There is no such thing as a fix that does not enhance the partisan advantage of small-d democrats over fascists, and hence of most Democrats over MAGAts.
What it has. come down to is mobilized, unitized complete resistence--overwhelming number of citizens standing tall in the streets, challenging the MAGA coup. The numbers are there--MAGA numbers are actually much smaller. MAGA has succeeded because of ignoring all legal challenges, pretty much ignoring everything and getting away with it. My prediction is dark for democracy. Americans sit in their homes, drawing the curtains, hoping to be unnoticed, watching "them" being disappeared--fearfully, cowardly, selfishly. Americans as citizens, united against this tyranny, does not exist. Racial prejudice is strong, strong and thrives on simple dishonest denial, far from being limited to the deep Dixie South. They greet ICE with withering resistence and hope "somebody" will something. ICE is steadily being normalized as a result. Ten elected Democrats recently voted to further funding for ICE. Americans in their selfish, spoiled lives will fail to fight meaningfully.
The Roberts court is a blatantly partisan Trump enabler and enforcer, every bit as brazenly, unapologetically corrupt as he is. The court is “working fairly well” for MAGA & associated extremists but it is a disgrace to its own history, an existential threat to democracy, and a burden on the American people. It must be structurally reformed. If that isn't doable, then perhaps we could start by impeaching those justices who outright lied in their Congressional confirmation hearings.
Your proposals are band‑aids on the real wounds of a failing political system. We are living with the predictable consequences of democracy’s long‑recognized flaw: the passions of the people have been allowed to dominate our politics. That unleashes faction, division, and corruption, and the result is a Congress that no longer functions as a deliberative body. The tragedy is that Congress still holds the constitutional power to cure much of what ails the country — but it no longer has the structure or discipline to use it.
The 17th Amendment must be replaced. Senators should be chosen by state legislatures sitting as a body of the whole, selecting one of their own duly elected members. Only then would the Senate regain its intended character as a stabilizing institution of the states rather than a second arena for national populism. Rebalancing the country as a republic requires steering it away from the messy, destructive outcomes that come from trying to appease a sophomoric mob. Until we restore a structure that restrains popular passions rather than amplifying them, the system will continue to fail.
Does anyone today actually understand what a Constitutionally limited government is, let alone support such a thing? There'd be no central bank, no banking and finance regulations, no departments of education, no departments of healthcare, no energy regulations, no income tax, basically no government involvement in the economy in any meaningful way.
Is there anyone actually supporting or advocating such a thing in the mainstream?
Isn't talk about amendments to the Constitution an odd priority if no one supports it anyway?
And if we're to make amendments, it would be nothing like what's being suggested here.
The only change the Constitution really needs is to add a sentence or two to help address the major confusion everyone seems to have about politics.
It would go something like this: "The function of government is to protect individual rights and therefore the government must never interfere in the economy, nor our personal beliefs, in any shape or form, for any reason whatsoever, ever again. The only activity the government restricted by this Constitution may engage in is the courts, the police and the armed forces."
if you want to grant such a power it should be to, at a minimum , someone with legal training or judicial experience (which sounds an awful lot like an appeals court). nothing in our election process ensures that the president is going to be a wise and knowledgeable attorney or judge.
another item to amend is granting two senators per state regardless of population and might as well throw in the need to redetermine the total number of federal legislators in the House of Representatives , which hasn't changed since about 1910 despite a tripling of the nation's population.
I think this is a good well reasoned argument. However, reforming the Supreme Court is an extremely urgent matter and while requiring term limits would be great for the long term, it would not help the current extreme threat to Democracy and to the Constitution itself. So besides this good idea about non partisan amendments, it is urgent that as soon as Democrats take over Presidency and both houses of Congress (hopefully 1/20/29) they must immediately expand the Court (which does not require amending the Constitution) by at least 4 justices and ideally much more than that--all appointed and confirmed (get rid of filibuster) right away. Minority voters greatly harmed by the destruction of the voting rights act, women greatly harmed by the Court's Roe overturn, and all Americans greatly harmed by many other outrageous decisions cannot wait generations for term limits to change the Court!
There's already no filibuster on all judicial appointments. You can thank Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell for that. Yeah, that would a sarcastic "thanks".
