Supreme Court
- Thread starter bqknight
- Start date
My opinion: they should do their job and confirm the appointment if the person is qualified for the position, regardless of whether you believe the justice to be left-leaning or right-leaning. That said, it's not out of bounds to block an appointment to get a compromise candidate. In the end, a compromise candidate is exactly what we need on the bench.
What will happen: They'll block the appointment, any appointment. The circumstances will dictate how they do it. I expect a market correction at some point during the next 4 years, so that could play into how they spin the rationalization of the block. The most likely rationalization for blocking will be the FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
There's a compromise candidate for the taking right now but the GOP seems uninterested. Meanwhile, they are about to lose the election and risk having a more liberal candidate brought to the table.
That's because they are playing stupid political games, basically the exact same thing the Democrats would be doing if they were in that position. It's disgusting, stupid and petty, but hey that's how politics have always been in this country
With no term limits for justices and very little limits on their ability to reinterpret legislation to meet their political goals, the vetting process by Congress is extremely important. Congress represents the people and their actions should fall in line if the people voted to shift the Congress right or left. Congress does not exist to be a rubber stamp on the executive branch.
We have an adversarial federal government for a lot of reasons. Why do people think the federal government is supposed to run smoothly? Building a system where things are difficult is one of the limits on potential excessive power of the federal government. When the populace demands a weak Congress, we are giving up nearly the only representation we have.
We have an adversarial federal government for a lot of reasons. Why do people think the federal government is supposed to run smoothly? Building a system where things are difficult is one of the limits on potential excessive power of the federal government. When the populace demands a weak Congress, we are giving up nearly the only representation we have.
I agree with your premise but to think we have representation in Congress is laughable. I know this is off-topic from the Supreme Court discussion but I think all of our problems in the federal government boil down to this issue. 9 out of 10 Congressional races are won by the candidate who raises the most money.
Because of the Supreme Court decisions - 1976 Buckley v Valeo (money = speech), 1978 First National Bank of Boston v Bellotti (Corporations have first ammendment rights and can spend money in politics), 2010 Citizens United vs FEC (corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in elections cannot be limited), and 2014 McCutcheon v FEC (upheld individual contribution caps to individual candidates) - we now have a system that is financed overwhelmingly by corporations, economic elites and special interests.
Princeton University did a study on American politics that was published in 2014. They looked at almost 1800 different policy initiatives from 1981-2002 and compared the policy changes to public opinion as well as economic elites and special interest groups. The results were, "When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."
https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...ge-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B#
They're going to confirm Garland if Killary wins. They have two and half months to get it through.
