Sanders: Supreme Court Is “Out of Control” and Must Be Reformed
Sanders: Supreme Court Is “Out of Control” and Must Be Reformed
The senator criticized the “right-wing, corporate-sponsored Supreme Court” for its clear “extremist agenda.”…
Once they legalized coups, they lost all legitimacy in my opinion.
The SCOTUS situation is scarier than the POTUS situation which was already frightening enough.
Don't forget they legalized bribery long before making coups legal. That's when they were testing the waters. Now they know they can be blatent with their rulings and noone will hold them accountable.
Frankly, the writing has been on the wall since they overturned the election in 2000; it’s just gotten a lot more blatant.
Hmmm, I wonder if the left or any democracy loving peoples can create a temporary armed anti-coup force, just in case?
The silver lining here is they have no power of enforcement themselves, and their decisions can be reversed if a sane court is built around them by leaders with enough spine to do so.
Democrats just need to get Biden out of the race so Trump can be kept out of office. And the house majority is very slim, so that can potentially be flipped too if the base can actually be energized instead of suppressed the way they have been. Democrats win when there is high turn out, so the name of the game needs to be showing people that Democrats are capable of listening.
…if a sane court is built around them by leaders with enough spine
Lack of spine isn’t the issue. It’s lack of political power.
And even then what would the new court do? If they go back to operating the way they did before this judicial coup, that wouldn’t actually fix any of the damage done. Or remove the traitor sitting on the SCOTUS.
So Bernie & AOC are the only ones I've heard that call for change of the SCOTUS.
Only ones serving the people & deserving of support in many aspects.
That's understandable since they are the most popular.
My city's senator called it out on the news and it's not getting any attention from mainstream media.
And remember that it's only been about 48 hours since Biden can legally assassinate anybody so right now, the news is kinda uncertain how to play this out.
There are others that don't get the coverage, but yeah, pretty fuckin lame anyway. If only for the fact that they don't get the coverage.
They have the luxury of saying things should change without providing an actual plausible path to achieving that change.
AOC championed expanding SCOTUS without worrying about how it could actually be done, or what the consequences would be 10 years down the line.
Bernie does the same. His public statements frequently gloss over the massive hurdles that make such idealistic ideas implausible, like requiring a super majority which is functionally impossible in today's political climate.
To be fair, I do think that it's important that idealists voice how things could be in a political utopia, if they also include a pragmatic breakdown of what it would take.
However, virtue signaling in itself without acknowledging reality is also dangerous.
Lemmy is a perfect example of it. Lots of dissatisfaction with the status quo, and a whole lot of impossible ideas floating around like "there are obvious solutions that establishment politicians just refuse to consider", when they just aren't feasible.
The other side of that coin is that if there is no demand for change, no one will be pressured to work out the logistics required. All change starts with people demanding a solution.
We need a solution right now more than we need a perfect plan of execution. The solution is being called for, to expand the Supreme Court to balance the blatant corruption pouring from the conservative justices. That's the first step
They're feasible with a voter mandate. You get that mandate by building it in your platform and getting elected on it with sufficient margins. The Democratic party, however, is not a revolutionary party but a status quo party and refuses to go that route because they're afraid of losing. So they just lose by default.
As correct as Bernie Sanders has been his entire life, he's also right here.
Granting one branch of government absolute and unfettered authority is the end of stable government.
SCOTUS has nearly unfettered authority as long as Congress remains dysfunctional in keeping them in check. They’re just passing the power along.
Passing the power along to only anyone they agree with. Biden? Not an official act. Trump? All official acts. They just gave more power to themselves and the presidency.
It's not too late to pack that fucker. Sinema and Manchin could sit it out while Harris breaks the ties. Judicial nominations do not have the filibuster. If you're looking for a campaign season pick me up, this kind of direct response to SCOTUS going off the rails is something that could do it.
Fucking fight Dems, and you'll get backed up. We're tired of watching you do nothing while the GOP pisses on everything. This would be a great way to demonstrate that a vote for Biden is for more than a neoliberal order controlling a sleepy old man.
The Dems could also get rid of the filibuster right now. Getting rid of it completely only requires a majority and Republicans already proved they will drop it the moment it isn't useful to them to obstruct Dems like they did with judicial nominations.
Sinema and Manchin could sit it out
Big problem. They are Republicans in Democrat clothes. They will, as they always do, find a reason to vote against
Yes it is. That opportunity passed in 2022 when the Dems lost control of the House.