Authority to conduct a war, but only after Congress declares it. The clear words of rhe Constitution dictate this separation of power, and few points were more strongly emphasized by the anti-king founders.
What this highlights, at least for me, is how much of the focus is on structural fixes—like amendments—once problems become fully visible.
But it’s much harder to see how public concern builds before that point.
A lot of people may already share similar priorities around issues like accountability or institutional reform, but those perspectives tend to remain scattered rather than accumulating into something visible over time.
It raises a question about whether part of the gap isn’t just what changes we pursue—but how we make shared priorities visible early enough to shape them.
The SCOTUS term limits would make the branch far less effective, which would be bad because it's the only one working fairly well. If every president could name two justices then they would name the justices during the election and they would campaign for the candidate. The justices selected through that process would be much worse than the ones we can currently expect. No way thoughtful jurists like Kagan or Gorsuch would be selected if there were term limits.
"The justices selected through that process would be much worse than the ones we can currently expect" -- I literally, and sadly, LOL'd at this statement. But never mind because your core point is sound. Incoming presidents knowing in advance exactly how many and when they would be nominating justices would be bad.
SCOTUS term limits though need not result in that. For example make the maximum term be an odd number. And/or, also have an age limit for justices. A couple other ideas. Point being to deliberately put some variability into it that does not line up with presidential terms.
Trump already did campaign on a list of Supreme Court candidates, and Biden campaigned on promising to appoint on demographic criteria. And presidential candidates have been campaigning on Supreme Court appointments as an important reason to vote for them longer than that. It was certainly a hot issue in 2016. Everyone already knows it's likely most presidents will get at least one appointment (last who didn't was Carter). Voters don't necessarily care about the individual names being firmly pre-announced, and presidential candidates wouldn't necessarily want to tie their hands that much. But voters do already expect solidly liberal or conservative appointees from their respective parties. Overt politicization is also baked into letting justices strategically time their retirements, which they do on an obviously partisan basis (or else are subjected to heavy partisan pressure to do it). I'm not sure the current Court is exactly the pinnacle of America's most thoughtful jurists, either. And the incentive to pick somebody as young as you can get away with doesn't help on that front.
I think his point is that adding term limits to SCOTUS would exacerbate the problem of independence, something that hasn't really being a problem. The court has been independent and functioned well for centuries. Clearly no change is needed to the Constitution in this area.
The more recent frustrations with the Court seem less like structural failures and more like downstream effects of a degraded political culture. Amending the constitution cannot fix this problem.
But this raises a broader issue: what problems are you trying to solve with these proposed reforms anyway? If the concern is overreach in government, shouldn't you be calling to get government out of the economy, out of healthcare, out of trade, out of energy, etc? Think how little threat Trump would pose if we had an actually limited/liberal government.
This focus on altering institutions that are still functioning relatively well seems misplaced, especially when more fundamental sources of actual authoritarianism are left untouched.
Why bother with constitutional amendments if you accept the steady creep of authoritarian government anyway?
It’s the only branch that’s kinda working. Term limits where each president gets guaranteed appointments makes the process even more overtly political. I’d expect Supreme Court picks chosen by the campaign before to actually campaign with the candidates. SCOTUS isn’t perfect but this reform would make it even more politically connected to actual campaigns and thus more partisan.
So instead of term limits, let's limit how many appointments a president gets per 4-year term.
I propose minimum 1, and maximum 2. If the first appointment happens when there are no vacancies, the most senior justice is forced into retirement. The second appointment only happens if a Justice retires or dies after the first appointment and before the end of the current president's term. That's effectively a term limit of 36 years, but it has the advantage of making the makeup of the court more responsive to the wishes of the people expressed through their presidential choice. I'm assuming we've repealed the Electoral College here.
Now the right thing to do would be to abolish the Senate, but since that's currently unlikely, I would propose that any president's appointment will automatically become a justice if the Senate fails to have an up-or-down vote on confirmation within 80 days. That number is chosen so a lame duck president can't get a justice in the dying days of her term if the Senate doesn't back her.
This is fascinating. All your complaints are essentially about the presidential system giving too much power to one man but your proposed resolutions would further undermine the Supreme Court and Congress.
Listen, you obviously don't like my proposal, and that's ok. All this flailing about trying to come up with reasonable objections to it is rather unseemly, though. Let me help you out but pointing out its glaring and obvious flaw.
