https://www.huffpost.com/entry/samuel-alito-wsj-supreme-court-ethics_n_64c43c76e4b0fd06594b3711
In an interview in the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion section, he says there’s no room for Congress to set rules for the court.
You're wrong Alito, Congress can definitely make rules and laws to regulate you. They have the explicit authority to do that.
"The court can be trusted to self-regulate"
That's bullshit. With your unethical bribes being accepted and the bullshit rulings you've been making have proven you're an incompetent corrupt court.
It's right on the courts' info page
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.
I mean, these people haven't even read the laws they're supposed to be deciding cases on. You expect him to read his own website too? The privilege.
/s
You used sarcasm. Samuel Alito might not have read actual law in years. He mostly writes about the current manufactured outrage from Fox News, and tries to shoehorn that into an opinion. He's gone off-topic a few times in recent years, trying to shove culture war bullshit into cases where they're only tangentially related.
It's called Fox News Brain. Your racist uncle and a sitting Justice of the Supreme Court both have it.
What do you mean they haven't read the laws?
I think all of them were all good law students, law review editors, judicial clerks, and judges for some time, before being appointed. It's all law practice, it's all reading law. There can't be a fundamental concept of law they aren't well familiar with.
I say that because they clearly don't give a shit, or they'd avoid even the appearance of impropriety.
If they can't even be bothered to not do obvious stuff with conflict of interest/money/cases before them, why would they be putting in any actual work? Especially the ones who are there for prestige alone, their clerks are doing their reading and writing for them.
Alito and Thomas in particular have said things recently and historically that indicate they're just phoning it in.
The problem is they can also decide that isn't what that means, it's hilariously stupid to be able to do it but they can.
corrupt scotus justices: we're strict constitutionalists. if it says it in the constitution, it's the law. if it doesn't say it in the constitution, it's not the law
the constitution: ...well-organized militia...
corrupt scotus justices: no not like that
the constitution: ...equal protection under the law...
corrupt scotus justices: no not like that
the constitution: ...against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause...
corrupt scotus justices: no not like that
the constitution: slavery is legal
corrupt scotus justices: that's more what we were thinking....
Pretty much all authority the Supreme Court has is power it has given itself. It's long overdue being reigned in.
Indeed, I posted this on another thread about the court
Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Smith Adams, September 11, 1804, "but the opinion [Marbury v Madison] which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional, and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature & executive also in their spheres, would make the judiciary a despotic branch."
we were worried that republicans were gonna make the president a dictator appointed exclusively by republicans, and while we were fighting against that they made scotus a dictator appointed exclusively by republicans
That had to do with size of the court.
Constitution says it's a lifetime appointment, though.
Can have all the rules you want, which the justices are free to ignore because the Constitution says it's a lifetime seat.
You just have to be creative. Pass a law saying holding a Supreme Court seat for more than 20 years is a capital crime.
That would be unconstitutional and ruled that way, too. The law cannot take away a thing guaranteed by the Constitution (the lifetime appointment).
There would need to be an impeachment or amendment. Or court-packing.
It would be evil and unethical, yes, but not unconstitutional. They would still be justices right up until their execution, so it’s still a lifetime appointment.
It could still run up against tue 8th Amendment, more specifically the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Edit to add: being convicted of a capital crime does not guarantee a death sentence. Anything less than death still bumps into a Constitutional issue.
Coming and going, there's a likely Constituional challenge. An amendment would almost be easier.
Ah, but the Supreme Court has repeatedly found that execution is not in and of itself cruel and unusual punishment, as long as you follow procedures and don’t apply it arbitrarily.
“ In Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), the Court refused to expand Furman. The Court held the death penalty was not per se unconstitutional as it could serve the social purposes of retribution and deterrence.” (From https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/death_penalty#:~:text=The%20Supreme%20Court%20has%20ruled,it%20must%20be%20carried%20out.)
In this case, deterring justices from staying on the bench forever. :-)
If, however, the passage of this law made SCOTUS decide the throw precedent to the wind (and this is the court to do it) and decide that the death penalty WAS in fact unconstitutional, I’d still take it as a win
death penalty isn't cruel or unusual. scotus said so themselves. they even said a punishment could be cruel as long as it isn't unusual.
