this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
328 points (96.6% liked)

politics

19135 readers
2339 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 37 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The segment of the constitution relating to the supreme court is preposterously small. It's very weird that people think that no one is capable of actually reading the damned thing.

Never mentions any number of judges. Mentions numbers in a bunch of other places, and gets so detailed as to specify how to break up the initial batch of senators to ensure rolling terms.

But no, they specifically intended for there to be a specific number of justices that they just opted not to write down: ~~6~~ ~~5~~ ~~6~~ ~~7~~ ~~9~~ ~~10~~ ~~7~~ 9 justices, just like the constitution forgot to dictate.

Other fun fact: you can pass a law that says the supreme court can't hear appeals to certain types of cases. It's explicitly stated that you could just write the supreme court out of hearing any case that involved the supreme court or any Justice, an executive who appointed any member of said court, or just about anything.

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago

you could just write the supreme court out of hearing any case that involved the supreme court or any Justice, an executive who appointed any member of said court, or just about anything.

Yes, please!

Since the constitutional amendment process is literally impossible and has been for at least 40 years, SCOTUS is the final verdict on any constitutional matter.

Even if it WASN'T fundamentally broken, it's the mother and father of all conflicts of interest to make it the final arbiter on matters pertaining to itself and the ex president/wannabe dictator that appointed a plurality of them.

[–] thesporkeffect@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Other fun fact: you can pass a law that says the supreme court can't hear appeals to certain types of cases.

This is interesting, how would appeals work? Would there be a special committee formed by Congress, or would the circuit court be the final word?

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago

There's no defined process. The constitution just specifies that the supreme court has appellate jurisdiction except where Congress defines exceptions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisdiction_stripping

Since Congress also has authority to actually create and organize the lower courts, they can do almost whatever they please.
The only thing that can't do is diminish or expand the original jurisdiction of the supreme court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_jurisdiction_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States

So they can't put a different court in charge of cases involving two states disagreeing over ownership of a river or it's water, or ambassadors and such.

So if Congress wanted it to be a single use court nominated, appointed and dissolved for one special case they could. Or they could say it just stops at the federal appeals court, the state court or wherever they want.

Personally, I think a single use court established for special high profile cases with a large potential for conflict of interest would be best. There's some trickiness that would be involved, since Congress can't actually appoint judges, only the executive can. So if the case involved the current sitting executive (in my opinion only in their personal capacity, as cases involving the office of the president lack the personal liability that makes for a conflict of interest), then they would still need to be the one to make the appointment. Might be able to sidestep it by having the house select already appointed judges without the conflict to hear the case, but it's very close to appointment with extra steps.

In any case, other than the caveat that's never happened, it would be so much more clearly unbiased.