What if, due to calamities natural or man-made, we wind up with a protracted period when more justices are leaving the court than are being appointed to it?
My proposal only guarantees a minimum of 2 justices per four year period. That's a relatively long time to rely on the health and well-being of a relatively small amount of presumably mature people. It's unlikely, but definitely not impossible that we could wind up with no justices at all. I don't have a good answer on how to remedy this.
I don't see how. Right now presidents get to appoint between 0 and 9 justices. Limiting that to at most two is somehow giving them more power?
If your complaint is about Senate confirmation, that is only part of Congress, and by far the most undemocratic part.
We also have the very recent memory of McConnell abusing the rules of that undemocratic body to both block an appointment by a popular two-term president, and grant more appointments to a deeply unpopular one term president who made history by being impeached twice and staging the US's first coup attempt.
I think that partly depends on having a rosier view of the status quo, but I don't see any reason you'd get "candidates" for justice hitting the campaign trail like that. They could already do that right now, but nobody has. Presidential candidates don't even do that for their Cabinet picks, even though every president gets those. Nobody's running around before November saying e.g. vote for me, Marco Rubio will be my secretary of state and he's great. There are practical political reasons why presidential nominees don't like to do it that way even though they could.
But the court as it exists is already thoroughly politicized. They are already, frankly, extremely partisan hacks who have torched their public legitimacy. Sometimes they act as a brake or you'll get a case where they are, in effect, on the opposite side of an intra-party split from the president. But the self-perpetuating GOP court (and that's what they are, Republicans much more than originalists or even conservatives) has pretty reliably given Trump ~90% of what he wants. They've gotten worse since it became 6-3 instead of 5-4, too. If you like e.g. Gorsuch on some things, and he is OK on some, they don't even need his vote anymore, and it shows. Or Roberts in cases where he's tempted to be more moderate, etc. There's no defensible neutral principle for why they should have that supermajority, and it is itself completely the product of nakedly political maneuvering. The gamesmanship of strategically timed retirements and the morbid happenstance of deaths in office hasn't produced a more independent and apolitical court. It has produced a less independent, more partisan, less reputable court.
It's not the case that the half of the country that's left of center can be expected to just suck it up forever and accept that winning presidential (and Senate) elections doesn't matter, you're stuck with a hard right-wing court for generations to come. Stick with that and you will eventually get court packing jammed through when they have the votes, which would do a lot more damage to judicial review and the court as an institution. In contrast, almost every other high court both in the states and in other democracies have fixed terms, a set retirement age, or both. It works fine.
I’m still not clear why you’d want to make the most successful branch (relatively) more dependent on politics. There’s no good reason for making the court more political like you propose.
The problem is the president and few of your suggestions constrain him. I’m surprised you’re not calling for a parliamentary system or something like that. The political science on this is pretty clear that presidents are a major problem and there’s no good poli sci on how making courts more democratically accountable improves them — just the opposite.
What you misunderstand is the current system is what's more politicized. Justices timing their retirement based on overt partisan affiliation, so their preferred party gets to keep the seat, is politicization. A strong partisan incentive to block nominations because you hope to win the next election, even though you lost the last one, is politicization. (The predictability of the shoe soon enough being on the other foot would negate that. As it stands it's hard to imagine ever again a Senate of the opposite party will confirm any president's nominee, which kills ever getting bipartisan compromise choices.) I want to abolish both of those politicizing factors, you are defending them. They do not contribute to judicial independence, they make the Court *more* partisan.
I'm more keen on a Swiss-style council than a parliamentary system, in terms of reforming the executive branch. I also don't think a Westminster-style parliamentary system has any serious prospect of ever being adopted in the US. But this isn't an exhaustive list of all the ideal amendments I'd like. If I had a magic wand, there are plenty of other changes. The point is these are the ones that have some plausible degree of cross-partisan/ideological support, which is a necessary prerequisite for any serious amendment push. "Make the US a parliamentary system" is a fringe idea that's deeply counter to America's constitutional traditions. Maybe some other possibilities to limit presidential power, but not abolishing altogether the idea of an executive that's elected to a fixed term independently of Congress. It's also unclear how that'd even work while you still have the Senate as strong as it is, the closest parallel of Westminster + strong bicameralism is Australia and that's proven something of a mess.
