LOS ANGELES – President Biden on Saturday night said he expects the winner of this year’s presidential election will likely have the chance to fill two vacancies on the Supreme Court – a decision he warned would be “one of the scariest parts” if his Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, is successful in his bid for a second term.
Weve got to implement term limits on justices now that people are starting to figure out lifetime appointments are easily gamed with younger justices.
That will take a constitutional amendment, which… Good luck
Yeah thats never happened before.
Certainly not in the current political climate. You think a good chunk of Republicans can get on board with that when they have a 6-3 majority in the court right now?
you are the political climate. If you folks would put half the effort you put into trying to convince people everything is hopeless into fighting for reform like the people of the past who successfully achieved reform
Let’s say you can get the 2/3 of Congress. Are you really going to get 3/4 of the states legislatures?
I guess lets give up and have a trump appointed supreme court for decades.
And that’s an excellent segue to what I was going to bring up upstream: we only have so many resources to drive voters. There are plenty of relatable issues that can drive people to the polls so Trump doesn’t have another opportunity to appoint anyone. Removing SCOTUS lifetime appointments isn’t going to do it. But if we can keep a Democrat in the White House and control in Congress, we may still have lifetime appointments but at least there will be reasonably sane people in the court.
And before you say anything about a false choice fallacy, campaign resources and attention of the voting base are finite.
Term limits for supreme court justices is one of those issues to drive people to the polls, its a pretty popular idea. Heaven forbid democratic candidates actually try to win with popular ideas. They cant allow any reasons to support them other than not being republican.
It all falls under court reform, the political viability isnt in question:
-amend the constution
-make a law restricting the courts ability to accept and decide cases
-pack the court
-retire aging justices
-have the senate subpoena clarence thomas and make him say why he won’t recuse himself from cases involving his billionaire friend
The only approach that ever works politically is the “all of the above” approach because as soon as you start taking things off the table the opposition can laser focus down the “reasonable options”. This isnt new:
thomas jefferson pioneered this strategy in the US where he kept agreeing slavery was immoral but it was “too hard” to free the slaves. In reality he loved owning people and designing his little slave town. The result of this tactic was it took a war to resolve slavery because politicians were too cowardly to address it.
What it means when something is too hard solve with politics, is that it needs to be solved with violence. What it doesn’t mean is that is that people will stop talking about it just because it “doesn’t seem politically viable”.
You have throw so many things at fox news and other propaganda outlets that they can’t just pick one and focus fire it into the ground with lies and fear. Something like an amendment will draw fire for sure but it lets all the other stuff sail by.
That’s true. It was a lot of effort to get this far. “Oh no, someone won’t do it for me” is stupid.
As opposed to, like, passing my own constitutional amendment because someone won’t do it for me?
What exactly is a realistic path to make a real one happen?
Working for and donating to a campaign to get what you want. I.e. democracy.
My Democratic rep and Senators are in pretty safely blue territory. What am I/they supposed to do about the other half of Congress they have to win over a good chunk of?
Not in your lifetime.
You’re confident they were born on or after May 8, 1992?
I’m pretty confident they weren’t born before 1789, when that amendment was proposed.
Pretty good odds no amendment has been proposed and ratified in that person’s lifetime.