SC Kennedy Retiring

apple44 said:
I'm not convinced that Sanders or another Dem would have outperformed HRC, it's a guessing game. Republicans who didn't like Trump saw the stakes - naming one if not more SC justices - and they voted for Trump. Dems found reasons not to like Hillary or to canonize Bernie.
To me, the more important question is why do these people still have lifetime appointments? I understand the need to keep justices immune to pressures from the exec and legislative branches, that they shouldn't be fired on a whim. However with life expectancies increasing - at least for Americans with decent healthcare - someone appointed at age 50 can sit for 30 years or more. Why not limit the terms to 25 years or so - 18 years has been suggested as a way to potentially allow that every elected president might have an opportunity to fill at least one seat. As one legal scholar told The Atlantic, ""Eighteen years is long enough to allow a justice to master the job, but not so long as to risk creating a court that reflects political choices from decades earlier."

 18 years sounds perfect. And how about term limits for congress.

Changing the makeup or term lengths of the Supreme Court doesn't require an amendment. The minute the Dems can do it, they should pack the court to 11 and institute term limits.

eta: it has been pointed out to me that I was wrong about term limits.

Sorry about that.

IMO, term limits for Congress is about the least effective way of reforming it. What needs to be done is to overturn Citizen's United and get money out of our elections and eliminate the revolving donors between business and Congress.

Term limits for SCOTUS is completely different, because SCOTUS is so small, so these long terms really have substantive effects. In Congress, the terms tend to correct themselves over time because they face regular elections. And Congress is pretty damn complicated, so institutional knowledge from senior members is important.

I've never actually understood what Congressional term limits was supposed to accomplish.

.

drummerboy said:
Changing the makeup or term lengths of the Supreme Court doesn't require an amendment. The minute the Dems can do it, they should pack the court to 11 and institute term limits.

 TomR

drummerboy said:

DaveSchmidt said:
Personally, I’d also be loath to dismiss out of hand the impact that a dominant superdelegate advantage might have on media coverage of a race before a single primary or caucus vote is cast.

 Well, news coverage of campaigns is generally pretty bad anyway. It's all about the horse race, and  superdelegates might negate a horse race - so the editorial decision may be just as likely to discount their importance, so as to create a competitive race.
In the beginning of Sanders' campaign, he was mostly seen as not-a-chance-in-hell candidate - kind of legitimately, I think ( though I was for him the minute he announced). So, in the beginning of the campaign, he probably didn't get much coverage, just like most fringe candidates. But that certainly changed once he started to do well in the primaries.

 Actually, the main networks were in the tank for Hillary and they prevented Sanders from getting coverage. This continued throughout the whole campaign.  He deliberately received less coverage.

Tom_R said:

drummerboy said:
Changing the makeup or term lengths of the Supreme Court doesn't require an amendment. The minute the Dems can do it, they should pack the court to 11 and institute term limits.

 TomR

 Oops. My mistake. Didn't realize that was in the constitution.

nan said:

drummerboy said:

DaveSchmidt said:
Personally, I’d also be loath to dismiss out of hand the impact that a dominant superdelegate advantage might have on media coverage of a race before a single primary or caucus vote is cast.

 Well, news coverage of campaigns is generally pretty bad anyway. It's all about the horse race, and  superdelegates might negate a horse race - so the editorial decision may be just as likely to discount their importance, so as to create a competitive race.
In the beginning of Sanders' campaign, he was mostly seen as not-a-chance-in-hell candidate - kind of legitimately, I think ( though I was for him the minute he announced). So, in the beginning of the campaign, he probably didn't get much coverage, just like most fringe candidates. But that certainly changed once he started to do well in the primaries.

 Actually, the main networks were in the tank for Hillary and they prevented Sanders from getting coverage. This continued throughout the whole campaign.  He deliberately received less coverage.

 Nan,

ah, forget it.

drummerboy said:

Tom_R said:

drummerboy said:
Changing the makeup or term lengths of the Supreme Court doesn't require an amendment. The minute the Dems can do it, they should pack the court to 11 and institute term limits.