I also don't think you can disentangle runaway imperial presidency from the Supreme Court that has done so much to produce it, largely based on an ideological framework (unitary executive was central to Scalia) that was not coincidentally developed at a time when Republicans tended to win more presidential elections but hadn't won the House in decades.
For what it's worth, if somebody does seriously want to pursue a parliamentary system, they should start in the states. A state could do that if it wanted, nothing's stopping them, though I'm skeptical how well it would fare on the ballot. I didn't mention this point but a common pattern for federal constitutional amendments is they reflect ideas that first gained steam by being adopted in the states. All of the three examples I outlined have parallels in existing state-level reforms that have already been adopted.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives each State 3 US Senators - 2 chosen by the people and 1 by State legislature. State legislatures should be allowed to fire US Senators they choose whenever they want and pick replacements. State legislatures would again have a say on Declaring War, military draft, Judges on US Supreme Court, tariffs, federal taxes, immigration, etc. State legislatures would be better able to fire the President.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that fixes Electoral College. Winner of a state gets 2 electoral college votes and winner of Congressional districts gets 1. Current electoral college system and popular vote for President both provide huge benefits for violence at polling places, ballot stuffing, voter suppression. Popular vote for President would decease odds Presidents would care about states low in population like NH.
Would like Amendment to Constitution - the only pay that Judges on US Supreme Court, federal judges, State Supreme Court Judges, President of the United States of America, Vice President of the United States of America, Speaker of United States of America, members of Congress, Secretaries of Federal Department should get is their pay for the position. No more domestic emoluments. No more foreign emoluments worth over $100. Foreign emoluments will continue to need the permission of members of Congress before they may be taken. Gifts from non family members have to be under $100. They may receive military pensions and state government pensions. Pensions from companies should be held in trust until after leave office.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that says when a Treaty conflicts with Bill of Rights or other parts of Constitution that part of Treaty is not constitutional.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives US House of Representatives Advice and Consent on Treaties.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives State legislatures the power to nullify, federal laws, federal regulations, Treaties.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives the people the power to nullify, federal laws, federal regulations, Treaties.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives State legislatures power to pardon federal crimes.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives States legislatures power to pardon state crimes.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives US Senate power to pardon federal crimes and state crimes.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives US House of Representatives the power to pardon federal crimes and state crimes.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives people the power to pardon federal crimes and state crimes. Innocent people have received death penalty.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives State legislatures the power to fire President, Vice President, Speaker of US House of Representatives, Secretary of State of USA, Judges on US Supreme Court, Secretaries of Federal Departments, Director of FBI, Director of CIA.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives the people the power to fire President, Vice President, Speaker of US House of Representatives, Secretary of State of USA, Judges on US Supreme Court, Secretaries of Federal Departments, Director of FBI, Director of CIA.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives the people the power to fire their US Senators, their Representatives to US House of Representatives, Governors, Mayors, Aldermen, members of School Boards, members of State legislatures. When the people fire US Senator chosen by State legislature, State legislature chooses the replacement. The people pick the replacements for US Senators and others they elected via elections.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives State legislatures the power to fire US Senators and Representatives to US House of Representatives the people pick. The people would pick the replacements via elections.
While not preserving mercy, the simpler approach with respect to pardons is to remove the presidential pardon power and retroactively revoke all pardons. Given the political misbehavior it may prove all but impossible to provide wording for a pardon power that cannot be misinterpreted by political or legal actors.
As for gerrymandering, you need to move to some form of proportional representation - and that has its issues as well. Lesser, but still problematic.
Yes all congressional districts should be reasonably concentric and respect natural and visible boundaries, such rivers, lakes, Interstates and railroads.
There is no such thing as a fix that does not enhance the partisan advantage of small-d democrats over fascists, and hence of most Democrats over MAGAts.
