In remarks at a judicial conference, Roberts bemoaned what he characterized as the American public’s misconceptions about the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday defended the Supreme Court from what he believes are misconceptions held by the American people that he and his colleagues are “political actors” who are making decisions based on policy, not law.
Roberts is a member of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, which has moved federal law to the right on a number of weighty issues in recent years, such as abortion and gun rights.
The court has also in several cases weakened the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, including in a ruling last week that led to outrage and disappointment on the left.
Homeboy has been incrementally gutting the voting rights act as part of the Republican agenda for 40+ years.
https://theprogressivemedia.substack.com/p/john-roberts-spent-44-years-killing
Fuck this partisan sack garbler:
Oh fuck all the way off you political hack. You’re playing for a very specific team, and that team is not us.
Bro knows he’s facing a political shit storm with whatever the results of the midterms are.
Dems would have to get a supermajority to start removing justices or start doing anything since we know Trump will veto the bills.
Man, a boy can dream.
I wish that started with a G or possibly Double T but the Statesian public has no taste for creative justice
If they were making judgements based on laws and logic then they would regularly have unanimous decisions.
The fact that for each case that comes before them, it’s almost always a split decision down predictable conservative/liberal lines means that Roberts is full of shit.
misconceptions held by the American people that he and his colleagues are “political actors” who are making decisions based on policy, not law.
Maybe if they stopped acting like they were making decisions based in political ideology instead of law, the American people might have those opinions…
These fuckers are overturning settled law and acts of congress left and right. Not political actors? Bitch the political buck stops at the supreme court that much is clear.
Given everything they have done, why pretend anymore? I honestly don’t know who they are trying to impress. They know they are succeeding at eroding democracy. Congrats. You’re on the team now. So wear your T-shirt.
Roberts is fascinating, he really truly believes he can escape with an intact legacy while simultaneously overseeing the final destruction of the functional democracy that was the US. It kind of speaks to the mentality deep down, they don’t really understand the finality and monumentality of their actions, and where it’s going to lead us. But his legacy is secure: one of the most destructive men who was ever a part of our Republic.
The Republican justices thought December was too close to the election to do anything about Texas’s gerrymandering that favored white poeple/Republicans, but somehow last week wasn’t too close to the election to shoot down Louisiana’s changes that boosted minorities. That’s pretty clearly policy at work, not the law.
Undoing decades of settled law to strip rights from women, minorities, and everyone else. You’re damn right we view you as political. You’re a disgrace to the law and should be impeached yesterday.
“Settled law” is such a cop out. If there is any ambiguity, any question, the law should be rewritten. Anything “decided” can be “undecided”, why take the chance?
Of course they’re political, but the legislative should be drafting legislation at a quality that the SC only CAN touch it very lightly.
The whole process is broken, I guess is my point, and SC latitude is a symptom of shitty and lazy legislators.
That’s bullshit, there’s always room for interpretation of any law. Especially when laws start overlapping and someone has to decide which law takes precedence.
The real failure of the US political system is that voters that were stupid enough to believe that uncompromising is the same as strength. Once bipartisanship collapsed, the only way to get anything done was through the courts because as soon as any law passed someone somewhere sued to stop it. The courts became political because all laws passed through them.
This happened because Republicans realized their actual policies are unpopular and don’t work, so they have specifically been stacking courts with conservative judges for decades so an unelected cabal of rich assholes get to decide all the laws in the country.
I hear you.
There is always leeway. Any language is imprecise, it’s the nature of the human condition. We agree on that.
Where we disagree seems to be what to do about it.
I don’t mean to strawman you here, so please correct me… but it seems like you’re saying “since legislators certainly will produce inexact wording in thier legislation that is open to interpretation… we just need to live with that and throw ourselves at the mercy of an unelected body with lifetime appointments. The problem is the lifetime appointees aren’t benevolent”
I’M saying “since legislators certainly will produce inexact wording in thier legislation that is open to interpretation… it is thier continually duty to explicitly update, amend, and otherwise refine the law so that it most explicitly describes the intention of the elected legislative branch. The problem is they have the power to ammend the legislation, and are the right people to do it because they are accountable to the electorate, but do not execute a core function of thier responsibility”
Like, make those fuckers work. Writing the law is thier job. If people can’t agree on what it means, make them re-write it until they do. Your PhD supervisor will send back your paper before publication covered in red ink before it gets submitted to a journal. In what world should a legislator not be held to the same standard?
Excuse me, Republican policies are very effective… at funneling our wealth to the capitalists on top.
Does anyone still remember that the Supreme Court - which already included a certain Clarence Thomas at the time -ensured during the 2000 election that the votes in Florida would not be recounted, thereby guaranteeing that Bush Jr. would become president?
I would certainly say that this is exactly how a political actor behaves.
Let’s also remember the deciding vote on handing the 2000 election to the devil, which lost, was the now lionized Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Notorious indeed. You can draw a straight line from their successful steal of 2000 to 2020 and now.
