Getting a bit frustrating to see people on here say over and over again “why doesn’t Biden just use his new power under Trump v US to appoint 4 new SCOTUS justices and then they can fix everything?”
I don’t want to defend Trump v US, but people owe it to themselves to understand why it’s bad.
If the president issued an EO saying there were four new Supreme Court justices, the Supreme Court would be like “lol no there aren’t” and they wouldn’t let them in the door.
I completely get the idea here but problem is logically you can come up with very easy ways to use his powers, as defined by Roberts et al, to circumvent the "LOL no".
1. Find someone to propose bill/amnd expanding court
2. Temp kidnap enough congresscritters to ensure passage
3. Voila
Ok what happens on the next page of the history, and how “temporary” does the detainment of members of the body that’s going to overturn and impeach you immediately have to be?
Not for nothing, the historical precedent for the President just doing whatever the fuck he wants is a shockingly immoral ethnic cleansing in the deep South, and the people being forcibly removed were not enfranchised in any meaningful way
Following my discussion on the norms that can and should restrain Biden both pre and post ruling; I think an interesting and challenging question is: while acknowledging the dangers of using extraordinary means to challenge extraordinary dangers, when and what norms might or should be broken?
It’s a good question, and part of what the answer must grapple with is which actions retain and/or build the support of his coalition. Part of what I’ve been saying mostly implicitly above is that kidnapping the Supreme Court wouldn’t just be opposed by republicans, for instance.
I mean maybe you (the royal you, not you specifically) think Dems should be ok with more stuff that skirts or maybe crosses the line. But you’ve got to be able to convince who needs convincing or work around where they can’t.
even if the rules are malleable and we recognize that they are malleable what *we* want to do is not burn everything down but shore things up, and that requires playing within the rules (to an extent)
Tbh this is why history needs to make a comeback in a lot of spaces. Just reading how much of Lincolns challenge was negotiating a coalition to fight the war and end slavery really changes how you think about unilateral executive action.
One way to view this decision isn't the mechanics. It's to provide legitimacy for actions that the conservative coalition might not abide otherwise. You can't mirror it to the liberal coalition because the decision has no legitimacy
I think generally people make this mistake with autocracy and dictatorship all the time, presuming that having the power nominally means you have it in reality and can just issue whatever orders you want and they happen.
Yes. You cannot restore the rule of law by breaking the law. We are now in a place where there is no law. If there is to be law in the future we will have to create it. That is a daunting task.
Sure, but this is also what I’m getting at. These are profoundly bad and corrosive means toward a “good” end. It’s like trying to build a house when your only tool is an acetylene torch.
Except when the firefighter is trying to make points about the corruption in the city and expose the evilness of the city councilor who is taking bribes to make budget cuts, and is using dangerous and unethical arson to justify his just ends.
I realize we're already in metaphortown and none of this *really* makes sense anyway, but this is just not a thing that happens with any frequency in the real world, and partially because it rarely works
Art uses metaphors to get at “truths”. Sometimes well and sometimes poorly.
In this example they are working with a basic, long-standing and cliched idea; that the ends justify the means. Which is partially where this discussion is too.
I was mostly making a joke. But it’s not that far off.
Or present fait accompli. Or rely on the public not figuring it out until later. (Trump will use these methods). There is a tradeoff, in terms of legitimacy and perception that you have to evaluate. As well as risk and effectiveness. (It’s 1 of those times that instinct is better than analysis).
some key norms that must be broken that still hold sway among many in the media, the senior ranks of the Democratic Party, and some of its voting base and the general public, namely that the Republican Party values democracy and that the judiciary is mostly nonpartisan, and you can't say otherwise
Biden moved uncharacteristically fast (EO April 9, 2021) to appoint a Presidential Commission on SCOTUS, but it was implicitly engineered to fail to come to any conclusions and was not empowered to make recommendations. So reform wasn't going to come from the top.
www.whitehouse.gov/pcscotus/
Which beloved American sport is better, basketball or baseball? The Presidential Better B-Ball Commission has been tasked to determine this, and welcomes its appointed committee members:
LeBron James
Michael Jordan
Larry Bird
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Stephen Curry
Yeah, I understand the frustration but a stronger commission report would have had the same result because there just weren’t the votes (sucks but true).
the first step to solving a problem is acknowledging you have one
one reason many voters don't think there's a crisis of democracy is because their political leaders don't act like there is
