John McCain's wife saying 'we all knew', wrt Eptsein https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QENiaUaoJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QENiaUaoJo
  - Nimitz14 6y ago
    > This latest development should certainly call into question the haphazard rules and procedural tricks that allot Trump the power to decisively tip the scales of justice in his favor. Pressed further, one might also ask: Why should the Supreme Court, an unelected body that is richer, whiter, and more male than the United States is, continue to have such outsized power in the lives of ordinary people I think the arguments (that go against yours) in this article are relevant: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-case-for-ending-the-supreme-court-as-we-know-it https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-case-for-e...
    - crocodiletears 6y ago
      I can understand the author's frustration with the court's decisions, and generally agree with his complaints that the court has historically served as a breaking mechanism on social progress. But molany of the examples he cites are exactly what the Supreme Court is suposed to be doing, serving to moore the federal government's reach into daily life, and local governance by interpreting the constitution, and leveraging historical precedent. Initial appointment is inevitably a political affair. But once the justice is in, the justice is in, and you pray that their interpretation of law is what you wanted it to be, because you're not going to remove them. Now, you could argue that the Supreme Court will increasingly lose its legitimacy, since a filibuster is no longer enough to prevent an overtly politically motivated appointment. You could also argue thattimes have changed, and the relatively degenerate state of state level authority means that the confirmation process should be moved to the house, rather than the senate. But these would be relatively new criticisms and proposals that have yet to be spread and be internalized widely enough as to make the whole institution illegitimate in the public's eye.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
redisman 6y ago
I feel like that is about to come to an end now that the appointments have become the biggest political events of the year. Yay home team! Everyone in the US knows that the setup is 6-3, does the fact that those numbers exist not make it already deeply political.
tathougies 6y ago
Well no because the six number refers to that coalition that doesn't believe in legislating from the bench. It should be the case that all nine justices of the supreme court believe they are not legislators. For example RBG has said several times that roe v wade was wrongly decided. An impartial judge would therefore believe in striking it down but she voted not to do so several times. Unfortunately many justices still believe that their job is not solely to interpret laws established via democratic processes.

The Supreme Court is the only branch of government that still has legitimacy — bringing it to the Senate will make it just another political football.

by ponker 6y ago

The Supreme Court is the only branch of government that still has legitimacy — bringing it to the Senate will make it just another political football.

MiroF 6y ago

> the only branch of government that still has legitimacy Legitimacy w.r.t. what? What is it that the Supreme Court has that congress is lacking?

crocodiletears 6y ago
Respect? A basic perception of goodwill and competence? The Supreme Court has a very narrow mission statement, and it generally executes on it well. Congresspeople sabre rattle on TV, submit symbolic legislation with poison pills and take turns abstaining on legislation they don't want passed but their constituents do, and hide whatever they want to pass in unrelated legislation (budgets, usually). They eagerly devolve every responsibility they can to the executive branch, and seem incapable of voting against their own or the intelligence community's interests. The only principled one seem to be single-issue legislators who couldn't tell the ass-end of a horse from its head if it was unrelated to their obsession. During depositions they spend more time chasing soundbites and executing partisan jabs than trying to extract any information in the public interest. Many of them seem to care more about the rest of the country than they ever could about their district or their states. Edit: As a punctuation, here's the late John McCain's wife saying 'we all knew', wrt Eptsein https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QENiaUaoJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QENiaUaoJo
- Nimitz14 6y ago
  > This latest development should certainly call into question the haphazard rules and procedural tricks that allot Trump the power to decisively tip the scales of justice in his favor. Pressed further, one might also ask: Why should the Supreme Court, an unelected body that is richer, whiter, and more male than the United States is, continue to have such outsized power in the lives of ordinary people I think the arguments (that go against yours) in this article are relevant: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-case-for-ending-the-supreme-court-as-we-know-it https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-case-for-e...
  - crocodiletears 6y ago
    I can understand the author's frustration with the court's decisions, and generally agree with his complaints that the court has historically served as a breaking mechanism on social progress. But molany of the examples he cites are exactly what the Supreme Court is suposed to be doing, serving to moore the federal government's reach into daily life, and local governance by interpreting the constitution, and leveraging historical precedent. Initial appointment is inevitably a political affair. But once the justice is in, the justice is in, and you pray that their interpretation of law is what you wanted it to be, because you're not going to remove them. Now, you could argue that the Supreme Court will increasingly lose its legitimacy, since a filibuster is no longer enough to prevent an overtly politically motivated appointment. You could also argue thattimes have changed, and the relatively degenerate state of state level authority means that the confirmation process should be moved to the house, rather than the senate. But these would be relatively new criticisms and proposals that have yet to be spread and be internalized widely enough as to make the whole institution illegitimate in the public's eye.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

redisman 6y ago

I feel like that is about to come to an end now that the appointments have become the biggest political events of the year. Yay home team! Everyone in the US knows that the setup is 6-3, does the fact that those numbers exist not make it already deeply political.

tathougies 6y ago

Well no because the six number refers to that coalition that doesn't believe in legislating from the bench. It should be the case that all nine justices of the supreme court believe they are not legislators. For example RBG has said several times that roe v wade was wrongly decided. An impartial judge would therefore believe in striking it down but she voted not to do so several times. Unfortunately many justices still believe that their job is not solely to interpret laws established via democratic processes.