What it has. come down to is mobilized, unitized complete resistence--overwhelming number of citizens standing tall in the streets, challenging the MAGA coup. The numbers are there--MAGA numbers are actually much smaller. MAGA has succeeded because of ignoring all legal challenges, pretty much ignoring everything and getting away with it. My prediction is dark for democracy. Americans sit in their homes, drawing the curtains, hoping to be unnoticed, watching "them" being disappeared--fearfully, cowardly, selfishly. Americans as citizens, united against this tyranny, does not exist. Racial prejudice is strong, strong and thrives on simple dishonest denial, far from being limited to the deep Dixie South. They greet ICE with withering resistence and hope "somebody" will something. ICE is steadily being normalized as a result. Ten elected Democrats recently voted to further funding for ICE. Americans in their selfish, spoiled lives will fail to fight meaningfully.
The Roberts court is a blatantly partisan Trump enabler and enforcer, every bit as brazenly, unapologetically corrupt as he is. The court is “working fairly well” for MAGA & associated extremists but it is a disgrace to its own history, an existential threat to democracy, and a burden on the American people. It must be structurally reformed. If that isn't doable, then perhaps we could start by impeaching those justices who outright lied in their Congressional confirmation hearings.
Term limits for judges is effectively partial now.
Currently the GOP appointed most, and it might carry on for decades.
Any bi-partisan fix should be sharper as to avoid a direct partisan effect.
Maybe best to enact it as "only applying for those appointed going forward". But still wild harm the GOP advantage.
For age limits, we should exempt currently serving politicians aged 50+ from this, so they wouldn't have a self interest in opposing it.
Your proposals are band‑aids on the real wounds of a failing political system. We are living with the predictable consequences of democracy’s long‑recognized flaw: the passions of the people have been allowed to dominate our politics. That unleashes faction, division, and corruption, and the result is a Congress that no longer functions as a deliberative body. The tragedy is that Congress still holds the constitutional power to cure much of what ails the country — but it no longer has the structure or discipline to use it.
The 17th Amendment must be replaced. Senators should be chosen by state legislatures sitting as a body of the whole, selecting one of their own duly elected members. Only then would the Senate regain its intended character as a stabilizing institution of the states rather than a second arena for national populism. Rebalancing the country as a republic requires steering it away from the messy, destructive outcomes that come from trying to appease a sophomoric mob. Until we restore a structure that restrains popular passions rather than amplifying them, the system will continue to fail.
Does anyone today actually understand what a Constitutionally limited government is, let alone support such a thing? There'd be no central bank, no banking and finance regulations, no departments of education, no departments of healthcare, no energy regulations, no income tax, basically no government involvement in the economy in any meaningful way.
Is there anyone actually supporting or advocating such a thing in the mainstream?
Isn't talk about amendments to the Constitution an odd priority if no one supports it anyway?
And if we're to make amendments, it would be nothing like what's being suggested here.
The only change the Constitution really needs is to add a sentence or two to help address the major confusion everyone seems to have about politics.
It would go something like this: "The function of government is to protect individual rights and therefore the government must never interfere in the economy, nor our personal beliefs, in any shape or form, for any reason whatsoever, ever again. The only activity the government restricted by this Constitution may engage in is the courts, the police and the armed forces."
absolutely no pardon power for the president.
if you want to grant such a power it should be to, at a minimum , someone with legal training or judicial experience (which sounds an awful lot like an appeals court). nothing in our election process ensures that the president is going to be a wise and knowledgeable attorney or judge.
another item to amend is granting two senators per state regardless of population and might as well throw in the need to redetermine the total number of federal legislators in the House of Representatives , which hasn't changed since about 1910 despite a tripling of the nation's population.
I think this is a good well reasoned argument. However, reforming the Supreme Court is an extremely urgent matter and while requiring term limits would be great for the long term, it would not help the current extreme threat to Democracy and to the Constitution itself. So besides this good idea about non partisan amendments, it is urgent that as soon as Democrats take over Presidency and both houses of Congress (hopefully 1/20/29) they must immediately expand the Court (which does not require amending the Constitution) by at least 4 justices and ideally much more than that--all appointed and confirmed (get rid of filibuster) right away. Minority voters greatly harmed by the destruction of the voting rights act, women greatly harmed by the Court's Roe overturn, and all Americans greatly harmed by many other outrageous decisions cannot wait generations for term limits to change the Court!
There's already no filibuster on all judicial appointments. You can thank Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell for that. Yeah, that would a sarcastic "thanks".
The President is the commander in chief; that kind of implies authority.