Fun fact, the Constitution gives authority to make new SCOTUS judges to the Senate and the President. Congress as a whole only has the power to organize courts below SCOTUS. The entire idea that the house can set the size of the court is unsupported.
I thought that eliminating the filibuster took a 3/5th vote in the senate. That's 60 votes. We are nowhere close, though I support holding it to a vote to put it on the record, to highlight the hypocrisy later.
The filibuster is already gone in regards to judicial appointments, The Republicans killed it and the Democrats didn't bring it back. But also, yeah the chamber rules are a simple majority vote. It's Manchin and Sinema keeping that from happening, but also without the house of representatives it's kind of useless to get rid of it right now.
We could've had Bernie in the Whitehouse. He really could have been president. This country is doomed.
The SC sure as fuck wouldn't have given him the power to legally assassinate fascists trying to overthrow democracy on the expectation he wouldn't use it.
I've said this so many times
Fucking let's go. Do it.
Bidens guys already came out saying they don't want to reform the Supreme Court. It's not on the ballot this cycle.
And his die hard supporters on here wonder why people don't want to vote for Biden just because it keeps Trump out of office. Biden isn't fighting this fight. The democrats are asleep at the wheel, another 4 years of, "oh no, poor me, SCOTUS said we can't do this, we just have to executive order the most conservative policy in 60 years." Does not excite the people who are willing to go vote.
I wish the dnc didn't fuck him over
Me too. Well, I guess I’ll support the dnc anyway and vote for biden/genocide because I prefer trump’s policies with biden’s veneer of politeness rather than trump’s policies with trump’s veneer of impoliteness.
Bernie/AOC ticket 2024 plz
Or 2028 if we still have elections then
I love Bernie, but he’s 82 and has heart disease.
Trump is mentally challenged and he’s still running
Would be easily the biggest age gap between president and vice president
AOC for president, Bernie for vice (cause ageist societal concerns).
Or, Bernie as President, AOC as Prime Minister (using SCOTUS' ruling to rewrite all laws and current established government).
Fucking Brilliant. Biden could just pull out the ol' uno reverse right now.
Why would we have a PM? We already have the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader. And the PM wouldn't be able to exercise any executive powers unless you burned the constitution, because separation of powers.
There's not really a good reason to adopt a parliamentary system like the UK's for example if we were to completely reform the government imo. Or to have a PM separate from the president at all.
My god can we get a younger social Democrat please? Fuckin A I'm tired of people born before WW2 ended making all the policy decisions. I was going to say before the moon landing but they were all adults when that happened. They're not even Boomers. They're fucking older than boomers.
Idk. I feel like Jay Pritzker/Warren 2028 would be fucking sweet
Nah, I'd take a turd sandwich over Pritzker any day.
No, you don't solve the problem with another OLD white guy.
Damn bruh if only we had the power to summarily imprison those greasy fucks.
Biden does if he deems it an official act!
We called for this on day 1 of Biden's first term...
He chose to put a bipartisan committee in charge of seeing if we should just let the corrupt Republican SC stay in power, and the committee waited two years till dems didnt have the numbers to fix anything, before recommending Dems don't fix anything.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/biden-support-expanding-supreme-court-white-house/story?id=85703773
The aristocrats! /s
As long as the Dems have less than 60 votes in the Senate, and aren't willing to ditch the fucking filibuster, there's literally nothing they can do.
You can't reform the court without a Constitutional Amendment since the operation and formation of the court is defined by the Constitution.
So, 2/3rds vote in the House, 2/3rds vote in the Senate, ratification by the States.
and aren’t willing to ditch the fucking filibuster, there’s literally nothing they can do.
That's the rub.
We have things we can do, but party leadership don't want to do it.
So when they say they can't do anything, things like "get rid of the filibuster" come up. And they party has to acknowledge that would work...
They're just not willing to do it.
Which when that comes back to voters, makes them less likely to vote. Because they feel like even when we have the numbers, it won't change anything because party leadership wants to have the fight against fascism with at least one hand tied behind their back out of an outdated sense of honor.
We're fucking fighting fascism bro.
What matters is winning.
If the Republicans take the Senate and White House, they will ditch the filibuster the first day the next Senate leader takes the gavel. Count on it.
The Judiciary Act of 1869 should be amended today, and 4+ justices should be confirmed before January. It's a hell of a lot easier to confirm them now than it will be for Republicans to remove them from the bench next year. Not easy, mind you, but easier.
