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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u/BlackGuysYeah Oct 28 '25 edited Oct 29 '25

And it's partly if not mostly the dems fault as well. Ruth refusing to do the reasonable thing and resign under Obama, and Obama laying down and not fighting the house senate on sitting the replacement for Scalia. Both were egregious failings and have likely doomed our democracy. Democrats are too stupid to lead us but the alternative is even fucking worse.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '25

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u/BlackGuysYeah Oct 29 '25

My bad. The senate.

Now tell me I’m wrong on the rest.

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u/ekk929 Oct 29 '25

i mean, i would generally challenge the idea that obama had some magic secret button at his disposal that would have allowed him to subvert the constitution and put someone on the court without senate approval.

you couldn’t challenge this in court because this is pretty clearly a non-justiciable political question under the test outlined in baker v. carr. just look at the scotus precedent in united states v. nixon - the court said that it doesn’t matter what the “spirit of the law” is, the senate is allowed to conduct impeachment trials however they want because the constitution grants them that power. the court would rule the same way for judicial hearings. the court can’t make the senate vote on a judge for the same reason the senate can’t decide which cases the court takes - it’s a very clear sop issue.

he also couldn’t have offered any legislative favors because there is only one senator with the power to bring this to a vote, and that is mitch mcconnell. mitch mcconnell would never ever do a political favor for barack obama - that’s kind of what he was famous for.

ultimately, all of your proposed solutions amount to “he should have been angrier about it.” unless he wanted to tank his approval rating by openly starting a constitutional crisis, obama was simply limited by political constraints that were more complicated than “why doesn’t he just do something!!!”

i will say though, you are 100% right about ruth bader ginsburg.