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As a foreigner Presidential pardons + the appointment (and life terms) of Supreme Court judges baffle me. How can a country that claims to be a leader in democr

by kjakm 6y ago

As a foreigner Presidential pardons + the appointment (and life terms) of Supreme Court judges baffle me. How can a country that claims to be a leader in democracy have these two wildly abused bugs? Edit: fixed use of election instead of appointment

riffraff 6y ago
head of state pardons are common even in the rest of the world. In France, Germany, Greece, and Italy it's also a prerogative of the president, for example.
Ericson2314 6y ago
America: it's not a bug, it's a feature It's much better to be on an nth + 1 republic, let me tell you.
raldi 6y ago
As an American, I agree with everything you said. (Well, except that Supreme Court justices are appointed, not elected.) The other gaping flaw is the systemic, undemocratic bias that determines the makeup of our Upper House.
- WkndTriathlete 6y ago
  That's a feature, not a bug. I can get behind changing the presidential election to be based on the popular vote, but I don't think I want the Senate to be based on the popular vote given the terrible job done by the CA and TX legislatures.
- marcusverus 6y ago
  The issue you're referring to with the Senate is, of course, the fact that each state gets two senators, regardless of population. This means that the sparsely populated North Dakota has the same number of senators as California. This a feature, not a bug, and in fact the United States would not exist without it. The senate prevents small states from being dominated by large states, and is the only reason that smaller states like Rhode Island agreed to join the union in the first place. If we were to alter this configuration of the Senate, the same question would undoubtedly arise--why should small states like North Dakota, Vermont, and Oklahoma remain in the Union, only to be dictated to by the citizens of Florida, New York and California?
  - raldi 6y ago
    Same reason Bootjack doesn't secede from California just because it doesn't get the same representation as Los Angeles
  - nemothekid 6y ago
    >If we were to alter this configuration of the Senate, the same question would undoubtedly arise--why should small states like North Dakota, Vermont, and Oklahoma remain in the Union, only to be dictated to by the citizens of Florida, New York and California? I don't know why this is a valid argument, when you can turn it on it's head. Why should states like Florida, Texas, New York and California, who (1) have the most amount of people and (2) generate nearly all economic activity, be dictated by the citizens of North Dakota? Why is it that this argument never considers the inverse? It's clear, by looking at Federal budget inflows and outflows, that states like North Dakota need California more than California needs them. If States were countries, and if The United States were more like the European Union, Texas would naturally have outsized power, much like Germany. It would be Texas citizens bailing out North Dakota.
    - lazide 6y ago
      Because of the resources those states provide. In almost all cases, resources (food, minerals, oil, energy) flow from those more sparsely populated states to feed, fuel, etc. the more densely populated ones. If you think NYC could be supported purely by NY state alone (or frankly even just 'Blue' states), you'd be in for a rude shock. That much of the value add/economic activity happens in the more densely populated states isn't that surprising - but cutting off the midwest from the rest of the United States would cause catastrophic famine in very short order, to name one example.
      - nemothekid 6y ago
        California produces, by far, the most food of any state, ($50B for California, $27B for #2 Iowa)[1]. Texas produces, by far, the most oil of any state (1.8B barrels vs 512M for North Dakota)[2]. Catastrophic famine? The data doesn't support that assertion at all. Rude shock? I guess I'm more shocked at how much California feeds the nation, but is ruled by sparse smaller states. Your initial claim is so wrong I'm interested where you got it - maybe I'm Googling the wrong information. [1] https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17844 https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17844 [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/714376/crude-oil-production-by-us-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/714376/crude-oil-product...
jcranmer 6y ago
> the election (and life terms) of Supreme Court judges baffle me SCOTUS judges are not elected; they are appointed by POTUS, after confirmation by the Senate. At the state level, only about half the states use elections for their Supreme Court judges. However, the highly-polarized and roughly-evenly-split Midwestern states (MN, WI, MI, OH, PA) are among these, so it definitely will come across as more visible.
dkarl 6y ago
The people who created the system and decided on lifetime terms for Supreme Court judges had a lot of enthusiasm for democracy, but they could see it had flaws, and they wanted the judiciary to be much less sensitive to the mood of the public than the rest of the system. As disappointed (and angry) as I am to see the Republicans steal the Merrick Garland appointment and then replace RBG with someone who has flaunted her enthusiasm for overturning Roe v Wade, I'm glad Supreme Court justices can't be held politically accountable for their decisions. It means that power ranges from being accountable to the public on very short time scales (legislators in the House) to slightly longer (the president) to pretty darned long (senators) to extremely long (the Supreme Court, which reacts very slowly through presidential appointment after retirement or death.)
- travisjungroth 6y ago