I think most people have soured a bit on Ginsberg after she refused to retire, only to die under Trump
Fun fact: no member of the Supreme Court was willing to sign their name to the Bush v. Gore decision. It was instead issued per curiam, “by the court” itself.
That alone says more than enough about what kind of people they are…
Roberts belief that he can salvage the courts reputation is deeply pathetic. He wiped his ass with the law and made the supremes courts corruption even more brazen.
SCOTUS told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
It was its final, most essential command.
His name will forever represent the most corrupt SCOTUS in history, and he’s trying to mitigate that despicable legacy.
Just like PEDOnald will represent the worst president in history - at least so far.
He better be the worst in history, we couldn’t survive anyone worse.
To put things in perspective.
About 40% of the then population of the American colonies were Patriots and fought against the British in the revolutionary war. The war itself functioned like a civil war.
Roughly 40% of the population of the current United States supports Trump, not perfectly unwavering support but pretty staunch nonetheless. The remaining 60% are too busy thinking that their problems are the ones that need to be addressed first and a staggering number of those people are perfectly willing to throw away decent compromise simply because they weren’t perfectly satiated.
All of this to say: Trump is the tip of the iceberg.
Roughly 40% of the population of the current United States supports Trump, not perfectly unwavering support but pretty staunch nonetheless. The remaining 60% are too busy thinking that their problems are the ones that need to be addressed first and a staggering number of those people are perfectly willing to throw away decent compromise simply because they weren’t perfectly satiated.
I’m curious where you get your information from that you speak so confidently
Did you vote for Kamala?
Probably. I’m so tired I can’t trust that yesterday actually existed
That I feel, deep in my bones.
To put it simply, I don’t have exact numbers on who is willing to let perfect be the enemy of good on the left. I just know enough of them exist to render the rest’s votes ineffective — we know this because plenty of poll information has been collected that points to ‘Kamala lost because of her stance on Israel’. As if the alternative has been better.
The left in the U.S. seems to be filled with people who know what the right thing to do is, but can’t separate that from what needs to be done right now. While I recognize that the heart bleeds for people in Palestine, or Gaza, or any victim of Israel’s (really any genocide) — not voting for Kamala might as well be considered a vote for what’s happening in Iran right now. I understand being caught in a two party system isn’t ideal either, but pumping the breaks on fascism would have been a much more effective barrier against Israel than what’s happening today. I’m inclined to believe anything under Kamala would be better than Trump, even if it wasn’t necessarily ‘getting better’.
For context, I worked under Kamala when she was the AG for California’s DoJ. The blatant corruption happening under her nose was eye opening, it really turned me against her as a result. I still fucking voted for her.
I wonder if he genuinely thinks this. Surely he’d have to if he bothered to say so. I can’t imagine a cynical political actor would waste his energy explaining himself to a public that he isn’t accountable to. Thomas and Alito for instance don’t really say jack shit, because they don’t care what you think.
I used to think that we had to add another 4 seats to the SCOTUS, but I no longer believe that. Now I think we need to add 20 seats to the Supreme Court.
We have allowed SCOTUS to remain so small so that one bad-faith president can negatively alter the course of the nation for half a century. We should increase it to 29 or 31, with rolling term limits, so every president gets to appoint a handful, but never enough to throw off the balance to any great degree.
Don’t assign a set number of seats. Whenever a justice dies, their seat dies with them.
Add one justice every two years, at the end of the first and third year of the presidential term. Every president gets to add exactly two justices per term. This timing pushes the decision as far away from an election as possible.
To further depoliticize the process, I would formally establish a “line of succession” for the court. This line would start with the chief judges of each of the 13 circuit appeals courts, then continue with every other judge in the appeals courts, in order of seniority.
Everyone in the line of succession has been previously confirmed by the Senate to their appellate court seats. To limit the games the Senate can play, I would not require an additional Senate confirmation if the candidate is one of the first 26 in the line of succession. The president can unilaterally elevate any of those 26 to SCOTUS (but, these are the oldest candidates available. They are at the pinnacle of their careers; they can be expected to serve terms measured in months, not decades. The president is not going to want to name one of these geriatrics.)
If a new justice hasn’t been added by the 18th/30th month of the president’s term, the next in the line of succession is permanently elevated to SCOTUS. This deadline keeps the appointment process at least 6 months away from an election.
The “line of succession” also suggests a way for the court to be apolitically reconstituted in case of a disaster. If the court falls below 5 members, the next in the line is automatically elevated.
Further, it provides a means for a case to be heard even if all sitting justices are conflicted and compelled to recuse themselves. If fewer than 5 members of the court are eligible to hear a particular case, the next in the line of succession is temporarily elevated for that case. In a case where SCOTUS ethics rules are under scrutiny, the case may be heard entirely by temporary members.
I like the way you think.
Make it a seat for each state in the union.
nah, that’s what messed up the senate.
