Once they legalized coups, they lost all legitimacy in my opinion.
The SCOTUS situation is scarier than the POTUS situation which was already frightening enough.
The silver lining here is they have no power of enforcement themselves, and their decisions can be reversed if a sane court is built around them by leaders with enough spine to do so.
Democrats just need to get Biden out of the race so Trump can be kept out of office. And the house majority is very slim, so that can potentially be flipped too if the base can actually be energized instead of suppressed the way they have been. Democrats win when there is high turn out, so the name of the game needs to be showing people that Democrats are capable of listening.
…if a sane court is built around them by leaders with enough spine
Lack of spine isn’t the issue. It’s lack of political power.
And even then what would the new court do? If they go back to operating the way they did before this judicial coup, that wouldn’t actually fix any of the damage done. Or remove the traitor sitting on the SCOTUS.
A court with more judges would water down the influence of any extremists.
But yes, packing the court alone doesn’t guaruntee the court can’t be captured again. What Elie Mystal suggested way back when the court majority had flipped was basically two things that should happen:
-
expand the court by alot, maybe somewhere within 20-30, similar to the 9th circuit that’s just below the Supreme Court. This helps dilute the power of individual crazies like Alito and then
-
Rotate judges out routinely to other federal positions. This allows for their life-time appointment still, but ensures also that, due to the high number of justices, every administration is getting an opportunity to appoint a few judges every time. That revolving door means it wpuld require multiple far-right administrations to pin the court down like it is now.
There’s no reason the court needs to be nine justices, we’ve had more and less throughout our history as a nation, and there’s no reason that the courts power needs to be concentrated into the hands of so few individuals, since the purpose of the court is suppose to be a moderating force of legal scholars, not an explicitly partisan body.
None of this addresses my point. There isn’t the political power to do it.
And even if there was, the court has already essentially overturned precedent as a concept. That can’t just be rolled back without completely reworking the court, which…see my first point…
Yes, it depends up getting people out to vote, especially in mid-terms.
Precedent is literally just a tradition that’s agreed upon, there’s nothing binding judges to adhere to it, which is why the supreme court was so easily able to ignore it.
So in that sense it’s a double-edged sword, it’s just as easy for judges to rule by precedent as it is for them to not, it’s always been this way.
-
they have no power of enforcement themselves
…which is why they’re working in tandem with the corrupt GOP, which does have the power. There isn’t a separation of powers in practice, just Democrats and Republicans.
Yes, what I’m saying is if you can keep the GOP out of power you hobble the supreme court. Like I said, it’s a source of hope and a goal to aim your political effort towards, not a permanent solution.
People downvoting this seem confused. I made the assumption people were able to understand I was talking longer term fight.
Fucking let’s go. Do it.
Bidens guys already came out saying they don’t want to reform the Supreme Court. It’s not on the ballot this cycle.
Yeah I just saw that. Ridiculous.
And in 2 years he’ll probably “regret” not doing anything.2 years he might come to regret that decision in January when Trump usess his new powers to lock his ass up.
If fucking Biden lose in November he better use that new gift to stop Trump. Dumbass really wants to use this to fundraiser on, Biden so out of fucking touch he got no clue that we are just this vote away from a Christofascist state.
I ALMOST want to vote Trump just to see SOMEONE (like Biden) FINALLY receive Consequences for their Actions! ALMOST.
We called for this on day 1 of Biden’s first term…
He chose to put a bipartisan committee in charge of seeing if we should just let the corrupt Republican SC stay in power, and the committee waited two years till dems didnt have the numbers to fix anything, before recommending Dems don’t fix anything.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/biden-support-expanding-supreme-court-white-house/story?id=85703773
The aristocrats! /s
As long as the Dems have less than 60 votes in the Senate, and aren’t willing to ditch the fucking filibuster, there’s literally nothing they can do.
You can’t reform the court without a Constitutional Amendment since the operation and formation of the court is defined by the Constitution.
So, 2/3rds vote in the House, 2/3rds vote in the Senate, ratification by the States.
and aren’t willing to ditch the fucking filibuster, there’s literally nothing they can do.
That’s the rub.
We have things we can do, but party leadership don’t want to do it.
So when they say they can’t do anything, things like “get rid of the filibuster” come up. And they party has to acknowledge that would work…
They’re just not willing to do it.
Which when that comes back to voters, makes them less likely to vote. Because they feel like even when we have the numbers, it won’t change anything because party leadership wants to have the fight against fascism with at least one hand tied behind their back out of an outdated sense of honor.
We’re fucking fighting fascism bro.
What matters is winning.
In 1982 SCOTUS made a decision on this:
“We hold that the petitioner, as a former President of the United States, is entitled to absolute immunity from damages liability predicated on his official acts.”
The media, the Democrats, but I repeat myself, have all been lying to you. This has always been the case. Nothing has changed.
Nope, the real lie was SCOTUS was becoming liberal instead of just making a few liberal rulings here and there. This was used as a battle cry to put in more conservatives, remember the “activists” judges they were wringing their hands about. So now we don’t even get a few liberal rulings sprinkled here and there.
Full stop, SCOTUS has always been conservative. History has already proven this
I wonder why you’d prefer a partisan court?
