Justice Alito Caught on Tape Discussing How Battle for America 'Can't Be Compromised'
Justice Alito Caught on Tape Discussing How Battle for America 'Can't Be Compromised'
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in a new recording says the battle for America "can't be compromised," and that one political party will "win."
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Most of this kind of problem can be fixed with term limits - say 7 years. That way there would be a few changes of justices every presidential term.
That, and stop making the Supremes political appointees. The Australian parliament takes a shortlist of suitable candidates from a judicial review board. Our High Court is law-qualified and peer reviewed. The Government usually takes the first name off the recommended list. No particular political party has an advantage.
That's not to say that our governments love the high court. No government loves a hand brake. However, the people respect the bench, and the system works well.
I'm sure in America there would be a massive power struggle over which party would have majority control over the judicial review board. Agree with term limits though.
That's the thing. If political parties are involved it leads to corruption. It has to. The idea is to remove political interference. Let the law stand for itself without parties pushing it their preferred direction.
I know that this is probably impossible now in the US. It is probably even too big of a change to get your head around, However, such a system is common place around democracies.
The difference between the US and other countries is that there's more financial incentive to having political control in the US. Companies here have way too much freedom to exploit under the current system and a lot of money they can invest in keeping it that way. Whether that means bribing justices or building platforms for Ben Shapiros or making big donations to campaigns.
There's a way out for the US I think. We need to get people in office whose goal is to remove the incentives. Take money out of politics (no more donations, lobbying). Laws should be decided based on merit and debate alone, and if it's not near unanimous in the courts it should be a citizen vote.
That, and stop making the Supremes political appointees. The Australian parliament takes a shortlist of suitable candidates from a judicial review board. Our High Court is law-qualified and peer reviewed. The Government usually takes the first name off the recommended list. No particular political party has an advantage.
The only difference between this and the US system is that this is done by the US Senate and not a judicial review board. And it can't change without a constitutional amendment as it's the Constitution that makes the Supreme Court lifetime political appointees. But even if that were to happen, the only thing is that the power struggle around appointing judges would just shift from the US senate to whatever review board you set up to accomplish the exact same thing.
With that said, at least in the US, making Supreme Court appointees term-limited would likely just make the situation worse, not better. At least until the current supermajority, the Supreme Court at least had some public trust and appearance of impropriety. If you think it's bad now, Term-limiting the judges would just make them take the masks off even more and openly make whatever partisan decisions they need to make to get re-elected/re-appointed.
Well, the only difference between the two systems are extremely significant.
Whoever controls congress makes the pick. Congress comprises political parties. So, political parties make a choice as to how it benefits them. That's the point.
In our system an independent process is in play, and it works and has done so since 1901. In our system, the government of the day rubber stamps the selected candidate. Even if it would rather not. That explains the public faith in the system. We also have an independent electoral system that draws up the electorate boundaries. No political power can gerrymander electorate boundaries to preserve power. The electorate system is independent of party interference. All a party can do is make a submission. But anybody can make a submission. Even an individual.
I think that the US got itself into these problems by letting the inmates run the prison. You distrust your institutions because party politics control them. In your answer above about if anyone besides Congress were to select judges they would become just as corrupt. In the free world this isn't a particular problem. It is in the US tho.
Peace out....
Edit: Soz, where I say Congress, I mean Senate.