RetroFed
Major Supreme Court changes proposed by Pete Buttigieg: 3 reform ideas
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A lot of filler in that article to get to:
Just make it a felony to accept a gift from anyone. And enforce it. Like go to their house with an arrest warrant enforce it
Make it a felony to give a gift to any Justice. High ranking officials get way too many passes.
May I suggest…both?
This balanced bench thing is a horrible idea. Because if one party gets to have a run where voters trust their candidate to be President for four or five terms in a row, then why should the party that lost those election retain control over any seats?
Straight term limits are a better idea. If each President was guaranteed to be able to appoint a few justices during their 4-year term, it would minimize the impact of additional appointments. (It would also reduce the number of justices who have to be replaced because they die while serving).
If the Presidency continues to ping-pong between the parties every term or two, then the balance would come naturally. But if voters favor one side for a stretch eventually the court would come around to reflect that….
… And the idea that the sitting justices would appoint more is a non-starter too. It would just serve to further enhance partisan control, because the party with partisan advantage would get to appoint more partisans.
On the other hand, why should a party that wins a few elections when seats are open 40 years ago retain any sort of control? I know you said term limits and I agree, but even if the presidency changed hands every single time it’s possible to pack the bench by a) withholding appointments, b) by timing your stepdown, or c) appointing younger, less qualified justices to the bench for the express purpose of serving a long tenure.
I like the idea of term limits and also mandatory financial audits of justices and immediate family that result in felony charges for financial crimes or failures to report.
Applying a set term to Justice’s tenure will greatly reduce the amount of time a justice is in any particular role. Once we have those terms in place, no justice will be sitting there for 40 years without any further discussion of their fitness for office. Even if we allow justices to be re-nominated for more terms, they would at least be subject to another Senate vote.
But your comment about their finances is a whole different matter. Did you know that the SCOTUS justices are not formally bound by any code of ethics? There is a code imposed on lower court justices, and SC justices tend to follow those because they were all lower court justices at one point, but they have no formal accountability to anyone but themselves. Congress has threatened to withhold their funding if they don’t adopt a formal code of ethics, but that hasn’t gone anywhere.
Please can we stop trying to make this genocide loving neo-liberal piece of pig shit a 2028 candidate?
He’s not doing anything special that any progressive anti-Israel candidate isn’t doing better.
Adding to this, I noticed what I believe was an artificial push to promote him earlier this year. Dude also has ties to the company starting with p
He’s smarmy. He got elected mayor of the fourth largest city in Indiana and then said, “you know what? I’m ready to be the fucking president!” I believe he is a megalomaniac.
I have no problem with somebody even more of a nobody becoming president. In fact, it may be ideal. And he is pretty intelligent. What I do have a problem with is the support of Zionism, and that is enough to curtail all support.
Also, having had much contact with McKinsey in my career, the fact that he worked there is a dealbreaker to me. You need a triangular fin on your back to get hired by them.
Shit article, padded out with definintions of basic concepts.
Also, Pete’s ideas will do nothing to eliminate the corruption in the court, and the balanced court idea will lock in partisan obstruction, rather than eliminating it. Why should a party that fails to win a majority in an election have any influence at all on which judges get picked? And the idea that the justices themselves could veto some of the appointments is ridiculous. It’s not a fucking private club.
And term limits are a bad idea, unless there are provisions to prevent termed-out justices from getting paid off after they leave office, with phony jobs (such as non-executive directorships or gigs at think tanks), inflated lecture fees, etc. No revolving door. These reforms should also apply to all federal judges.
Better regulations would be: mandatory disclosure of all outside income, and limits on its amount. Failure to disclose income, including gifts, within a defined, short time period should be a felony. There should be a requirement that financial assets be put into a blind trust. Conflict of interest laws should include spouses and immediate family members. Random assignment of cases to justices, the randomness provided by an independent body not answerable to the court. A set of mandatory recusal criteria defined by law, with heavy penalties for non-compliance. Elimination of the shadow docket. There should be a non-partisan commission that establishes qualifications for judges, and appointment of a judge found unfit by the commission can only be overridden with 2/3 majority in the Senate.
We really shouldn’t have appointees from freaking Reagan still on the courts. They proposed 1 term 18 years, which sounds fine ( rounded it up to 20 in my head). That’s an entire generation of service that can’t be ousted by the electorate nor representatives (unless convicted).
Why not add some post term conditions to prevent SCOTUS from being a jumping off point to “consulting”? I’m fine with that.
I like your ideas too, but
How do we begin to enforce that kind of concept? Just make the federal courts assign cases to justices and put them under the same rules as SCOTUS. If one federal judge seems to be assigning cases to the same few judges that be grounds for audit.
If mayor Pete proposes it, it’s probably a good thing and we should do this.
But I figure the twats won’t vote against their own corruption so they aren’t going to go along with this.
They will never learn that reform is a failed path to progress. No matter what changes they claim to support and try to implement, those changes will always still favor the wealthy over the working class.
Yeah, better to do nothing and just let things rot even further. Thanks for your attention to this matter.
Supporting the oligarchy is supporting what caused the rot.
My idea of adequate reform is no more oligarchy. That’s where the rot is coming from.