Well when we have a Right Wing party (Democrats) and a Fascism Party (Republicans) one of those is preferable to the other
Why do you consider the Republican party racists? What makes the party as whole this way to you?
This most recent ruling wildly expanded the immunity, added presumed immunity for adjacent actions, and phrased everything in such a way that actually prosecuting the president for literally anything will take years.
Say the president does something you think is illegal and should be prosecuted. Stop. Before you can take him to court over that, you need to determine if what he did was “official” or “unofficial.” SCOTUS didn’t give deterministic guidelines to differentiate, so you need to have a separate court case just for that. Alright so let’s have the court case that determines whether what the president did was official or unofficial. Let’s introduce some evidence—
Stop. Evidence from official acts cannot be introduced in a case to prove something was unofficial. So you actually need to have a separate court case to determine if that evidence is official or unofficial. Once you have your results, one party won’t like it and will appeal it up and up to the supreme court. Repeat for potentially every single piece of evidence.
Okay now that we know what evidence we can and can’t introduce, we can finally determine if what the president did was official or unofficial. Once we have a result, one party won’t like it and it will be appealed all the way up to the supreme court again. Only when SCOTUS rules the action was unofficial (IF they rule it was unofficial) can you then BEGIN the process of actually taking the president to court over that action.
This will take years, not to mention the supreme court is appointed by the president and it recently ruled that taking bribes after you do something instead of before is perfectly legal actually. This is all by design. The point is to keep this all tied up in court for years, which effectively gives the president full immunity for everything. And he can also pressure the courts or judges to rule his way via any number of threats (if you think that’s an unofficial act, feel free to take him to court over it).
This is pretty clearly designed to functionally protect the president from all culpability (which the dissenting SCOTUS opinions agree on, ergo their dissent).
Before prosecuting a president you have always had to stop and determine if what was done was in an official capacity or an unofficial capacity. It’s been like that for 200 years. That’s why you can’t charge bush 1, bush 2, or Obama with war crimes. Furthermore, the court made their stance on Trump quite clear. They did not dismiss any of his cases. If they were in his pocket, and he had this absolute immunity as you claim, all cases would be dropped.
Folks, it’s quite clear what the president can and cannot do. He can pardon, appoint, dismiss, and instruct the military to take actions and has full immunity to do so. Which of course the president must have full immunity for those actions. If you or I send a missle to kill people we would get charged. The president would not.
Moreover, presumptive immunity leaves the door wide open. The ruling says that any action taken with presumptive immunity may be challenged and that the burden is on the government to show that the action was not within the presidents duties, and failed to uphold the constitutional oath taken. If the president blatantly breaks the law that burden of proof would be childish to gather. The president is not above the law, and never was.
The thing is, this country has existed for nearly 250 years without this ruling and the president having any sort of immunity. The idea that we suddenly need this is ridiculous. So what changed? Well, Trump of course. And yes, this is all about Trump. This ruling didn’t come out of nowhere. It came from Trump making claims about immunity, the lower courts dismissing the claims as nonsense, until the supreme court took it up and here we are.
Let’s follow that logic.
You locate a terrorist. You just so happen to have a couple guys who can bomb that terrorist. You murder the terrorist. You are charged with murder because the laws of this nation do not allow murder.
Same scenario, but now it’s the president. Please tell me what the difference is. Why can the president not be charged with a crime but you can? What would you call that?
You can’t charge them for war crimes bc war crime isn’t a US law. This didn’t exist before and the official unofficial distinction was explicitly created in the ruling. The above post outlines exactly the process now established to block any case, suggesting that because a more ridiculously comically corrupt version of a ruling exist that this isn’t it nonsense and clearly demonstrative of your goal to spin propaganda.
Your post is a lie, self contradictory and explicit propaganda. Your account should be blocked and banned.
Well, didn’t take long to out yourself as a fascist did you?
damages liability
it’s okay, reading is hard
I copy and pasted from the 1981 ruling. Anyway, hope you have a good one!
He’s pointing out what you posted says damages liability, which means something completely different. Basically means I couldn’t have sued Regan for fucking over 90% of the American populous financially. It doesn’t mean he has immunity to everything that is an official act. Big difference.
Indeed it does. The president has always had immunity. This is civil immunity. There is also criminal immunity because you can’t prosecute the president for ordering the deaths of thousands of people. Unlike say, you know if I was responsible for thousands of deaths. Or even one death. The president must have some immunity to carry out their duty as commander and chief. We have laws against murder. Ever find it funny you can’t go after the president for murder? No, you never once considered it.
That Liberal Media that keeps treating Trump like a real candidate despite the 34 felonies?
You disagree with 74 million people then?
I do, and I’m tired of pretending I don’t.
“We hold that the petitioner, as a former President of the United States, is entitled to absolute immunity from damages liability predicated on his official acts.”
Specifically, immunity from civil damages. The president couldn’t be sued by randos claiming he cost them a job or whatever.
This is a new class of fascism. Keep on trollin’.
The president has always enjoyed immunity for performing official duties. Obviously.
That’s true other than it’s absolutely not.
No? Can the president be charged with murder for telling the military to drone strike someone? No they cannot, because they are immune. They have to have some immunity in order to execute their duties.
In other words everyone, things are not going according to Liberals/Democrats, so, we need to change the entire structure, Constitution, and political system in America.
