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What checks and balances exist on the board? What mechanism does the board have to ensure a sufficient diversity of ideologies? I've seen news outlets describe
by bhupy 5y ago
What checks and balances exist on the board? What mechanism does the board have to ensure a sufficient diversity of ideologies?
I've seen news outlets describe the Oversight Board as a "Supreme Court" of sorts. With the US Federal Judiciary, there's a mechanism by which judges are appointed by democratically elected bodies (setting aside the debate around how different elected bodies are composed). As a result, we have some modicum of ideological diversity in the Courts; you have originalists, "living Constitutionalists", and everything in between. The balance experiences shifts every few decades, but by and large it's remained a balanced body.
If the Oversight Board really is a "Supreme Court", how can we trust that its composition will be made up of the right balance of perspectives? If the board members elect new board members, what happens if the board members become increasingly homogenous and create an endless negative feedback loop of self-selection[1]?
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/abs/political-diversity-will-improve-social-psychological-science-1/A54AD4878AED1AFC8BA6AF54A890149F https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain...
- pmoriarty 5y agoThat the US Supreme Court has a "balance of perspectives" is pure fantasy.
- bhupy 5y agoI'd encourage you to read my comment in full: over the long run, the balance has swayed, but it's never remained ideologically homogenous in perpetuity. Until 2017, the majority of the Supreme Court was "living Constitutionalist". Now the majority happens to be "Originalist". The only reason we see this ebb and flow over a 200+ time horizon is because there's a system in place to elect judges by the other 2 branches of government. In contrast, the Oversight Board appears to function like a hypothetical Supreme Court in which the sitting members appoint new members. Imagine, if the 2021 US Supreme Court did that, do you think that its ideological balance would ever shift? Imagine if the 1999 US Supreme Court (majority of the opposite ideology to today's) appointed new members. Do you think its ideological balance would look like the one it has today? If anything is "pure fantasy", it's the idea that the members of the Supreme Court are partisan ideologues as opposed to jurists that have truly fundamentally different ideas of how the judiciary ought to function, in good faith. It's exactly that kind of diversity of opinions that has resulted in the Supreme Court enjoying the highest approval rating of any institution in the Federal government: https://news.gallup.com/poll/316817/approval-supreme-court-highest-2009.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/316817/approval-supreme-court-h...