Comrade Pickles is right about rolling term limits. I propose 20 year terms, first two years are as a clerk to get them up to speed on SCOTUS procedure and ethics. then 18 as a justice. i haven’t decided how we choose the chief justice, maybe russian roulette. none of this “you rule the country the rest of your life” bullshit. Taft would be appalled and he was both President and chief justice. The court is currently far too small. 27 seems about right so like a new justice every year or something someone else do the math. That could make for much of the court clerkship to be future justices. WHAT FUN. If someone dies or retires during their term, there should be enough other justices to fill the court. No replacement is allowed unless the court falls below quorum, or let’s say… 14? At which point an emergency session of government is called, the party in power submits 7 new justices and the party out of power submits 6. assuming good faith from both parties (don’t start), because forgive the tautology but that’s how functional government functions (i’ll let someone else figure out mechanisms to prevent bad faith actors i’m only halfway through coffee today) all of the proposed justices will be qualified and impartial, just ideologically different.
This is pretty close to my thinking as well: just keep adding members on a set schedule; don’t fill vacated seats. (I’d add one seat at the end of the first and third year of the presidential term, to keep this process as far away from the presidential and midterm elections as possible.)
The only major difference is that I would not use emergency sessions to reconstitute the court! I would strongly isolate the court from politicization.
The foundation of my plan would be to establish a formal “line of succession” to SCOTUS. We have 13 circuit courts of appeal, each with a chief judge. Those chief judges, in order of seniority, are the first in the line of succession. Next, every other appeals court judge, in order of seniority.
Every one of these judges has been through a Senate confirmation. They are pre-approved. If every SCOTUS justice dies from a Hantavirus outbreak, the next court has already been selected, without needing to expose the court to the political process.
This line of succession offers some other possibilities as well. When it comes time to appoint a new justice, the president can name anyone they want, and the Senate can confirm. But, we can say that the first 26 (2 * number of circuit courts) in the line of succession are pre-confirmed and don’t require an additional confirmation to be named to the bench. The Senate can fairly consider the president’s preferred, younger nominee, or the president can ram one of these 26 senior candidates down the Senate’s throat. The president has a veto-proof pool of candidates that the Senate can’t play games with.
The line of succession also offers the possibility of temporary elevations for specific purposes. Suppose most/all of the justices are conflicted and forced to recuse themselves from a particular case. The line of succession allows us to elevate temporary replacement justices for this case. This would allow an ad hoc supreme court to hear cases involving, say, SCOTUS ethics.
So, not a lawyer, take this with a grain of salt, they already have a system for temporarily seating justices/federal confirmed judges on courts they normally don’t sit on. Like sick days or something? For when a judge needs to recuse themselves from a case, more realistically I imagine. Not sure how it works for scotus but the lower courts use it a lot.
20 is to long. Fuck them. 5 year terms. Only 1 term each.
With 9 justices, that’s a new justice appointed every ~7 months. Are you sure Trump should be putting 7 people on a 9-seat court right before that court will be hearing issues related to the next presidential election?
I know I think they definitely need to expand the court out as well because there’s not nearly enough justices to actually make a difference with the way the supreme Court works. But shortening the term significantly and only making it set to one term is quite a significant thing.
I feel you didn’t address my point.
No matter the size of the court, on 5-year terms, the president will be replacing 20% of the court each year. At the end of his first, 4-year presidential term, he’s replaced 80% of the court.
Every presidential election I can remember has involved some sort of challenge in the courts, and many of those challenges have been elevated to SCOTUS. With your 5-year plan, every SCOTUS decision relating to presidential elections will be made by a court consisting of 80% to 100% of appointees made by the incumbent president.
Why would we want this situation to exist?
The Senate was always designed as a wealthy check on the will of the people. We would be better off without the Senate and increasing the size of Congress dramatically.
I think that expanding the court should work a certain way, but to preface: I am assuming that the US is broken into four major cooperative territories, each with a president, with their own regional courts and executives. However, there would also be a figurehead president elected by the regional presidents, whose vote is confirmed by their regional voters. The figurehead represents national policy and acts as a face for it.
00000
The national court draws 4 justices from each region’s court system, and has an additional justice appointed by each president. These only lasting while that executive holds office. This means 16 national justices that are chosen by their judiciaries, and 5 appointed by executives. 21 in all.
Toss in term and age limits. We want age limits to prevent mental degradation or the social stratification that comes from age. Term limits help ensure that justices can’t remain too long, inviting corruption. I would say 10 years is reasonable for the judiciary justices. The executive justices picked by a president can’t have more than two terms for this position, so they can last up to 8 years if picked twice by presidents. This should allow for a reasonable amount of ‘churn’ in viewpoints, while still allowing the supreme court to have coherence.
The checks and balances comes from different factions - regions and administrations - sending representatives to assert their interests. Hopefully, this prevents the courts from being overly stacked for too long.
