Author Topic: US Politics 2018  (Read 9793 times)

Pentagathus

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #45 on: October 31, 2018, 09:07:46 PM »
It doesn't matter how much time was given to the investigation, there's obviously never going to be any physical evidence in this case and unless the witness statements were drastically changed (which would seem rather shifty) then there's simply not going to be any real evidence behind these allegations. Delaying it could of course give more people the chance to come forward with fresh allegations, but considering the motivation for some to bring false allegations to bear I'm not sure that's a good thing.
Fair enough, I did not look into it deeply enough and I guess I was being unfair to the dem senators.
Can't say I know anywhere near enough about US government to speculate on whether the SC needs fixing or how that would be done, but I feel the lack of retirement age may be a good ting, since senators have no hold over a judge's future prospects once they have made it into the SC.

Jubal

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #46 on: November 01, 2018, 02:04:12 PM »
I don't see how a fixed term length for the court would give senators any additional power over judges? It wouldn't make it any easier to remove judges from office or anything whilst in post, but it would mean that appointments cycles were timed less randomly, which is one of the objectively weird things about the current system - appointments are basically partisan and dependent on the president, but it's really random how many picks a president gets. If a SC justice had a normal term of, say, 20 years, and they were retiring on a staggered system, you could basically guarantee that every presidential election roughly corresponded to getting one supreme court pick, rather than the current system where one party can just be "well we got lucky and got three picks in four years, so our judges might now control constitutional decision-making for the next thirty regardless of how people vote in the intervening time".

I think my point about requiring supermajorities for the appointments is a more important one though anyhow - ensuring judges had permanent bipartisan support would make a massive difference to who could be put forwards, and would in turn make it a much less high-profile campaign issue and instead something senators had to deliberate on more properly.

Not that any of the above is going to happen, because for some reason the US hasn't invited me to redraft their Constitution yet :P
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Pentagathus

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #47 on: November 03, 2018, 02:42:10 PM »
I was thinking that SC judges were probably more likely to become less partisan as they ease in to their positions if that makes sense. If their career advancement has been somewhat reliant on appeasing politicians it may well take a while for them to be comfortable with actually being neutral. So the longer each judge sits on the court the less partisan they are likely to be. Perhaps. Plus the idea of your staggered system seems like admitting that the SC nominations are a legitimate political tool, which isn't a great message to send.
The super majority thing does sound like a good idea, and it has the word super in it so it must be pretty rad.