The Supreme Court discussion thread

Maybe because entering illegally wasn't effectively a thing. It was basically open boarders.

but it was whites only pre 14a.

the white only requirement got removed in full only in 1952 for naturalization.

when the 14a was passed it was absurd to think non whites could ever be American citizens.

and btw, natives were NOT included as citizens.

the 14a was explicitly passed to make non whites qualify for citizenship… (black people)

The Constitution has been 'updated' 16 times. There is obviously already a mechanism for that; including a Constitutional Convention.

yes american born ones, one of the main reasons the civil war happened in the first place.

Sure. Another example of doing **** all that's come up before is the lack of political effort to change the constitution. For example, instead of the ludicrous nonsense of 'wise men' deciding what the right to bare arms meant centuries ago, anti-gun politcs should be primarily about building a consensus to amend or abolish the 2nd. It might take decades, it might fail in part or entirely but it's real political pressure for change instead of wah! it's all too hard and impossible and blah di blah

What if democrats correctly assess that running on abolishing the 2a is terrible politically and would cause them to lose close elections in purple areas more often?

It's evident they never did because of that (and the fact that a portion of democrat voters don't hate the 2a).

What they can hope to achieve is to install enough leftist judges in SCOTUS as to interpret the 2a in the way they want.

You see failure in gun control goal but that's just downstream of the right securing SCOTUS.

I am not sure you checked how the constitution is amended in the USA btw.

You need 38 state legislatures to ratify it.

Democrats control 18.

Campaigning on something you are at 0% chance of achieving and that hurts you meaningfully at the margin every electoral cycle is suicidal. It's just bad politics. Bad at attempting to achieve goals.

The way to reach politically divise goals that the population doesn't support a lot is to reach power by *other means* campaigning on stuff the population does agree with and then do the politically divisive thing you care about.

However solid it may have been, the ground shifts over time and it just makes no sense for so much to be about what the forefathers imagined or wanted centuries ago. On increasingly much - they meant nothing about it.

I understand the ease of 'it's impossible lets do pretty much **** all instead'. And the democrats will very happily do nothing if they can get way with it. It's not remotely true but there are always easy excuses.

The attitude of 'lets game the system instaed' is a huge part of the problem. Seems fine when we get our way but it just helps a rotten system ripe for deadly infection.

Exactly,
Luciom think democracies are about finding ways to circumvented democracies .

Wwhat does the left/progressive side do? Try to appoint judges who see it more our way or try to make law that reflects what we want and appoint judges soley based on their legal expertise?

Some people rather be idealistically yelling at the clouds than effecting real change.

It avoids having to answer hard questions.

I think you could make a pretty compelling argument that the Constitution is almost impossible to update in the modern era in the practical sense. There have been over 12,000 amendments proposed, very few are ratified, emphasizing the complexity of the amendment process.

The document was being modernized by the “horrific” acts of what the right wingers call judicial activism but the dinosaurs have succeeded in stacking the court with the strict constructionists (when it suits them).

yes and what party made this possible by invoking the nuclear option?

It's not an excuse to accept that if you need 3/4 of the states and you have less than half, you should give up on that.

Keep in mind that democrats COULD do a lot of things at the state level, that they profess they want to do at the federal level, that don't violate the constitution at all.

They could guarantee any level of healthcare to every state resident they desire. They can do the same for high education. They can loan money to students in their state and then forfeit those debts. They can increase taxes on rich people as much as they want.

They control 18 states in full (legislature + governor) they can do anything they claim the USA should do at the federal level for those topics and much more, in those 18 states.

Actually they should pass that in all 18 states before they are allowed to campaign for it at the federal level in a sane world, because it's absurd otherwise.

Like maternity leave mandate. Pass it in every single state where you govern if you think it's good.

The list is long. They do very little (they do something, but very little). That's something you can attack. Not giving up on attempts to change the constitution, which is something they simply can't accomplish.

they put radicals as judges same as the right. Just check how many decisions are under what experts call "political lines" (6-3 currently).

chez,

This is nonsense. Asking you what you propose isn't some form of sophistry, no matter how many times you try to pejoratively label such requests as a demand that you "start with the endpoint." It's OK if you don't know what to do, but casting aside requests for clarifications as "demands that you start with the endpoint" is pablum. We are all strongly in favor of making thoughtful decisions.

We started with your apparent rejection of "the 'wise men' interpreting a centuries old bit of paper nonsense." I'm still not entirely sure whether that was a shot at the "wise men", the "old bit of paper", or both.