Maybe we could have used this to stop George Bush (with the support of Bill Kristol) unconstitutional war.
Authority to conduct a war, but only after Congress declares it. The clear words of rhe Constitution dictate this separation of power, and few points were more strongly emphasized by the anti-king founders.
What this highlights, at least for me, is how much of the focus is on structural fixes—like amendments—once problems become fully visible.
But it’s much harder to see how public concern builds before that point.
A lot of people may already share similar priorities around issues like accountability or institutional reform, but those perspectives tend to remain scattered rather than accumulating into something visible over time.
It raises a question about whether part of the gap isn’t just what changes we pursue—but how we make shared priorities visible early enough to shape them.
The SCOTUS term limits would make the branch far less effective, which would be bad because it's the only one working fairly well. If every president could name two justices then they would name the justices during the election and they would campaign for the candidate. The justices selected through that process would be much worse than the ones we can currently expect. No way thoughtful jurists like Kagan or Gorsuch would be selected if there were term limits.
"The justices selected through that process would be much worse than the ones we can currently expect" -- I literally, and sadly, LOL'd at this statement. But never mind because your core point is sound. Incoming presidents knowing in advance exactly how many and when they would be nominating justices would be bad.
SCOTUS term limits though need not result in that. For example make the maximum term be an odd number. And/or, also have an age limit for justices. A couple other ideas. Point being to deliberately put some variability into it that does not line up with presidential terms.
Trump already did campaign on a list of Supreme Court candidates, and Biden campaigned on promising to appoint on demographic criteria. And presidential candidates have been campaigning on Supreme Court appointments as an important reason to vote for them longer than that. It was certainly a hot issue in 2016. Everyone already knows it's likely most presidents will get at least one appointment (last who didn't was Carter). Voters don't necessarily care about the individual names being firmly pre-announced, and presidential candidates wouldn't necessarily want to tie their hands that much. But voters do already expect solidly liberal or conservative appointees from their respective parties. Overt politicization is also baked into letting justices strategically time their retirements, which they do on an obviously partisan basis (or else are subjected to heavy partisan pressure to do it). I'm not sure the current Court is exactly the pinnacle of America's most thoughtful jurists, either. And the incentive to pick somebody as young as you can get away with doesn't help on that front.
I think his point is that adding term limits to SCOTUS would exacerbate the problem of independence, something that hasn't really being a problem. The court has been independent and functioned well for centuries. Clearly no change is needed to the Constitution in this area.
The more recent frustrations with the Court seem less like structural failures and more like downstream effects of a degraded political culture. Amending the constitution cannot fix this problem.
But this raises a broader issue: what problems are you trying to solve with these proposed reforms anyway? If the concern is overreach in government, shouldn't you be calling to get government out of the economy, out of healthcare, out of trade, out of energy, etc? Think how little threat Trump would pose if we had an actually limited/liberal government.
This focus on altering institutions that are still functioning relatively well seems misplaced, especially when more fundamental sources of actual authoritarianism are left untouched.
Why bother with constitutional amendments if you accept the steady creep of authoritarian government anyway?
It’s the only branch that’s kinda working. Term limits where each president gets guaranteed appointments makes the process even more overtly political. I’d expect Supreme Court picks chosen by the campaign before to actually campaign with the candidates. SCOTUS isn’t perfect but this reform would make it even more politically connected to actual campaigns and thus more partisan.
So instead of term limits, let's limit how many appointments a president gets per 4-year term.
I propose minimum 1, and maximum 2. If the first appointment happens when there are no vacancies, the most senior justice is forced into retirement. The second appointment only happens if a Justice retires or dies after the first appointment and before the end of the current president's term. That's effectively a term limit of 36 years, but it has the advantage of making the makeup of the court more responsive to the wishes of the people expressed through their presidential choice. I'm assuming we've repealed the Electoral College here.
Now the right thing to do would be to abolish the Senate, but since that's currently unlikely, I would propose that any president's appointment will automatically become a justice if the Senate fails to have an up-or-down vote on confirmation within 80 days. That number is chosen so a lame duck president can't get a justice in the dying days of her term if the Senate doesn't back her.
This is fascinating. All your complaints are essentially about the presidential system giving too much power to one man but your proposed resolutions would further undermine the Supreme Court and Congress.