There are a few ways to reform the court without a Constitutional amendment:
- Increase the number of justices on the bench. The Constitution sets no limit or requirement for the number of seats, only the process by which they are filled. Nomination comes from POTUS and will need to be "consented" to by the Senate. The number of seats has changed in the past and will change again, just a matter of when and who stuffs the court.
- Establish bounds of "good Behavior" and define means of removal. The Constitution isn't very cut and dry on the removal process of Justices (with impeachment being reserved for the "President, Vice President, and all civil Officers" the latter group being left undefined), but it does say that the Judges shall "hold their Offices during good Behavior." Historically impeachment has been the process chosen for removal of Judges, but discussion about Congress' role in defining "good Behavior" and the means for removal have persisted even into the late 1900s. It is entirely feasible that Congress imposes a code of conduct and simple majority review to remove those found in violation. That code of conduct doesn't just have to be about taking free vacations, either. It could assess the quality of judgement and find that if you clearly ignored the facts of a case to push your own narrative (such as with KENNEDY v. BREMERTON) you're in violation.
- Establish a term limit for the Supreme Court and rotate Justices into lower courts when that limit is reached. This one is probably the longest shot as it would depend on whether or not a Justice's "Office" is literally the Supreme Court or the federal Judicial system as a whole and that interpretation would almost definitely be seized by SCOTUS if Congress even attempted this. But, so long as Congress and the Executive are in agreement on the specific interpretation, SCOTUS' opinion here can be suppressed. Worth noting, however, that that is very rarely how the US operates.
- Remove Judicial Review. The idea that the courts have the sole authority to determine the constitutionality of legislation passed by Congress is not found in the Constitution itself, but was manifested by the same court that benefits from granting itself that power. It's the executive branch's job to enforce the law and both Congress and POTUS are elected to represent the people. SCOTUS's job is to resolve conflicts involving the States and those who work with them, they are not accountable to anyone and are not elected. A new law ceding the ability to review constitutionality to some other branch would reset SCOTUS' job to the original intent (a move which I'm sure the 6 textual literalists will gladly embrace).
- Tailor bills to undo recent catastrophic rulings. Congress makes laws. They can make laws that close "loopholes" or perceived ambiguities that SCOTUS uses to derive their rulings. Congress can (and should) undo presidential immunity, Dobbs, judicial review of government agencies' actions, etc.
These will all take work to achieve, and are very unlikely to even be tried, but because they all address shortcomings manifest outside of the Constitution they can all be implemented without amendment to the Constitution.
As long as the Dems have less than 60 votes in the Senate, and aren't willing to ditch the fucking filibuster, there's literally nothing they can do.
*and even the number of democrats minus 50 don't want to. So even one (plus Harris helping) in the first two years of the term or even two (if Harris helps again) in the second two years of the past term. It's not like all democrats are unified about the filibuster, most voted to bypass it. You need either more than 60 dems total, or more than 50 dems that support bypassing the filibuster.
Or you know, even a single republican that doesn't want to be a facist helping to transition the country to authoritarian rule. But that seems less likely unfortunately.
And 2/3 of both houses is easy mode compared to State ratification. We couldn't get states to agree that the sky is blue at this point in the collapse of the country.
Best I can do is stern warnings
Pawnstars.jpg
Add 6, and impeach 2.
Got it, the split is now 12:1
I vote for Sanders as King of America. I guess I gotta write that in?
Please don't though
If you wrote "King of America: Bernie Sanders" on a ballet, they'd throw the whole thing out? I mean, fair. Ballots are no place for having either fun or opinions :(
(If you mean don't write him in for presidency then yeah obviously but as King?)
“If these conservative justices want to make public policy, they should simply quit the Supreme Court and run for political office”
Why do that when they can exploit a shitty system instead? They now are there for the rest of their lives and can interpret the law to mean whatever they want and there is no legal recourse to do anything about it as long as their corrupt party has enough power to prevent impeachment.
Plus they can receive bribes just like politicians too, so the "low" salary (far higher than most people will ever make, but tbf a significant amount of training required to reach that point) isn't an issue.
Agreed
If only the scotus had just approved a ridiculously over reaching stance that could solve this
Ok, but to do this, the Dems would need a blowout election in their favor. They would need to retake the House and have a commanding lead in the Senate so that they can get this passed even with a couple turncoats.
Ber-nie! Ber-nie! Ber-nie!
No shit.
Someone's gotta say it, because too much of the narrative is "it's no big deal lol" to keep people complacent.
