Justice Elena Kagan declined Thursday to outright answer the question of whether Congress could impose an ethics code on the Supreme Court, but she did allow that it could do “various things” to regulate the high court.
“It just can’t be that the court is the only institution that is somehow not subject to any checks and balances from anybody else,” she said, adding, “I mean, we are not imperial.”
“We, too, are part of a checks and balances system,” she said.
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I’d say it a pretty strong indicator that they shouldn’t have the job they have.
my own country doesn’t have absolute democracy, but when I read things about the American Supreme Court it just seems so crazy, so much absolute power held by so few. Incredibly easy to influence and corrupt and their decisions are so wide ranging and impactful. It has no place in a democracy in the form that America does it.
make it a few hundred Justices that all vote and you have something closer to the UK’s house of Lords, unelected and corruptible, but it’s much harder to corrupt hundreds than three.
What do you mean? The UK created a Supreme Court in 2009 that has 12 justices, which has similar functions to the US Supreme Court (9 justices). UK’s House of Lords is closer to the US Senate.
UK’s House of Lords is closer to the US Senate.
I understand what you are trying to say, but no, it isn’t.
Sure, there’s no direct equivalent for the House of Lords in the American system.
At the same time, unlike the Supreme Court in both the US and the UK, the House of Lords is not a judicial body. That’s why I thought it was odd that you chose a legislative body like the House of Lords to make your point.
I’m curious because I just know not.
How is it not closer?
Mainly because the UK’s parliament is Westminster-based, the House of Lords are appointed (not elected) for life, and it’s there to act as a check against the House of Commons (who are elected) so no majority gov’t could just pass any laws, etc that they want.
Canada’s gov’t is the same (except we call it the Senate vs House of Lords instead).
Senators used to be appointed, and the House of Lords can no longer check the house of Commons, only delay.
It absolutely is, and actually it used to be even closer to the house of lords. Up until this last century the US Senate was not directly elected, the state government would appoint the state’s senators. IIRC the Senate was inspired by the house of lords, the major difference being term limits instead of lifetime appointments.
(I imagine the Senate was more meaningful back when the state government couldn’t talk to people in Washington in seconds)
What I find so ironic is that the US always wants to be the world’s law enforcer, trying to dictate where and how democracy should be run and followed, yet it doesn’t follow what it preaches.
Source: I live in the USA, and I see it going on on one way or another every day.
I can promise you, as an outsider, that the rest of the world regards the US as neither democratic nor free
The Idea behind the American SC was that their life long appointment would eliminate the need to be corrupt as they (theoretically) wouldn’t have the ‘pro quo’ part of ‘quid pro quo’ to corrupt them. In reality, that doesn’t seem to work calling into question the necessity of term limits and of course corruption checking.
Packing the court to a few hundred justices isn’t really necessary as it would just be more like the US Senate which does exist.
But I agree, they seem to have too much power as is.
Packing the court to a few dozen and having the justices rotate randomly would do a lot to prevent corruption. Nobody would know which justices are going to hear their case and there would be more justices to bribe. Do both of those together and we’re most of the way to restoring the court’s legitimacy.
The house of lords actually served as the highest court before the supreme court was introduced
Prove it
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
Seems pretty clear.
Even if they want to say they can only regulate jurisdiction, then fine, take away their jurisdiction. We’ll just have circuit splits.
it must be really f’in weird to be on the supreme court, like, “oh my esteemed colleague who watches Long Dong Silver and takes obvious bribes constantly and I’m uh, we could like uh… make policy that helps people…”
She’s changed her mind since April, when all 9 said there was no need for oversight. Glad to hear she’s coming around, if a bit late.
She’s not coming around. She knows it doesn’t matter what she says, so she might as well say something that makes her look good. She’s just as full of shit as the rest of them.
When the check against the highest level of the judicial system is amending the constitution, and the partisan split ensures that congress will never agree to ratify any new amendment, it’s functionally not a check anymore.
They don’t need amendments to the constitution to adjust the supreme court, only laws, as long as those laws don’t conflict with what is written in the constitution. For instance, the reason we have nine justices and not eight or ten, is because of a law passed by congress. So congress can change that anytime it feels like. The number of justices is not set in the constitution. There’s actually very few details about the supreme court in the constitution, so congress has a lot of latitude to regulate and make changes to the supreme court.
One thing that’s popular that would likely require a constitutional amendment though is term limits for justices, because the lifetime appointment is a detail specified in the constitution. So basically, congress regulates and sets up the court system through passed laws, most changes to the court system including to the supreme court don’t need constitutional ammendments. Alito is talking out of his ass when he says congress can’t do this.
Unfortunately Congress’s only real recourse if the supreme court declares themself above the law and ignores congress like Alito wants them to, would be for congress to get off its butt and impeach some justices, which seems very unlikely. I would hope Roberts and at least one other would want to avoid a constitutional crisis though that would risk a total collapse of supreme court authority, but I’m not sure. The corruption seems to run deep with a number of them.
Kagan actually respects the system of government, unlike every other justice. They want to act like they’re above everyone else, fuck that.
unlike every other justice.
Has Jackson proven to be an elitist hack?
Just because you say it, that doesn’t mean it’s true.
Her comment doesn’t sound very certain. “It just can’t be” sounds the same as “I’m sure there’s something they can do”. She doesn’t actually know and is unwilling to give any examples.
Did you consider reading more than the
headlineblurb in the post?The liberal justice declined to say much more about a bill that advanced out of the Democrat-led Senate Judiciary Committee at the end of July – meant to force the Supreme Court to adopt a stronger ethics policy – for fear legal challenges surrounding the issues could someday land before the court.
You want the Supreme Court to prescribe the form of regulation congress can have on it?
