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Indeed Congress could do much much more to make legal proceedings "morally fair". They could greatly expand the bench (aka have more judges) so cases get heard

Indeed Congress could do much much more to make legal proceedings "morally fair". They could greatly expand the bench (aka have more judges) so cases get heard faster. They could create entirely new levels of legal proceedings by expanding "small claims" or invent other forms of legal review that are less formal with simpler discovery rules. They could greatly expand the basis for appeals and insert more levels of review into the existing process, rather than just trial -> appellate -> SCOTUS. The fact that the current congress is dysfunctional is a political problem the courts can't fix.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> could greatly expand the bench (aka have more judges) so cases get heard faster For what it's worth, we have 62 judicial vacancies with 25 nominees pending [1]. Bugging your Senator about this from time to time isn't a bad idea, since most electeds are convinced their voters don't care about judges. [1] https://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/judicial-vacancies/current-judicial-vacancies https://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/judicial-vacancie...
simiones 3y ago
That's not the point the poster above was making. They were saying that, if Congress passed a morally unfair law (say, Congress passed a law requiring all transactions in the USA of any kind to pay a 30% commission to Apple Inc.), it's not the job of the courts to fix this moral unfairness. Just like if you write `rm -rf . /`, it's not the job of the CPU to prevent the OS from deleting your entire file system. The courts, including the Supreme Court, are supposed to apply the law as written. If people are unhappy with the law, they need to take that up with Congress, not the court system.
- xenadu02 3y ago
  That is what I was saying. If Congress wanted courts to be more "morally fair" they could decide what that means and remodel the courts to apply that new standard. And I think we both agree a great many things are issues Congress should resolve by changes to the law. I find it unfortunate that the vast majority of arguments (for or against) in these kinds of cases are just ad-hoc complaints about what the poster wants because it would be more convenient for them. There is very little reasoning from principles going on. The much larger question is: should companies be able to be rewarded for creating a market? That covers everything from retail stores to game consoles and cell phones. Millions of businesses pay commissions every single day to someone else for access to the other company's customers. Some people say they aren't doing anything of value, they are just getting in the middle... but if they hadn't done anything at all there would be no market and no customers to sell to. It takes a ton of work to build a business, find customers, keep those customers happy, and get those customers to enter an ongoing payment relationship the customer trusts enough to continue making purchases. And come back to keep buying into the ecosystem every X years. My personal opinion is that has a value greater than $0 that so many people seem to be arguing here.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> could greatly expand the bench (aka have more judges) so cases get heard faster For what it's worth, we have 62 judicial vacancies with 25 nominees pending [1]. Bugging your Senator about this from time to time isn't a bad idea, since most electeds are convinced their voters don't care about judges. [1] https://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/judicial-vacancies/current-judicial-vacancies https://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/judicial-vacancie...

simiones 3y ago

That's not the point the poster above was making. They were saying that, if Congress passed a morally unfair law (say, Congress passed a law requiring all transactions in the USA of any kind to pay a 30% commission to Apple Inc.), it's not the job of the courts to fix this moral unfairness. Just like if you write `rm -rf . /`, it's not the job of the CPU to prevent the OS from deleting your entire file system. The courts, including the Supreme Court, are supposed to apply the law as written. If people are unhappy with the law, they need to take that up with Congress, not the court system.

xenadu02 3y ago
That is what I was saying. If Congress wanted courts to be more "morally fair" they could decide what that means and remodel the courts to apply that new standard. And I think we both agree a great many things are issues Congress should resolve by changes to the law. I find it unfortunate that the vast majority of arguments (for or against) in these kinds of cases are just ad-hoc complaints about what the poster wants because it would be more convenient for them. There is very little reasoning from principles going on. The much larger question is: should companies be able to be rewarded for creating a market? That covers everything from retail stores to game consoles and cell phones. Millions of businesses pay commissions every single day to someone else for access to the other company's customers. Some people say they aren't doing anything of value, they are just getting in the middle... but if they hadn't done anything at all there would be no market and no customers to sell to. It takes a ton of work to build a business, find customers, keep those customers happy, and get those customers to enter an ongoing payment relationship the customer trusts enough to continue making purchases. And come back to keep buying into the ecosystem every X years. My personal opinion is that has a value greater than $0 that so many people seem to be arguing here.