Yep preach it
Vote harder, change the party from inside, blue no matter who!
B-B-Bbut I thought Biden was going to stop the fascism? If the vote is for slow descent into fascism and literal fascism, does the vote really matter? There's gotta be something better, man. Very disheartening.
In other words everyone, things are not going according to Liberals/Democrats, so, we need to change the entire structure, Constitution, and political system in America.
There's a fucking Democrat in the position that the Supreme Court just handed a blank check to, and you think they're worried because that aren't getting what they want as opposed to how that power might be abused?
What kinda crack are you smoking?
The Democrats are fucking weak, and although I will continue to vote for them, i am ashamed of them.
Biden won't do shit with his newfound power, even though he should to defend this country because it's under attack.
Republicans' stated goal is to change the entire structure and political system in America and the 6-3 ideologically Christian scotus has already begun ignoring the constitution.
This is the very definition of a constitutional and democratic crisis. If democrats don't do something as the only other party with any power, republicans will make sure they no longer have the opportunity the first chance they get.
Now is really not the time for "both sides" logic to prevent democrats from acting.
Likely the nuclear option for a lame duck Biden.
In 1982 SCOTUS made a decision on this:
"We hold that the petitioner, as a former President of the United States, is entitled to absolute immunity from damages liability predicated on his official acts."
The media, the Democrats, but I repeat myself, have all been lying to you. This has always been the case. Nothing has changed.
"We hold that the petitioner, as a former President of the United States, is entitled to absolute immunity from damages liability predicated on his official acts."
Specifically, immunity from civil damages. The president couldn't be sued by randos claiming he cost them a job or whatever.
This is a new class of fascism. Keep on trollin'.
This most recent ruling wildly expanded the immunity, added presumed immunity for adjacent actions, and phrased everything in such a way that actually prosecuting the president for literally anything will take years.
Say the president does something you think is illegal and should be prosecuted. Stop. Before you can take him to court over that, you need to determine if what he did was "official" or "unofficial." SCOTUS didn't give deterministic guidelines to differentiate, so you need to have a separate court case just for that. Alright so let's have the court case that determines whether what the president did was official or unofficial. Let's introduce some evidence—
Stop. Evidence from official acts cannot be introduced in a case to prove something was unofficial. So you actually need to have a separate court case to determine if that evidence is official or unofficial. Once you have your results, one party won't like it and will appeal it up and up to the supreme court. Repeat for potentially every single piece of evidence.
Okay now that we know what evidence we can and can't introduce, we can finally determine if what the president did was official or unofficial. Once we have a result, one party won't like it and it will be appealed all the way up to the supreme court again. Only when SCOTUS rules the action was unofficial (IF they rule it was unofficial) can you then BEGIN the process of actually taking the president to court over that action.
This will take years, not to mention the supreme court is appointed by the president and it recently ruled that taking bribes after you do something instead of before is perfectly legal actually. This is all by design. The point is to keep this all tied up in court for years, which effectively gives the president full immunity for everything. And he can also pressure the courts or judges to rule his way via any number of threats (if you think that's an unofficial act, feel free to take him to court over it).
This is pretty clearly designed to functionally protect the president from all culpability (which the dissenting SCOTUS opinions agree on, ergo their dissent).
Before prosecuting a president you have always had to stop and determine if what was done was in an official capacity or an unofficial capacity. It's been like that for 200 years. That's why you can't charge bush 1, bush 2, or Obama with war crimes. Furthermore, the court made their stance on Trump quite clear. They did not dismiss any of his cases. If they were in his pocket, and he had this absolute immunity as you claim, all cases would be dropped.
Folks, it's quite clear what the president can and cannot do. He can pardon, appoint, dismiss, and instruct the military to take actions and has full immunity to do so. Which of course the president must have full immunity for those actions. If you or I send a missle to kill people we would get charged. The president would not.
Moreover, presumptive immunity leaves the door wide open. The ruling says that any action taken with presumptive immunity may be challenged and that the burden is on the government to show that the action was not within the presidents duties, and failed to uphold the constitutional oath taken. If the president blatantly breaks the law that burden of proof would be childish to gather. The president is not above the law, and never was.
Nope, the real lie was SCOTUS was becoming liberal instead of just making a few liberal rulings here and there. This was used as a battle cry to put in more conservatives, remember the "activists" judges they were wringing their hands about. So now we don't even get a few liberal rulings sprinkled here and there.
Full stop, SCOTUS has always been conservative. History has already proven this