 TomR

 Oops. My mistake. Didn't realize that was in the constitution.

It's right that the size of the Supreme Court could be changed by statute (which would be a violation of an immensely important norm), but life tenure is constitutional.  Neither party could change that without amending the Constitution.  

Term limits for SC makes the most sense. It may even be possible to have them reviewed by the Senate every 10 years to see if they’re still fit for office, perhaps. But at the very least, 18 years, basically a generation, seems like a good run at being a SC Justice.

ridski said:
Term limits for SC makes the most sense. It may even be possible to have them reviewed by the Senate every 10 years to see if they’re still fit for office, perhaps. But at the very least, 18 years, basically a generation, seems like a good run at being a SC Justice.

 No review by the senate. That would be too political. Just look at thus senate. A term, one term only, for 18 years.

drummerboy said:
Changing the makeup or term lengths of the Supreme Court doesn't require an amendment. The minute the Dems can do it, they should pack the court to 11 and institute term limits.

 Yeesh!  I think you earned a posting time out with this one.

DannyArcher said:

drummerboy said:
Changing the makeup or term lengths of the Supreme Court doesn't require an amendment. The minute the Dems can do it, they should pack the court to 11 and institute term limits.

 Yeesh!  I think you earned a posting time out with this one.

 Duly noted.

I shall say 3 Hail Mary's and 2 Our Father's.

drummerboy said:
Changing the makeup or term lengths of the Supreme Court doesn't require an amendment. The minute the Dems can do it, they should pack the court to 11 and institute term limits.


eta: it has been pointed out to me that I was wrong about term limits.
Sorry about that.

Next time Dems are in charge we need to add 10 justices and split Hawaii in to 49 new states and then we'll be gold for a while.

DaveSchmidt said:

nohero said:

Hillary Clinton wasn't nominated because of super delegates.  She was nominated because more voters chose her. 

I’m going over the math again. A Democrat needed 2,383 delegates to win the nomination. Clinton won 2,205 through primaries and caucuses. How did you figure she was nominated because more voters chose her and not because of superdelegates? An overall vote tally? 

 You're going to make me explain it like I'm talking to a five year old.

Even without the "super delegates", Ms. Clinton won.

She won more votes.

That is what I was saying.  I don't think it was so inscrutable that you had to post that.

nohero said:

DaveSchmidt said:

nohero said:

Hillary Clinton wasn't nominated because of super delegates.  She was nominated because more voters chose her. 

I’m going over the math again. A Democrat needed 2,383 delegates to win the nomination. Clinton won 2,205 through primaries and caucuses. How did you figure she was nominated because more voters chose her and not because of superdelegates? An overall vote tally? 

 You're going to make me explain it like I'm talking to a five year old.
Even without the "super delegates", Ms. Clinton won.
She won more votes.
That is what I was saying.  I don't think it was so inscrutable that you had to post that.

She wouldn’t have had enough delegates, so she wouldn’t have won the official way. But she won more votes, even though votes aren’t tallied in caucus states and published totals don’t include nonbinding primaries, either.

Nevermind. It’s past my nap time.

I believe that if the superdelegate numbers were removed from the overall count, HRC won enough delegates in the primaries/caucuses to get the nomination.  That is, she won more than 50% of the delegates selected by the voters. 

That’s true. I imagine the Sanders argument would be: But there were superdelegates, and had they swung 5 to 1 in Sanders’s favor instead, he’d have won, so that alone makes it problematic to suggest they were irrelevant to Clinton’s victory in the nomination race. And while Clinton also won more delegates the old-fashioned way, Sanders generally did much better than she did in the states with caucuses, an edge that the overall vote totals don’t account for.

Take those points for what they’re worth. I thought they were worth making.

Life tenure for SCOTUS Justices is meant to protect them from outside influences.

First, they are not supposed to follow changing political climates.

