Should There Be a Supreme Court? Its Role Has Always Been Anti-Democratic
Should There Be a Supreme Court? Its Role Has Always Been Anti-Democratic
By Michael Hudson / CounterPunch Vested interests create “checks and balances” primarily to make political systems non-responsive to demands for social reform. Historically, therefore, the checks are politically unbalanced in practice. Instead of producing a happy medium, their effect often has been...
The problem of democracy has always been the short attention span of the electorate. People make emotional decisions; "throw the bums out" - which of course it is sometimes right to be frustrated and take a new direction - but sometimes cooler heads must be allowed to prevail. We democratically chose to have that non-democratic institution, no different than various other government institutions that we put in authority over our day-to-day activities (police, and a whole range of other government "services", even the IRS!).
"Vested interests create “checks and balances” primarily to make political systems non-responsive to demands for social reform.".
It is thanks to checks and balances that we don't currently have a dictator Trump running this country. Anyone who thinks checks and balances are a bad idea need only take a cursory glance at the world over the past few years to realize we would be far worse off without them. From Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to Boris Johnson in the UK, would be autocrats were thwarted in their quest to remain in office by these same checks and balances.
It's not the concept is bad at all, it's the fact chceck and balances have been corrupted by corporations. Today they're just really to ensure corporate American isn't held accountable for their atrocities.
In Israel the right-wing government is currently using the same argument to try to muzzle the supreme court so it can push through legislation. It's always a bad idea. Anytime we Democrats remove these mechanisms it always comes back to bite us. In 2013 Harry Reid led a vote to reduce the Senate supermajority requirement for bench appointments from 60 votes to a simple majority. The direct result of that was the Republicans removing the supermajority requirement for the Supreme Court which culminated in the mess we have today.
The founding fathers built in these safeguards to force us to seek compromises. The alternative is rule by the extremes which is what we see today.