  The downside to this is people spend decades being ruled by people they didn’t have a chance to vote against.
  - ggcdn 6y ago
    But the Supreme Court doesn’t make the rules, it just interprets them. The rules are made by elected representatives.
    - rtkwe 6y ago
      Elected representatives get to try to make rules then the other side can chuck lawsuits at it for a decade trying to overturn it. The power to determine what rules are valid and how those rules are interpreted is a very powerful lever on how the country is run.
    - jonp888 6y ago
      They might not be directly elected, but they are political. If they weren't political we wouldn't divide them into liberal and conserative jusices. It seems like everyone already knows how they would 'interpret' any case involving abortion. This doesn't seem to be such a problem in other countries. I don't really understand if that's because the judges are purposely appointed to be as partisan as possible, or whether the 'rules' are so badly written that they can be interpreted any way you like.
sittingplant 6y ago
If I understand correctly, the lifetime appointment is meant to avoid political pressure. Don't you think the judges might be swayed to vote one way or another if they knew there was a vote coming up in a couple years and they'd be on the chopping block?
- kjakm 6y ago
  Couldn't this be mitigated by making terms a fixed number of years? e.g. UK Supreme Court - No life terms. Justices selected by peers + independent committees. There is one member of the government with a veto that is rarely used and highly scrutinised when it is.
- triceratops 6y ago
  Single 15 year term with a guaranteed pension afterward.
johannes1234321 6y ago
Regarding judges: How would you appoint them? Basically there are three options: - Have a public vote, direct legitimation (or via some extra electoral college or something) this means that judges have to be "popular" and run campaigns and question is, if that's really smart ... - Have the "juristical class" elect within, so judges from lower courts would lick somebody, or current judges elect additional ones. That would put judges into their own "class" and remove all democratic legitimation - or do what is done and have a democratically elected body do it. In the case of the U.S. it's done by a combination of president (nominating) and Senate (confirming) where the Senate represents the different states. It is one of the tough problems. For the pardon the idea comes from absolutist times where a King would pardon as he likes. The modern interpretation comes from correcting "blind" justice. Justice has to rule according to law. But sometimes one either might decide that a law was bad and than a pardon might be a way to correct that (ideally if law is rewritten as well) and sometimes there are hard cases, like the 90 year old who should get a chance to die outside of prison, for sake of family etc. Generally the system assumes the actors act mostly in good faith and were removed (impeachment etc.) otherwise.
- r00fus 6y ago
  Lifetime appointments are the problem not the method of appointment.
  - johannes1234321 6y ago
    Yes, they are an issue. The idea is to make them independent from future career things etc. and the rule is from a time where people didn't get as old as these days. This makes them independent from the politics of the day. I think Germany got that better: here we have a 12 year term (thus a single government can't easily swap them out - a learning from the time of 1933) and a max age of 68 (for whatever reason that was picked)
    - r00fus 6y ago
      Maximum age is a great idea. Senators like Feinstein and Grassley should honestly be booted and replaced.
pokot0 6y ago
You might want to look at the electoral vote and how 1 vote in Wyoming accounts as much as roughly 4 votes in Texas and California. Pretty serious bug that is enabling the far right to be over represented imo.
- briandear 6y ago
  The federal government is the government of the individual states. A state is a sovereign entity. Each vote in the United Nations general assembly is identical regardless of the size of the country voting. Ireland’s vote is just as valuable as India’s. That’s the point of the United States — it’s a republic, not a democracy. As far as 1 WY vote being worth 4 Texas votes, that’s also irrelevant because the president is elected as president of the republic, not the president of individual people.
  - jdsully 6y ago
    That made sense before nearly everything was declared interstate commerce. The federal government now directly affects people on an individual level in a way it did not when the system was originally formed.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      If that's the issue then surely it's easier to reverse the judicial precedent than to amend the constitution.
      - jdsully 6y ago
        My understanding is the vast majority of Americans are in favour of harmonization at a federal level. In the original days of the USA I think citizens identified more with their state than the country as a whole. Outside of Texas that is no longer the case.
  - pokot0 6y ago
    I never went as far as saying the the USA is not a democracy but you did. Goes far behind my point, but that was the direction. Saying that the president is not a president of the people when people literally vote directly for that person (unlike most of the wester republics) is frankly pretty weak. How can you argue he is not the most influencial political figure in a US citizen life?
kidproquo 6y ago
As a foreigner, gerrymandering[0] baffles me. Someone please explain how this makes sense? [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
- alxndr 6y ago
  Growth hacking.

by kjakm 6y ago

riffraff 6y ago

head of state pardons are common even in the rest of the world. In France, Germany, Greece, and Italy it's also a prerogative of the president, for example.