Second, if a Judge with a fixed term of, let's say 18 years, who began service at a relatively young age, let's say 50, would spend the last two years of his/her term looking a job opportunities for after he/she left the bench. That could have an influence on decisions.  

I'm not concerned about a SC justice in his mid- to late 60s looking for a job after the bench. They can get a gig to write, teach and/or become of counsel to a law firm with virtually no effort and no need to make decisions on the bench to try to influence that. Sitting justices already have side gigs in writing, teaching and speeches.

I don't know what's more frightening about potential nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett - that she's a social conservative who will overturn Roe, or that at age 46, she might be on the Court for 40 years or more.

It just doesn't make sense to me that in 2055 there might be a Trump appointee still on the SC. I'd say the same about an Obama or HRC appointee.

LOST said:
Life tenure for SCOTUS Justices is meant to protect them from outside influences.
First, they are not supposed to follow changing political climates.
Second, if a Judge with a fixed term of, let's say 18 years, who began service at a relatively young age, let's say 50, would spend the last two years of his/her term looking a job opportunities for after he/she left the bench. That could have an influence on decisions.  

I think the scenario of former SC Justices *maybe* looking for post-bench careers is less bad than the status quo, in which an appointee could be on the bench for for 30-40 years. 

Yet, as terrifying in democratic terms as a 30-40 term is, it's compounded by the Supreme Court being so all-powerful as an institution.  The Supreme Court majority - ie, five superelite lawyers - has the final say on all state & federal legislation and if the Supreme Court majority says something is unconstitutional there is no effective check on it.  

The all-power Supreme Court also distorts voting.  Many people, liberals and conservatives, say that America would not have elected its least-qualified, most crude president ever if half the country weren't didn't view a liberal Supreme Court majority as a waking nightmare.

I'd settle for Supreme Court term limits, but I'd like to pair that with requiring a six or seven justice majority to declare a law unconstitutional.  

drummerboy said:

Tom_R said:

drummerboy said:
Changing the makeup or term lengths of the Supreme Court doesn't require an amendment. The minute the Dems can do it, they should pack the court to 11 and institute term limits.

 TomR

 Oops. My mistake. Didn't realize that was in the constitution.

Makes for a catchy DNC Slogan for '20.

Robert_Casotto said:

drummerboy said:

Tom_R said:

drummerboy said:
Changing the makeup or term lengths of the Supreme Court doesn't require an amendment. The minute the Dems can do it, they should pack the court to 11 and institute term limits.

 TomR

 Oops. My mistake. Didn't realize that was in the constitution.

Makes for a catchy DNC Slogan for '20.

 You know, reading your posts, I am glad we emasculated you by taking away your right to have your lawn blown.

Runner_Guy said:

Yet, as terrifying in democratic terms as a 30-40 term is, it's compounded by the Supreme Court being so all-powerful as an institution.  The Supreme Court majority - ie, five superelite lawyers - has the final say on all state & federal legislation and if the Supreme Court majority says something is unconstitutional there is no effective check on it.  

 I consider that one of the great myths. Aside from the Court have no real enforcement power the Constitution can be amended, and more easily, Congress and the President or a State Legislature and Governor can correct the Constitutional infirmaties of a law by amending the statute itself.

well gee, this is troubling.

LOST said:
Life tenure for SCOTUS Justices is meant to protect them from outside influences.
First, they are not supposed to follow changing political climates.

 If only it worked, right?

Brett Kavanaugh: "No president has ever consulted more widely or talked to more people from more backgrounds to seek input for a Supreme Court nomination."

Got it.  Majority rules.  Not quite the thinking of the liberal left, or better yet, the thinking of the liberal left when it suits them.

If what DB posted is true then the whole thing about there was a long list of possible candidates and it then being narrowed down to four candidates Trump was considering was just a charade.

If I were one of the other three I would be totally pissed!

Duplicate

"The president’s criminal defense attorney present for the appointment of a justice who could hear appeals relating to the criminal investigation into the president. They don’t even try to hide it."

https://twitter.com/matthewamiller/status/1016488711553503232