Listen, you obviously don't like my proposal, and that's ok. All this flailing about trying to come up with reasonable objections to it is rather unseemly, though. Let me help you out but pointing out its glaring and obvious flaw.
What if, due to calamities natural or man-made, we wind up with a protracted period when more justices are leaving the court than are being appointed to it?
My proposal only guarantees a minimum of 2 justices per four year period. That's a relatively long time to rely on the health and well-being of a relatively small amount of presumably mature people. It's unlikely, but definitely not impossible that we could wind up with no justices at all. I don't have a good answer on how to remedy this.
I don't see how. Right now presidents get to appoint between 0 and 9 justices. Limiting that to at most two is somehow giving them more power?
If your complaint is about Senate confirmation, that is only part of Congress, and by far the most undemocratic part.
We also have the very recent memory of McConnell abusing the rules of that undemocratic body to both block an appointment by a popular two-term president, and grant more appointments to a deeply unpopular one term president who made history by being impeached twice and staging the US's first coup attempt.
I'm ok with being guilty as charged, I guess!
I’m sorry, I thought you were making a principled argument and not merely a partisan one in principled language. My mistake.
I think that partly depends on having a rosier view of the status quo, but I don't see any reason you'd get "candidates" for justice hitting the campaign trail like that. They could already do that right now, but nobody has. Presidential candidates don't even do that for their Cabinet picks, even though every president gets those. Nobody's running around before November saying e.g. vote for me, Marco Rubio will be my secretary of state and he's great. There are practical political reasons why presidential nominees don't like to do it that way even though they could.
But the court as it exists is already thoroughly politicized. They are already, frankly, extremely partisan hacks who have torched their public legitimacy. Sometimes they act as a brake or you'll get a case where they are, in effect, on the opposite side of an intra-party split from the president. But the self-perpetuating GOP court (and that's what they are, Republicans much more than originalists or even conservatives) has pretty reliably given Trump ~90% of what he wants. They've gotten worse since it became 6-3 instead of 5-4, too. If you like e.g. Gorsuch on some things, and he is OK on some, they don't even need his vote anymore, and it shows. Or Roberts in cases where he's tempted to be more moderate, etc. There's no defensible neutral principle for why they should have that supermajority, and it is itself completely the product of nakedly political maneuvering. The gamesmanship of strategically timed retirements and the morbid happenstance of deaths in office hasn't produced a more independent and apolitical court. It has produced a less independent, more partisan, less reputable court.
It's not the case that the half of the country that's left of center can be expected to just suck it up forever and accept that winning presidential (and Senate) elections doesn't matter, you're stuck with a hard right-wing court for generations to come. Stick with that and you will eventually get court packing jammed through when they have the votes, which would do a lot more damage to judicial review and the court as an institution. In contrast, almost every other high court both in the states and in other democracies have fixed terms, a set retirement age, or both. It works fine.
I’m still not clear why you’d want to make the most successful branch (relatively) more dependent on politics. There’s no good reason for making the court more political like you propose.
The problem is the president and few of your suggestions constrain him. I’m surprised you’re not calling for a parliamentary system or something like that. The political science on this is pretty clear that presidents are a major problem and there’s no good poli sci on how making courts more democratically accountable improves them — just the opposite.
What you misunderstand is the current system is what's more politicized. Justices timing their retirement based on overt partisan affiliation, so their preferred party gets to keep the seat, is politicization. A strong partisan incentive to block nominations because you hope to win the next election, even though you lost the last one, is politicization. (The predictability of the shoe soon enough being on the other foot would negate that. As it stands it's hard to imagine ever again a Senate of the opposite party will confirm any president's nominee, which kills ever getting bipartisan compromise choices.) I want to abolish both of those politicizing factors, you are defending them. They do not contribute to judicial independence, they make the Court *more* partisan.
I'm more keen on a Swiss-style council than a parliamentary system, in terms of reforming the executive branch. I also don't think a Westminster-style parliamentary system has any serious prospect of ever being adopted in the US. But this isn't an exhaustive list of all the ideal amendments I'd like. If I had a magic wand, there are plenty of other changes. The point is these are the ones that have some plausible degree of cross-partisan/ideological support, which is a necessary prerequisite for any serious amendment push. "Make the US a parliamentary system" is a fringe idea that's deeply counter to America's constitutional traditions. Maybe some other possibilities to limit presidential power, but not abolishing altogether the idea of an executive that's elected to a fixed term independently of Congress. It's also unclear how that'd even work while you still have the Senate as strong as it is, the closest parallel of Westminster + strong bicameralism is Australia and that's proven something of a mess.