Ericson2314 6y ago

America: it's not a bug, it's a feature It's much better to be on an nth + 1 republic, let me tell you.

raldi 6y ago

As an American, I agree with everything you said. (Well, except that Supreme Court justices are appointed, not elected.) The other gaping flaw is the systemic, undemocratic bias that determines the makeup of our Upper House.

WkndTriathlete 6y ago
That's a feature, not a bug. I can get behind changing the presidential election to be based on the popular vote, but I don't think I want the Senate to be based on the popular vote given the terrible job done by the CA and TX legislatures.
marcusverus 6y ago
The issue you're referring to with the Senate is, of course, the fact that each state gets two senators, regardless of population. This means that the sparsely populated North Dakota has the same number of senators as California. This a feature, not a bug, and in fact the United States would not exist without it. The senate prevents small states from being dominated by large states, and is the only reason that smaller states like Rhode Island agreed to join the union in the first place. If we were to alter this configuration of the Senate, the same question would undoubtedly arise--why should small states like North Dakota, Vermont, and Oklahoma remain in the Union, only to be dictated to by the citizens of Florida, New York and California?
- raldi 6y ago
  Same reason Bootjack doesn't secede from California just because it doesn't get the same representation as Los Angeles
- nemothekid 6y ago
  >If we were to alter this configuration of the Senate, the same question would undoubtedly arise--why should small states like North Dakota, Vermont, and Oklahoma remain in the Union, only to be dictated to by the citizens of Florida, New York and California? I don't know why this is a valid argument, when you can turn it on it's head. Why should states like Florida, Texas, New York and California, who (1) have the most amount of people and (2) generate nearly all economic activity, be dictated by the citizens of North Dakota? Why is it that this argument never considers the inverse? It's clear, by looking at Federal budget inflows and outflows, that states like North Dakota need California more than California needs them. If States were countries, and if The United States were more like the European Union, Texas would naturally have outsized power, much like Germany. It would be Texas citizens bailing out North Dakota.
  - lazide 6y ago
    Because of the resources those states provide. In almost all cases, resources (food, minerals, oil, energy) flow from those more sparsely populated states to feed, fuel, etc. the more densely populated ones. If you think NYC could be supported purely by NY state alone (or frankly even just 'Blue' states), you'd be in for a rude shock. That much of the value add/economic activity happens in the more densely populated states isn't that surprising - but cutting off the midwest from the rest of the United States would cause catastrophic famine in very short order, to name one example.
    - nemothekid 6y ago
      California produces, by far, the most food of any state, ($50B for California, $27B for #2 Iowa)[1]. Texas produces, by far, the most oil of any state (1.8B barrels vs 512M for North Dakota)[2]. Catastrophic famine? The data doesn't support that assertion at all. Rude shock? I guess I'm more shocked at how much California feeds the nation, but is ruled by sparse smaller states. Your initial claim is so wrong I'm interested where you got it - maybe I'm Googling the wrong information. [1] https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17844 https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17844 [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/714376/crude-oil-production-by-us-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/714376/crude-oil-product...

jcranmer 6y ago

> the election (and life terms) of Supreme Court judges baffle me SCOTUS judges are not elected; they are appointed by POTUS, after confirmation by the Senate. At the state level, only about half the states use elections for their Supreme Court judges. However, the highly-polarized and roughly-evenly-split Midwestern states (MN, WI, MI, OH, PA) are among these, so it definitely will come across as more visible.

dkarl 6y ago

The people who created the system and decided on lifetime terms for Supreme Court judges had a lot of enthusiasm for democracy, but they could see it had flaws, and they wanted the judiciary to be much less sensitive to the mood of the public than the rest of the system. As disappointed (and angry) as I am to see the Republicans steal the Merrick Garland appointment and then replace RBG with someone who has flaunted her enthusiasm for overturning Roe v Wade, I'm glad Supreme Court justices can't be held politically accountable for their decisions. It means that power ranges from being accountable to the public on very short time scales (legislators in the House) to slightly longer (the president) to pretty darned long (senators) to extremely long (the Supreme Court, which reacts very slowly through presidential appointment after retirement or death.)