But will congress enforce the rules? By enforce, I mean using the power of Impeachment and voting to convict under said Article(s) of Impeachment. Otherwise, any rules are pointless. A president can only be prosecuted after leaving office, how do prosecute a sitting supreme court justice who serves for life? Even if you did, they'd still be a sitting justice that can rule from prison since criminal conviction =/= impeachment conviction, and I'd imagine the case could go up to the very court that he/she sit in, and it only takes 4 of their collegues plus their own vote to overturn their own conviction.
In this political climate, it's practically impossible to convict a justice under the impeachment procedure.
An impeachment is not a criminal trial, the Supreme Court would have no authority to make a decision in an impeachment.
Impeachment is purely a political tool to remove nefarious actors from the government. So an impeached justice would have his spot on the bench taken away, and then would be a regular citizen who can face trial and imprisonment like any other.
If they decide to ignore that rule, it’s literally the job the of the president to have them arrested and brought before congress to face their impeachment.
I would hope if the court tried to play that hand, congress would actually start using their authority and install a new court, but I trust congress to have a spine as much as I trust my 102 year old neighbor to mow his lawn.
But don’t worry, that would be like the 3rd constitutional crisis we’ve had in 5 years. They’re getting kind of boring now anyway.
The GOP would never give up their own. They proved that with Trump. Trump would have been impeached had McConnell not gone to Trump's lawyers and told them what they needed to say after the first day of the trial. The Senate left the first day with the mindset of he has to go. McConnell told Trump's lawyer that even most R Senators were going to impeach him unless the lawyer did exactly this.
Would be interesting to see a sitting Supreme Court justice who has been impeached but not convicted.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/04/07/supreme-court-justice-impeached/
Archive (Paywall-Free Version): https://archive.is/IcDV5
That is a great article! Thanks for linking it, especially with the archive link.
We the people made up the rules and we can change them in any way we want. If the supreme Court has some kind of magic that stops that they are free to deploy that but in the meantime we can assume that they are flesh bags like the rest of us.
He means absent a Constitutional amendment. And he's correct.
Congress authority is limited to saying what type of cases the court can take and how many justices there are.
Constitution says they are lifetime appointments. Can't really attach rules to that. Even if they break the rules, they are still lifetime appointments.
Only way out is death, retirement, or impeachment. I think only one justice was ever impeached.
Maybe I'm wrong but I thought the only thing the constitution says about it is "there shall be a supreme court."
Regardless, the constitution was created to be amended, and it's the states that vote on those. You know. That whole democracy thing.
Yeah, but at this point trying to amend the constitution is a dangerous prospect when we have a very large group trying to push the country into a fascist theocracy.
Not to mention that getting enough states to agree on anything is impossible now.
You could try to put in one that bans the government from raping puppies to death and the GOP would oppose it.
Congress can impeach Alito and remove him from the bench. So, yes, they have some major muscle to flex. Unfortunately, the GOP is so corrupt, they wouldn't impeach Alito for for shooting a random stranger on 5th ave and having sex with their corpse., in broad daylight, on live TV.
There's nothing that says we have to listen to their rulings. They can simply be ignored.
Uhhh, no? Courts and officers of the court are bound, top to bottom. Someone that ignores orders may be held in contempt. Courts can issue writs of capias to any proper officer and writs of mandamus to lower courts.
But they won't. They'll do what they want but in such a way to appear to be 'trying', they'll go back to court because people will see they didn't meet the requirement, it'll take a year or two to get back to Supreme Court, get another ruling, wash-rinse-repeat.
When a system can be trivially 'gamed' to avoid the rules, then the rules are useless.
I guess we could just just pass a law that any supreme court justice that sits on the bench after attaining the age of 80 will be summarily executed in celebration of their achievements.
Then when the alw is challenged to the court, the textualists can't argue that it's cruel and unusual punishment because it is infact a celebration.
I believe the proposals being floated right now are for instituting term limits by having justices retire to Senior Justice status after a set number of years. They'd still be technically appointed and able to sit in on cases in special circumstances, but not on normal duty.
Well... yeah. Have you seen the shit those untouchable godkings have been getting away with?
