To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
— Article I Section 8 Clause 18 US Constitution
The Constitution indicates that Congress gets to set the laws that are necessary for proper execution of all the powers enumerated in the Constitution.
Nah, that's too peaceful and hippie. Let's pray for Old Testament God and their unimaginable non-eucludean angels who have thousands of eyes and burning wheels and infinite wings with a baby fetus in the core with the absolute most fucked up horrific natural death possible.
He’s an asshole, but he’s right. SCOTUS is supposed to be the last stop for constitutional rights. They can even block presidential directives if they are what they (Scotus) perceive as unconstitutional. However we’ve recently learned that there’s a couple of members with sugar daddies and saying something like this isn’t only piss poor timing, it’s basically saying that Alito believes himself to be untouchable and infallible with authority over congress. Now keep in mind that we as American citizens make the ultimate vote (by the majority) to fill congressional seats to cater to the majority’s needs, Alito is saying that SCOTUS is untouchable and infallible to the people
Although the Constitution establishes the Supreme Court, it permits Congress to decide how to organize it. Congress first exercised this power in the Judiciary Act of 1789. This Act created a Supreme Court with six justices. It also established the lower federal court system.
No, he’s not right. The supreme court is big above all reproach. Multiple other people have proved that Congress has the power to make laws on how other parts of government function. On top of that, we are supposed to be a country of checks and balances. Why would we have a court that’s all powerful, its members are appointed, and its members have lifelong appointments? That’s basically zero oversight whatsoever. Congress can absolutely tell the supreme court how to function. Alito is just hoping that no one calls him on his bullshit.
Indeed. Justices are expected to serve “in good behavior” indicating they can be impeached which is a power granted to congress. Size of the court isn’t spelled out in the constitution and the court has been different sizes as well. Maybe Alito would like to be part of a 51 person court. The power of the purse lies with congress. Alito might enjoy hearing cases inside of the local Denny’s if they can beat the brunch crowd.
And then there is the whole judicial review thing - this is the vast majority of the court’s power these days, and it has no constitutional basis. It’s allowed only because everyone went along with it. What if the court declared something unconstitutional and everyone just went “ok boomer” and didn’t give a shit?
This is genuinely quite a scary belief coming from a SCOTUS justice. In effect he is saying that the SCOTUS is the only institution in the US that is completely untouchable by legislation. That elevates the SCOTUS to a level beyond any other government position. Effectively our benevolent overlords. Given how low of approval ratings that the SCOTUS has, their recent series of ideological activist decisions, and the fact that they aren’t even elected positions, I find myself increasingly in support of a fundamental redefinition of the SCOTUS as we know it. I don’t see why we shouldn’t stack the SCOTUS when they’ve fundamentally abandoned their duty to any level of fairness or responsibility for the citizens of the US.
Because Supreme Court cant create their own laws directly, missing legislature power, having no direct power to control national finances/budgets, a main power of a country and they dont have control of the executives including army and police. All their power depends on laws made by legislature and constitution.
Thats how the three pillars of power works in all democracies. Just because your legislature or executives or even forefathers who made the constitution fucked up, doesnt mean the supreme court is an absolute monarchy. The biggest piece of shit mistake you made was having a two party system. In other countries, supreme courts arent as binary partisan. Coalitions of Partys vote way more reasonable judges to supreme courts
Considering the Supreme Court's entire schtick is the arbitrary definition of a word's meaning by the sitting justices... I'd disagree.
They can literally change the definition of a law at a whim. It doesn't really matter at that point what the law even says unless it's lawyered up specifically to remove their powers. Even then, don't expect the conservative justices to go down without a fight lol.
The problem is that they blatantly collude with the other two pillars. They can’t make their own laws, but they can collude with the others to bring a case to their doorstep to make a ruling not based on precedent or good faith interpretation of the law.
They effectively can create whatever laws they want, just with extra steps.
Almost, impeachment is one big one allowed. I believe only one justice was impeached but I bet the issue is, you can’t get republicans to agree as then democrats can put one in. Which is a terrible injustice so they’ll make sure to vote down anything to make sure the supreme court stays right winged.
The “unelected” part is on purpose, though I’d prefer sortition.
The biggest group of voters may decide who controls the government, but they shouldn’t decide who takes places in the supreme court. At least not in the same mechanism.
Well, unless you can make it a 95% “in favor” vote, of course. Then, I guess, there’d be no hope anyway.
It’s funny you say that because that’s exactly where my mind went too. A system with elections, but a class of officials that exist outside of that system and that can overrule it and can’t be touched by it.
It’s also an incredibly dangerous thing for a justice to say because it just begs for a constitutional test. The court is probably best known for the ability to decide whether a law is constitutional, or judicial review, which is not spelled out in the constitution. So let’s say congress passes a law concerning ethics on the court and the court says “that’s not constitutional” and congress just goes “neither is judicial review.” Pure chaos. The courts power mostly is like that episode of The Office where Pam says she’s the office manager and everyone just goes along with it. The court says it has judicial review authority, and everyone just went “ok.”
I like the idea of terms being twenty years and judges being selected randomly from existing sitting judges in lower courts. Takes all the air out of the balloon around Congress fighting over approving SCOTUS judges.
I kind of like that idea, except I think it’s less likely to create a non-partisan court and more likely to create a randomly partisan court. Like, odds are that five of the justices would still have a partisan lean. Is that fair to the American people? Also, when Republicans block a president from having their judicial nominations confirmed, then it becomes even more likely for conservative justices to make it to the SCOTUS. Same for if Dems blocked. It would incentize obstruction.
I’ve felt that we should simply have the SCOTUS be elected like we do in many states. Why shouldn’t the people have a direct say in who makes the greatest decisions about our constitution? It was one thing when the court was ostensibly non-partisan, but at this point if it’s going to be partisan either way, we should just make it elected.
Alternatively, we could bake the partisanship into the court. Make the court have an even number, then reward an equal number of justices to the major parties (parties receiving more than x% of the vote in presidential elections or something like that). If libertarians or greens ever get more popular, we can have the court autoadjust to split between more parties. That’s my hairbrained idea that would probably be too messy to be worth it.
I mean term limits aren't going to fix the problem. They arguably may make them far worse. It then just becomes a job of tactically making sure you secure the election of the executive branch and senate. With senate being the most important since if senate sits on their hands you sort of get a "Scalia situation". Where there will just be an empty seat until you get executive and senate to agree on a candidate.
Yes but no. I'll elaborate, there is a concept called a recess appointment where if senate is on recess (which they do twice a year) where the president can fill in a temp until the end of their next session however National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning (2014) basically has allowed the concept of pro forma session as a valid way to disrupt a recess. So what is a pro forma session it is basically a session of senate where the President Pro Tempore (Longest running senator who handles procedure) delegates their job to a singular senator who then calls the session to an end and repeat this every 3 days and bing bang boom. You have a senate who is not on recess but is taking a break
So in a 5-4 vote, they dictated
“for purposes of the Recess Appointments Clause, the Senate is in session when it says it is, provided that, under its own rules, it retains the capacity to transact Senate business.”
So while there is technically a system to fill vacant government positions, it has been basically loopholed out of the equation since 2014.
Instead of term limits, the rule should be to replace the longest serving justice every 4 years. On average, every president will therefore replace one justice each term barring any accidents.
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