President Biden Announces Bold Plan to Reform the Supreme Court and Ensure No President Is Above the Law.
President Biden Announces Bold Plan to Reform the Supreme Court and Ensure No President Is Above the Law.
From his first day in office—and every day since then—President Biden has taken action to strengthen American democracy and protect the rule of law. In
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I have doubts a constitutional amendment will pass, but hopefully there are other avenues to enact this plan.
The Supreme Court gave him an avenue, an official act by executive order. Remove 3 conservative justices reducing the Court to it’s original number of 6.
Or, better yet, increase the number of justices to at least the number of circuits we have. I would say take that number and multiply it by three so that there are 3 from each that can form a small panel to deal with smaller issues and form a larger, randomly selected, 9-11 judge panel to deal with bigger issues. It would also dramatically limit the power any one justice holds. Mandate a strict code of ethics and disclosure and put in term limits.
Despite the actual structure of the Constitution and all of its amendments, the Supreme Court, as an institution, has fought to exceed the limits of its constitutional power from the very beginning. Its ruling in Loper Bright is only its latest and most brazen move to set itself up as the ultimate and final authority in the nation. As I said, the appropriate historical context for its ruling today is not 1984 and its Chevrondecision but its 1803 ruling in Marbury v. Madison. It was then, back when the country was still in its swaddling blankets, that the Supreme Court declared itself the sole interpreter of the Constitution. The word “unconstitutional” appears nowhere in the Constitution, and the power to decide what is or is not constitutional was not given to the court in the Constitution or by any of the amendments. The court decided for itself that it had the power to revoke acts of Congress and declare actions by the president “unconstitutional,” and the elected branches went along with it. The Supreme Court was never supposed to have this much power
Tbf it is difficult to uphold the constitution in another way. For instance, if Congress passes a bill that contradicts the constitution you have a contradiction. How else, than through courts, would you resolve the contradiction?
Biden could make a presidential address during prime time to declare a general strike until his demands are met.
We need to start thinking of extra-legal and post-electoral means of effecting change.
Yes. Without the courts ability to determine if something is unconstitutional then it would always be up to Congress / the executive to decide what is constitutional and what is not. That presents an obvious separation of powers problem and could easily be misused by a Congress or executive branch that are hostile to certain rights.
Oh really? I'd now like to see you throughout historical events right before they happened, expressing your doubts as if you uniquely had them... "I don't know, guys..."
Yes, that's the point. Nobody has 100% faith that this is a rubber stamp, that's not the point.
First, the announcement itself from a sitting American president is historic and important, second, it keeps a hard focus on the corrupt conservative frauds and illegitimacy of this current court. Those are the victories, the actual congressional amendment (a process designed to be difficult in a process that demands consensus) is and always was the long shot that could happen.