In theory, a few of them should be impeached, tried, convicted, disbarred, removed, & jailed, since lying to Congress under oath is a federal offense I'm pretty sure.
“The court has investigated the court, and the majority of the court found no wrongdoing on our the courts part.”
SCOTUS won't be able to do shit against a determined president. They're the most powerful branch now, but only one branch has direct access to an enforcement arm, and it isn't SCOTUS.
They better tread carefully. People are only going to become more extreme the more they continue dictating from the bench for the wealthy and corporations. They could be completely neutered as an institution.
The president could also order the executive branch to stop enforcing their rulings. It doesn't even have to involve Congress. They could even counterdict SCOTUS. I'm not saying it would automatically work, but it could work under the right conditions.
The branch of government with lifetime appointment can't be regulated by anyone else?!? LOL
How convenient!
The only thing stopping that from happening now is that Democrats are too weak to push the issue.
Well someone better regulate their silly asses cuz what they're doing now is throwing civil rights back to Jim crow.
scotus rulings only apply to the underclasses, like democrats, black people, queer people and other communists.
The court gave the court that authority.
When you think about it, the court itself has been unconstitutional since 1803 when they decided for themselves that they had the authority to decide what is and isn’t constitutional. Marbury V Madison is the case that “gave” the court the power of judicial review. A power that is not enumerated in the constitution whatsoever, and was entirely made up by the Supreme Court.
Judicial review is a bullshit system and should have been struck down with an act of congress immediately. Unfortunately, Americans have apparently always been lazy, and delegating constitutional questions to the court was seen as easier than making amendments all the time.
In short: sack the court and start again. Create a new entity for making constitutional interpretations, and make SCOTUS back into what it was supposed to be: the final court of appeals for the judicial system.
Then what would stop Congress from creating blatantly unconstitutional laws? Getting rid of judicial review sounds like a good idea now because the court is run by fascists, but I'm not convinced that getting rid of it entirely would make things better.
I think judicial review needs some serious revision and way to check against its power, but getting rid of it completely makes the legislature too powerful.
To quote myself “create a new entity that is responsible for constitutional interpretation”
Preferably these would be elected positions under the legislative branch with a formal code of ethics and terms limits. If a position is going to change the interpretation of laws, it should fall under the preview of law makers.
Judicial review has been used, and is fundamentally the power, to legislate from the bench. The duty of a court is to decide how laws are to be executed, not to decide what those laws mean. The meaning of the law is up to congress, and the enforcement of the law is up to the executive branch. The court is merely there to decide when those laws have been breached and what punishment that entity deserves, if any.
This is a stupid, far right take. Marbury didn't set new precedent. It said what everyone already knew. Judicial review is part of western jurisprudence for centuries and centuries.
How is this far right? The right loves the current court, it’s their personal sledgehammer they can pull out to erode our freedoms whenever they wish.
Just because something had been done for a long time, doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.
For a long time, the west had kings as governments. We fought a war to get rid of that. The French started cutting off heads to end that.
For a long time, the church was a key government entity, our constitution explicitly states that the government is entirely separate to the church.
For a long time, common people had no rights to trial by peers or privacy in their own homes from the government. Again, we have an amendment that enshrines that.
The Supreme Court has been abusing their power too much and for too long. It needs to change, and one those changes should be to judicial review. No more legislation from the bench.
Dismantling the court because you don't understand judicial review is a far right position. They want power consolidated, not in a tripartite system of government.
everything I don’t personally agree with is a far right position
Okay bud. I see I’m dealing with a highly intelligent being. After all, we definitely have a tripartite government when we have a legislative branch that makes laws and an unelected judicial branch that… also makes laws by deciding what is and isn’t constitutional and what rights are and aren’t protected by the constitution.
Yup, sure sounds like a totally fair and balanced system of government that definitely doesn’t need a major overhaul and sever limits places on it by the other branches.
But I guess actually wanting checks and balances is a far right position, so, according to you, shouldn’t be done.
This is a stupid take. Marbury didn't set new precedent. It said what everyone already knew. Judicial review is part of western jurisprudence for centuries and centuries.
And some state legislators believe the Independent State Legislature interpretation of the Constitution.
He and they are wrong.