I also don't think you can disentangle runaway imperial presidency from the Supreme Court that has done so much to produce it, largely based on an ideological framework (unitary executive was central to Scalia) that was not coincidentally developed at a time when Republicans tended to win more presidential elections but hadn't won the House in decades.
For what it's worth, if somebody does seriously want to pursue a parliamentary system, they should start in the states. A state could do that if it wanted, nothing's stopping them, though I'm skeptical how well it would fare on the ballot. I didn't mention this point but a common pattern for federal constitutional amendments is they reflect ideas that first gained steam by being adopted in the states. All of the three examples I outlined have parallels in existing state-level reforms that have already been adopted.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives each State 3 US Senators - 2 chosen by the people and 1 by State legislature. State legislatures should be allowed to fire US Senators they choose whenever they want and pick replacements. State legislatures would again have a say on Declaring War, military draft, Judges on US Supreme Court, tariffs, federal taxes, immigration, etc. State legislatures would be better able to fire the President.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that fixes Electoral College. Winner of a state gets 2 electoral college votes and winner of Congressional districts gets 1. Current electoral college system and popular vote for President both provide huge benefits for violence at polling places, ballot stuffing, voter suppression. Popular vote for President would decease odds Presidents would care about states low in population like NH.
Would like Amendment to Constitution - the only pay that Judges on US Supreme Court, federal judges, State Supreme Court Judges, President of the United States of America, Vice President of the United States of America, Speaker of United States of America, members of Congress, Secretaries of Federal Department should get is their pay for the position. No more domestic emoluments. No more foreign emoluments worth over $100. Foreign emoluments will continue to need the permission of members of Congress before they may be taken. Gifts from non family members have to be under $100. They may receive military pensions and state government pensions. Pensions from companies should be held in trust until after leave office.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that says when a Treaty conflicts with Bill of Rights or other parts of Constitution that part of Treaty is not constitutional.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives US House of Representatives Advice and Consent on Treaties.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives State legislatures the power to nullify, federal laws, federal regulations, Treaties.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives the people the power to nullify, federal laws, federal regulations, Treaties.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives State legislatures power to pardon federal crimes.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives States legislatures power to pardon state crimes.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives US Senate power to pardon federal crimes and state crimes.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives US House of Representatives the power to pardon federal crimes and state crimes.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives people the power to pardon federal crimes and state crimes. Innocent people have received death penalty.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives State legislatures the power to fire President, Vice President, Speaker of US House of Representatives, Secretary of State of USA, Judges on US Supreme Court, Secretaries of Federal Departments, Director of FBI, Director of CIA.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives the people the power to fire President, Vice President, Speaker of US House of Representatives, Secretary of State of USA, Judges on US Supreme Court, Secretaries of Federal Departments, Director of FBI, Director of CIA.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives the people the power to fire their US Senators, their Representatives to US House of Representatives, Governors, Mayors, Aldermen, members of School Boards, members of State legislatures. When the people fire US Senator chosen by State legislature, State legislature chooses the replacement. The people pick the replacements for US Senators and others they elected via elections.
Would like Amendment to Constitution that gives State legislatures the power to fire US Senators and Representatives to US House of Representatives the people pick. The people would pick the replacements via elections.
Sincerely,
Kenneth Scot Stremsky
187 Poplar Street
Manchester, NH 03104
603-647-5898
While not preserving mercy, the simpler approach with respect to pardons is to remove the presidential pardon power and retroactively revoke all pardons. Given the political misbehavior it may prove all but impossible to provide wording for a pardon power that cannot be misinterpreted by political or legal actors.
As for gerrymandering, you need to move to some form of proportional representation - and that has its issues as well. Lesser, but still problematic.
Behold! There should be an amendment prohibiting gerrymandering
Yes all congressional districts should be reasonably concentric and respect natural and visible boundaries, such rivers, lakes, Interstates and railroads.