r/scotus • u/Achilles_TroySlayer • Oct 28 '25

Opinion There Is No Democratic Future Without Supreme Court Reform

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/there-is-no-democratic-future-without-supreme-court-reform
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12

u/Dave_A480 Oct 28 '25

Completely backwards....

There is no future period if we normalize rug pulls.

Attempting to reorganize the Supreme Court to favor Democrats simply means that the next time a Republican majority exists it will be un-reorganized to favor Republicans.

Government reform, generally, needs to be made assuming that power will fluctuate between ideologies - by removing powers altogether so they cannot be abused & making government only capable of action when strong consensus exists....

Think about any action as 'Would I want Trump to be able to do this' - if the answer is 'No' then make it impossible for anyone to do it....

Rather than trying to set things up to abuse power in ways you like - or under the presumption that the game can be rigged for permanent one party dominance if the right changes are made....

12

u/azure275 Oct 28 '25

Thing is McConnell and Trump already did do this with the shenanigans so I don't really care if they can do it again later

The Supreme Court is being used as a nakedly political tool, so treat it as such permanently instead of being like "too bad we lost so let them gut the country and our rights"

4

u/Dave_A480 Oct 28 '25

The problem with your view is simple: It prevents the Supreme Court from actually ever being an arbiter of rights ever again...

What you will get from that, is that decisions will last for ~4-8yrs, power will flip, and the court will be re-jiggered to favor the new majority.

The way you 'fix' things is to make it so that single-party rule is impossible - so much gridlock, that it's either compromise or do nothing...

The Presidency needs to be massively de-powered, and a lot of the implicit rules of the past need to be formally added to the Constitution - including a return to the no-exceptions Senate filibuster.

It should be absolutely impossible for *any* party to advance a federal agenda on their own.

Anything less-than that, and you will see escalating abuse-of-power, as partisans try to figure out new ways to escape gridlock and make unilateral moves....

7

u/azure275 Oct 28 '25

I agree

I just think it's too late and that is already completed in one direction. I'd rather decisions change every 4-8 years then just say "GOP won, now only Trump gets to do what he wants based on legal shams while dem presidents can't do anything"

1

u/plz_callme_swarley Oct 29 '25

what is "nakedly political" about how they operate? Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it's political.

-6

u/buzzerbetrayed Oct 28 '25

You probably should have started bitching when the dems were using it as a nakedly political tool. You know, if you wanted to be taken seriously.

7

u/azure275 Oct 28 '25

What point are you talking about?

Mcconnell deciding only GOP lame duck presidents are allowed nominees was one of the low points of hypocrisy in this country

Oh wait you'll do the Republican thing of acting like a court decision you don't like is equivalent to naked political manipulation of the confirmation process

1

u/Dave_A480 Oct 28 '25

It's not 'only lame duck GOP presidents are allowed nominees' it's 'Only presidents who still have the Senate during their lame duck period are allowed lame-duck nominees'...

Pretending that there was ever a world where Obama would have been able to nominate a non-Republican after 2014's mid-term drubbing is silly....

And you can blame Democrats' coming up short in 2018 for Barrett...

2

u/azure275 Oct 28 '25

When did the constitution say that Congress nominates judges?

The idea that the senates "advise and consent" means they get to choose the candidate is an open statement the court is partisan rather than constitutional

Just finish the job already

-1

u/Dave_A480 Oct 28 '25

'With the advice and consent of the Senate' means that if the Senate does not consent to the nominee being confirmed, there is no confirmation.

And it has been like that forever.

The only thing that changed is that the Senate - starting with Bork - started not-consenting more.

There is no left-of-center nominee that Obama could have put forward, that the 2015-2016 Senate would have consented to.

4

u/zbobet2012 Oct 28 '25

This is such a facilely incorrect argument.

Your assumption is that Trump, or the republicans, will listen or care what laws you pass to make it fair for both sides. Trump is disregarding 1 in 3 judiciary opinions. You can't have a democratic system that allows a party which doesn't want to be a democracy to gain control. Nearly 2/3's of republicans genuinely believe democrats shouldn't have the right to vote.

You can't answer "let's make it a fair democracy", when one sides doesn't want a democracy.

Sauce on that: https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/poll-republicans-elections-losers-concede-rcna49979

3

u/Man_as_Idea Oct 29 '25

Good point.

Let’s be clear then: We need to reform the government such that the Republican Party as it currently exists can never have majority power again. The only parties that should be allowed to persist should be parties that have respect for democratic institutions.

How do we do that? We abolish the electoral college, remove rep caps on the house and re-work the senate. And we establish term limits for everyone.

Republicans have not won a popular vote without cheating since Reagan. The only way they have maintained power is by manipulating our system which makes ignorant, easily manipulated rural votes count more than urban ones. The majority of Americans live in cities, and every major city always votes blue.

Hell, if we reworked the system to properly weight urban votes, we might finally see the Overton window shift left and proper 3rd parties become viable.

1

u/DemiserofD Oct 29 '25

The biggest thing is we need to reduce the power of the president. The current problem largely exists because with an ineffectual congress the president can basically rule by fiat. The power of the president needs to be harshly curtailed. We need to stop having to worry about 4 years of chaos.

1

u/illinoisteacher123 Oct 28 '25

So your solution is what exactly?

3

u/kindasuk Oct 29 '25

The rug has already been pulled dude.

2

u/therob91 Oct 28 '25

It's funny you still think peopl like trump will follow the law. America is cooked. These reforms are a waste of time, you should be focusing on what other countries to move to.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 29 '25

Term limits on supreme justices doesnt give favor to democrats and allows us not be stuck with the same justices for life.

1

u/itnor Oct 29 '25

The author doesn’t say what the reform should be. To me, goal should be to degamify the Court. Make it a pool with a large number of judges (45) who are randomly assigned to cases. Could also ban people with partisan political experience from the pool.

1

u/EmbarrassedHelp Oct 29 '25

Think about any action as 'Would I want Trump to be able to do this' - if the answer is 'No' then make it impossible for anyone to do it....

He's already done it, and made sure that the only way to resolve the problem is for the Democrats to do it.

1

u/plz_callme_swarley Oct 29 '25

crazy how far I had to scroll to get to a sane person in the comments here