The SCOTUS Nomination and Confirmation Thread

I personally would like to see a constitutional amendment setting the number of justices at 9 and stating that any nominee who has not been rejected by vote of the Senate after 120 days is deemed to be confirmed by the Senate. Basically stop this nonsense of playing around with SCOTUS justices.
 
To be clear, I really don't want the Dems to just ham-fistedly shove a bunch of partisan justices on the court and continue this spiral that both sides have been enabling. If they gain control of both houses and the presidency, I would much rather they use the opportunity to implement one of the reform schemes that attempts to depoliticize the appointment process. Something like (a) change the number of justices to match the number of circuits, currently eleven + DC + federal, so... 13? (b) regularize the appointment schedule so you just always add one every other year, and at no other time. You use this same scheme to fill out slowly to 13 over the next couple presidencies (c) Fixed year terms (there are weird ways to do this constitutionally w/o an amendment).

Or there are a bunch of other proposals. None of them are perfect, but they are all better than what we are currently doing. I just want to get to a place where every appointment is not this situation where one side performatively rends its garments while the other side happily tattoos the words "HYPOCRITE" to their faces. It is exhausting.
 
Last edited:
Metaphysicist said:
To be clear, I really don't want the Dems to just ham-fistedly shove a bunch of partisan justices on the court and continue this spiral that both sides have been enabling. If they gain control of both houses and the presidency, I would much rather they use the opportunity to implement one of the reform schemes that attempts to depoliticize the appointment process. Something like (a) change the number of justices to match the number of circuits, currently eleven + DC + federal, so... 13? (b) regularize the appointment schedule so you just always add one every other year, and at no other time. You use this same scheme to fill out slowly to 13 over the next couple presidencies (c) Fixed year terms (there are weird ways to do this constitutionally w/o an amendment).

Or there are a bunch of other proposals. None of them are perfect, but they are all better than what we are currently doing. I just want to get to a place where every appointment is not this situation where one side performatively rends its garments while the other side happily tattoos the words "HYPOCRITE" to their faces. It is exhausting.
Click to expand...

I would love to depoliticized the appointment process. Not sure you can do that with those specific measures, since it’s essentially just court packing with good optics (the Republicans will respond with their own version of court packing with good optics).

Term limits, constitutional amendment to fix the # of seats, etc. I can get on board with something like that.
 
Tapate50 said:
But I wonder why MCconnel could do that?

"Senate Democrats infuriated Republicans in November 2013 by scrapping the 60-vote filibuster rule for judicial nominations — a change Obama and then-Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) used to usher through 96 judicial nominations."

Its politics Zito. Not for the faint of heart apparently. They all do it. We can't sit here and play "well he did it first" or we'd send them all to bed without supper. Its a useless measure for just about everyone in Washington. Thinking your guys only play by the rules, and the other doesn't is well.....dumb as hell.
Click to expand...

So because the democrats scrapped the filibuster except for Supreme Court nominees (which McConnell scrapped), this allowed McConnell to not bring almost any of Obama's nominees to the floor? I'm not following your logic.

I know it's politics. And right now the Republicans see the writing on the wall, the country is moving liberal and younger, and in doing so their ways are going out so they're packing the courts with conservative judges so that they can have an effect on things. I don't necessarily think what he's doing is wrong, but to deny the impact McConnell has had on the courts over the last 6 years is foolish.
 
chop2chip said:
I would love to depoliticized the appointment process. Not sure you can do that with those specific measures, since it’s essentially just court packing with good optics (the Republicans will respond with their own version of court packing with good optics).

Term limits, constitutional amendment to fix the # of seats, etc. I can get on board with something like that.
Click to expand...

Honestly term limits is the ideal solution. Set like a 10 year limit on judges. Stagger them enough so that it isn't like a snowball effect like the Census where one party can royally **** another.
 
chop2chip said:
I would love to depoliticized the appointment process. Not sure you can do that with those specific measures, since it’s essentially just court packing with good optics (the Republicans will respond with their own version of court packing with good optics).

Term limits, constitutional amendment to fix the # of seats, etc. I can get on board with something like that.
Click to expand...

I personally think the same scheme is fine keeping it at 9, since the "forced retirement" angle brings the court keeps the court more closely tethered the actual results of elections. But I don't think you get progressive buy in without some kind of response to what the Reps have done to the ratio of the court.

The "justices = circuits" idea is actually an idea I read on the Federalist of all places, and is the best idea I see as a rational tether for the size of the court to something non-political. I think the article makes some good arguments why that would be a good idea, even absent the current swirl of politics.
 
Maybe im wrong... but have the repubs ever done the dog and pony show of dragging people through mud? Or vote completely on party line?

Alito, Scania, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, ACB got dragged through hell.

I get Garland didnt get a hearing but if they weren't going to confirm they saved us a lot of drama and his image is prestine
 
Metaphysicist said:
I personally think the same scheme is fine keeping it at 9, since the "forced retirement" angle brings the court keeps the court more closely tethered the actual results of elections. But I don't think you get progressive buy in without some kind of response to what the Reps have done to the ratio of the court.

The "justices = circuits" idea is actually an idea I read on the Federalist of all places, and is the best idea I see as a rational tether for the size of the court to something non-political. I think the article makes some good arguments why that would be a good idea, even absent the current swirl of politics.
Click to expand...

I don’t hate the idea. But I don’t see how you likewise get (R) support on a proposal that adds 4 justices over the next 8 years that Democrats are likely to hold the executive branch.

If (R) does well in this election and proposed the same idea, there would literally be riots in the street.
 
sturg33 said:
Maybe im wrong... but have the repubs ever done the dog and pony show of dragging people through mud? Or vote completely on party line?

Alito, Scania, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, ACB got dragged through hell.

I get Garland didnt get a hearing but if they weren't going to confirm they saved us a lot of drama and his image is prestine
Click to expand...

Just to follow up on this and just so we are clear: Democrats have nominated 3 SCOTUS justices in the past 25 years. Between the three of them, they garnered a grand total of 14 Republican votes to confirm. Kagan in particular, a straightforward and uncontroversial center-orientated pick, a la Garland, managed a whole five republican votes. There was no reason to vote against her other than straightforward partisanship. Roberts got 22 Democratic votes alone, for comparison.

As far as Sotomayor, we also got stuff like this:

story15.jpg


Republicans desperately tried to argue Sotomayor was a destructive reverse racist and refused to support her.

I don't think Dems are angels, but the idea that only they are playing partisan games on court votes is straightforwardly dumb.
 
striker42 said:
My first year of law school legal writing class project was on the subject of hostile work environment, that decision is correct under current jurisprudence. A single incident is rarely enough to constitute a hostile work environment as one of the requirements for that cause of action is that the conduct be "severe and pervasive". One incident where a racial slur was uttered would be severe conduct, but it can't pass the bar of pervasive.

Also note that it was a unanimous three judge panel so two other federal judges agreed with her.

It's fine to think the law should be changed but she was following precedent in that case.
Click to expand...

You didn’t have to have a law degree to see this, as evidenced on the pages prior in this thread. But here we are ignoring common sense.

And thanks for posting that.

Case closed, next .
 
goldfly said:
Maybe she needed some notes:

[tw]1316425454128070662[/tw]
Click to expand...

This is probably because the first amendment is broken down into 5 parts in legal circles. The whole amendment is broken down into sub-parts with cases devoted to interpreting what they mean. For example, freedom of religion isn't a thing in Con Law. It's the free exercise and establishment clauses that are what's discussed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top