travisjungroth 6y ago
The downside to this is people spend decades being ruled by people they didn’t have a chance to vote against.
- ggcdn 6y ago
  But the Supreme Court doesn’t make the rules, it just interprets them. The rules are made by elected representatives.
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    Elected representatives get to try to make rules then the other side can chuck lawsuits at it for a decade trying to overturn it. The power to determine what rules are valid and how those rules are interpreted is a very powerful lever on how the country is run.
  - jonp888 6y ago
    They might not be directly elected, but they are political. If they weren't political we wouldn't divide them into liberal and conserative jusices. It seems like everyone already knows how they would 'interpret' any case involving abortion. This doesn't seem to be such a problem in other countries. I don't really understand if that's because the judges are purposely appointed to be as partisan as possible, or whether the 'rules' are so badly written that they can be interpreted any way you like.

sittingplant 6y ago

If I understand correctly, the lifetime appointment is meant to avoid political pressure. Don't you think the judges might be swayed to vote one way or another if they knew there was a vote coming up in a couple years and they'd be on the chopping block?

kjakm 6y ago
Couldn't this be mitigated by making terms a fixed number of years? e.g. UK Supreme Court - No life terms. Justices selected by peers + independent committees. There is one member of the government with a veto that is rarely used and highly scrutinised when it is.
triceratops 6y ago
Single 15 year term with a guaranteed pension afterward.

johannes1234321 6y ago

Regarding judges: How would you appoint them? Basically there are three options: - Have a public vote, direct legitimation (or via some extra electoral college or something) this means that judges have to be "popular" and run campaigns and question is, if that's really smart ... - Have the "juristical class" elect within, so judges from lower courts would lick somebody, or current judges elect additional ones. That would put judges into their own "class" and remove all democratic legitimation - or do what is done and have a democratically elected body do it. In the case of the U.S. it's done by a combination of president (nominating) and Senate (confirming) where the Senate represents the different states. It is one of the tough problems. For the pardon the idea comes from absolutist times where a King would pardon as he likes. The modern interpretation comes from correcting "blind" justice. Justice has to rule according to law. But sometimes one either might decide that a law was bad and than a pardon might be a way to correct that (ideally if law is rewritten as well) and sometimes there are hard cases, like the 90 year old who should get a chance to die outside of prison, for sake of family etc. Generally the system assumes the actors act mostly in good faith and were removed (impeachment etc.) otherwise.

r00fus 6y ago
Lifetime appointments are the problem not the method of appointment.
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  Yes, they are an issue. The idea is to make them independent from future career things etc. and the rule is from a time where people didn't get as old as these days. This makes them independent from the politics of the day. I think Germany got that better: here we have a 12 year term (thus a single government can't easily swap them out - a learning from the time of 1933) and a max age of 68 (for whatever reason that was picked)
  - r00fus 6y ago
    Maximum age is a great idea. Senators like Feinstein and Grassley should honestly be booted and replaced.

pokot0 6y ago

You might want to look at the electoral vote and how 1 vote in Wyoming accounts as much as roughly 4 votes in Texas and California. Pretty serious bug that is enabling the far right to be over represented imo.

briandear 6y ago
The federal government is the government of the individual states. A state is a sovereign entity. Each vote in the United Nations general assembly is identical regardless of the size of the country voting. Ireland’s vote is just as valuable as India’s. That’s the point of the United States — it’s a republic, not a democracy. As far as 1 WY vote being worth 4 Texas votes, that’s also irrelevant because the president is elected as president of the republic, not the president of individual people.
- jdsully 6y ago
  That made sense before nearly everything was declared interstate commerce. The federal government now directly affects people on an individual level in a way it did not when the system was originally formed.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    If that's the issue then surely it's easier to reverse the judicial precedent than to amend the constitution.
    - jdsully 6y ago
      My understanding is the vast majority of Americans are in favour of harmonization at a federal level. In the original days of the USA I think citizens identified more with their state than the country as a whole. Outside of Texas that is no longer the case.
- pokot0 6y ago
  I never went as far as saying the the USA is not a democracy but you did. Goes far behind my point, but that was the direction. Saying that the president is not a president of the people when people literally vote directly for that person (unlike most of the wester republics) is frankly pretty weak. How can you argue he is not the most influencial political figure in a US citizen life?

kidproquo 6y ago

As a foreigner, gerrymandering[0] baffles me. Someone please explain how this makes sense? [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering

alxndr 6y ago
Growth hacking.