I guess that I will start with the old bit of paper. There is nothing theoretically objectionable about getting rid of the existing Constitution and replacing it either with a new Constitution or some amalgam of statutory law, but to state the obvious, there needs at a minimum to be some document or documents that define the limits of the power of the various branches of government. I would strongly object to defining the limits of government power in a way that could be amended through a simple majority of both houses of Congress. Could smart people write a better constitution than the one we currently have? Almost certainly. Would some sort of parliamentary system be preferible? I'm not convinced, but perhaps. Unless the country is rising from the ashes of a civil war or something, I don't see any way that these things could be implemented politically, but if someone wanted to write such a document as an exercise or as something to roll out in the event of a civil war, I don't see the harm.

I don't see a practical alternative to a court of last resort. Someone has to interpret the law. In the interest of actually depoliticizing the court, and reducing the appearance of politicization, I would be in favor of both age limits and length of service limits (maybe 15 years?) for SCOTUS justices. I also think that the Senate Judiciary should be required to put appointments to a vote if a nomination is made within six months of an upcoming election. The stunt that McConnell pulled with Garland's nomination should not be possible.

I think there is an argument that the country would be better off if the Court had never waded into the area of substantive due process. It certainly would have made the Supreme Court less of a flash point, and I think it very likely would have depoliticized the court and made it a more effective bulwark against authoritarianism. My view on the court's involvement in substantive due process obviously assumes that a lot of the rights that are or were protected by the Court as a matter of substantive due process would have been implemented by statute in the 1960s and 1970s and would be politically untouchable now. I can't know that for sure. I am not favor of the Court getting out of the substantive due process business now. For better worse, the Court chose a lane a long time ago, and I don't think that decision can be effectively unwound now in the modern political environment.

Not nearly as many as you and most people imagine.

WTF are you talking about with another vague whataboutism about the democrats?

If you are talking about amending the constitution, jjjou is 100% correct here. The nuclear option has exactly ****-all to do with the process for amending the constitution. Invoke it. Don't invoke it. It doesn't matter. The process for amending is embedded in the Constitution itself and remains the same.

The standard to confirm judges was always 60 votes requiring you to work with the other side yet it was the Dems that decided they were going to change that . At least with 60 votes you worked with the other side .

I think we all agree there should be term limits and a age restriction but in todays political system never going to happen .

I'm sorry but it is. Maybe unintentional but the first thing to do is stop the worship the constiution as if it's some great thing rather than a millstone dragging you (and the rest of us) down. Part of the problem with doing anyhting about it is that it's treated with such veneration. That and the constant claims that nothing can be done.

It's both. Interpreting a new bit of paper would be a far better approach and it carries with it the development of new laws. The question is - who should make the law. Any response of 'what laws do you want' is sophistryI'm afraid even if not intended. Personally I want democracy and I want democratically accountable bodies to be responsible for what the law is - not 'wise men' and not long dead people. What laws we're then going to keep/make is a matter for democracy - I will give my input but that's another issue entirely.

Also you talk as if there isn't a major problem. Maybe you dont think there is but I'd then say you were in deep denial which is part of the problem above. Trump is an exmaple of both the dangers (if somehow they weren't staggeringly obvious) and may well create opportunity afterwards. People could be convincable that presidential powers and the supreme court have to change but it's wasted if there's no idea what to do - still possible but far better politics is to have groundwork and movements. Just as the end of WWII created great opportunity in Britain - but the great policies that followed didn't just appear by magic - people had been working on them and organising around for them for a long time when it seemd hopeless.

Its not about interpretion by courts. That's what courts are for but if we dont like the result we change the law through the democratic bodies inthe normal way. The elected bodies dont interpret the law and the courts do not (effectively) have the final say on what the law is. That doens't mean judgement and precedence shoudn't be used to apply exisiting law to new areas - it means that if we dont like where it's going or not going then we look to our democratic processes to change the law.

Prepare and work for a change in environment. This is my key objection I think - "We cant do it now so don't start". The political environment changes - negligably most of the time and then suddenly very fast. Being prepared for the opportiunity is not only necessary for good progessive politcs but it can help generate the opportunities. The right, trump etc do this sort of stuff all the time but as I say (I like to think with with biting sarcasm) they're too stupid to realise they cant win.

This is exactly the way the system is set up now. It isn't working well, but that's the way it is set up.

Theoretically perhaps but not remotely in practice. So change it or at least start working to change it.

My objection isn't to the possibilites it's to the attitude of doing **** all about it. Why does eveyone argue against trying to change it when they know it isn't working. Why issn't politics at least in part dominated by activity on changing it.

AFAIK, None of this has anything to do with the practical impossibility of amending the US Constitution or explaining why we have added only two Constitutional Amendments within the last 50 years.