100%. We need to stop treating the judiciary as if it were royalty, and instead operate the government using the established rules for change.
That means forcing Congress to accept its role and do its job instead of being a place where the members spend most of their time fundraising and trying to keep their seats.
Congress is theoretically supposed to act as a check on the judiciary, at least to the extent they appoint the judges in the first place. It's reasonable to encourage the constituents to provide feedback to their legislators.
Yeah, I don't know. Congress is so completely and utterly broken that I'm unsure it can be fixed.
Legislating from the bench is better than the administrative rulemaking in that it's at least generally more stable, but I do think that the conservative justices have a point that the actual laws should be more directly accountable to the people than the Supreme Court is.
Basically, we should be able to change the laws, but it shouldn't be as simple as winning a single national election because that makes things too unstable.
Not sure about that. At some point government has to work in spite of a reluctant congress. The rules should be about making governance better, not just helping our side to win the battle.
I would argue that existing setup which abdicates power of congress to courts and agencies is only making things worse. It keeps things running, somewhat, but only by applying bandaids that can be removed just as easily with new set of judges or new administration.
It's something that US political system allowed to fester for decades, arguably since 70s.
Take the entire situation around abortions. Supreme Court determined that there is a right, based in protection of privacy, that prohibits states from banning abortion before certain date. Congress didn't have to make a law about it, or even add amendment to constitution. So they didn't have to explain anything to their constituents. "It's the court! I can't do anything!" everybody was happy.
Except not. People who opposed it, saw it as undemocratic. Taking controversial issue out of the hands of representatives forever. So they pushed against it, and attempted to circumvent the ruling. Mostly they failed. But they never gave up, and their movement never died down. In fact it only became more and more powerful.
And when they finally had favorable judges on the court they finally had their way.
Angering their opponents, who were now using similar "this isn't democratic" arguments. In the end, nobody really won. The only certain result is that people on both sides of political spectrum now have reasons to distrust Supreme Court.
Compare that to the situation in Europe. Lawmakers took their time, but eventually they arrived at set of laws that most of society agrees with, or at very least is able to tolerate.
TLDR: The existing system led to the congress being incapable of making laws. If america is to survive, courts can't keep saving congress from controversial laws.
More like we need to limit the influence that money and lobbyists can have on elected officials. Changing seats in Congress will just put new people in place who will more than likely do the same thing.
Absolutely correct. There is a process for writing laws. There is a process for amending the constitution. But instead of building a broad coalition to go and do these things they would rather roll the dice with the judiciary. And when they lose try to change the judiciary. Completely wrong headed. We need to get our legislature working. We also need people to realize that living in a democracy means that you don’t always get your way.
The rules are always flexible enough. They never matter.
The power structure, the actual humans making decisions are all that is important.
And currently that behemoth is hell bent on not giving a fuck about itself, its components [the humans] are mostly looking out for themselves, there's not enough institutional inertia to change this, etc.
I'm not saying it needs to be dismantled, torched to the ground, blablabla, but of course there needs to be deep, systematic, qualitative and quantitative changes. Personnel, ideology/dogma, leadership, training, culture, process, structure.
"Congress" (or more precisely the upper echelon of the power structure - Congress/courts/administration are just the venues where the show happens) is in a gridlock over moral issues, that means everything else is at best performing at the level of the status quo, at worse things become chips in the very high-stakes poker game.
That's because Congress has abdicated its role and we live in a appartjik state where the executive appoints the judicial body and the judicial body legislates from the bench while the admin creates executive actions or has agencies create rules that have the weight of laws.
The system will continue to not work when Congress does not do it's job.
This is really it. A dysfunctional Congress serves to empower the Executive. And the Judicial branch only serves as a check so long as the Executive cares to follow their rulings.
This isn't just a problem if we get a malicious Executive either. If judges keep saying the Executive doesn't have some power unless Congress acts, and Congress continues to not act, then the Executive might be put in a position where they have to ignore judicial rulings in order to govern. Technically Congress can impeach, but a dysfunctional Congress isn't likely to get that one done.
And frankly, I think Congress should stop trying to dodge responsibility by letting the executive stretch its authority to take care of problems Congress won't.
You're right, congress has given up power to other branches of government. Judicialization of government is a clear problem that has come to weaken the democratic system, despite some high profile wins by progressive groups. For example, the citizen's united decision has been a major blow on democratic representation inflicted by the judiciary in favor or the wealthy elite. This has even promoted the international influence on elections we see today, since companies may have international conflicts of interest that are much more complex than individuals.
It's been a year and a half. The emergency justifications are gone, so it's time for congress to act. It's the judicial branch's job to act as a check on the power of the executive branch.
Maybe it's just me but, while I agree with this, I would like our government to focus on gaining a certain level of basic competence. The last few years seem to have brought to light just how impotent and incapable the US legislature is.
The other two branches seem to be doing fine, but I'd like to focus our attention on perhaps changing this ridiculous farce into something that might work, just a little bit.
The big problem is that due to our system of govt any change will be brought of the back of legislation, which, unfortunately, will have to pass thru the broken and disfigured legislature.
Good. Make Congress do its job. Erode the executive until we're not frothing at the mouth every 4 years worrying about who will be "in charge," and instead focusing on the actions of our congressional representatives.
Indeed. What's happened fairly recently is that the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society have realized this and concluded that they can define the future of the country by strengthening the judiciary rather than trying [the much harder task] of making congress functional. It's working great, and even though this started further back it only became blatantly obvious to outsiders what was happening with the Trump presidency.
That means forcing Congress to accept its role and do its job instead of being a place where the members spend most of their time fundraising and trying to keep their seats.
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