Right to LifeBoard

Horatius Cocles wrote:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/reform-the-court-but-dont-pack-it/614986/

Interesting article.

I do somewhat dislike how they equate a nonpartisan court with a 'moderate' or 'centrist' court-which is itself a political label. A nonpartisan court in practice would not be deciding on the middle option on issues, but sometimes 'conservative' and sometimes 'liberal' depending on the issue and facts of the case, basically Scalia's famous "A good judge will make decisions that he disagrees with.'

On the proposal itself, it is an interesting one, not quite what I was expecting, and worth some thought. A possible issue would be what to do with the lower courts-if they do not also have supermajorities, they basically become the next Supreme Court since it will almost never override them, if they do also require supermajorities, there is still the question of what to do with things like injunctions from individual justices-those would likely either have to be barred, or then those individuals would have extreme power-the travel ban injunction would be one example, a hypothetical would be if the Texas holding on the Affordable Care Act was a nationwide injunction and no higher court could get a large enough majority to take it on.

I think of all the court reform ideas I have heard proposed it is probably my favorite, though I would still lean towards it not being the best idea. I think, personally, that the biggest issue with the court has been the doctrine of incorporation/the 14th Amendment. The Court gets much more politicized when it interferes with issues of local control. If Roe only prohibited a federal ban on abortion, for example, rather than striking down state laws, there would just from that one decision be much less conflict over the Court today. Incorporation is half of that, and deference at the federal level the other half-Roosevelt's court-packing really did change history in that the Court basically stopped striking down federal laws (Wickard v. Fillburn is one of the most underrated worst decisions in SCOTUS history, it should be up there with Scott and Roe). Combining more leeway to federal laws and less leeway to state laws means a much more polarized political environment because change can only really happen at the highest level, which makes any such change much more terrifying since you don't have either 'laboratories of democracy' or 'vote with your feet' where you can just switch states if things go wrong.

I do not think getting back to that is likely to happen, but I think it would be the clearest solution to the Court's politicization and would lower partisan temperatures quite a bit basically as a knock-on effect. One would basically need a cease-fire via an amendment to the 14th Amendment to make it happen, which seems unlikely as both sides would have to give ground (Democrats would lose the ability to strike down Republican state-level abortion laws, Republicans would lose the ability to strike down Democratic state-level gun laws), paired with a cultural shift away from the "stitch in time" that would start putting programs back to the state level. The odds of getting that kind of compromise are pretty crazy long, but I think that is far closer to the Founders' idea of what the Court ought to do, and the changes that we've made to the original system I think are mostly to blame-which makes me a bit skeptical of fixing it with the proposed further change at the top level.

I still do think the idea is worthy of a discussion, like I said, the best I'd heard. The timing would be a tricky matter, though. Applying it retroactively would be a nightmare, so both sides would want to lock it in right after a big decision (there would be a big difference, for example, to this if it were applied a decade ago pre-Obergefell and Bostock vs. now, decisions the liberal wing of the court would want to lock in, while if, for example, Roberts took up the 2A cases a few months back and delivered a favorable ruling, conservatives would want to lock that in.)

If it was a choice between this (assuming that they sort out the issue of the lower courts/individual judges) and court-packing, I most certainly would go with the option proposed here.

Lagrodia wrote:

I don’t remember hearing it, although I may have subconsciously adapted it from something similar I heard at one point. You’re welcome to use it, I’m glad you liked it. And feel free to change the subject if you want, trade was just the first other issue I thought about when I thought of 1860’s Democrats.

As for the Court, the best wonky reform idea I’ve heard is to add about 30 more seats and have each case decided by a random pool of 9 justices. Then we don’t have to worry about the balance of power every time a new one is appointed.

It's a great turn of phrase, really hammers the point home succinctly, I think it'd be great to pop it on someone in a real-life discussion. (I think the only weakness is that most people probably don't know who Breckenridge is, or any major Democrats of the time, really. I doubt the average American could name a single President between Jackson and Lincoln.)

For the thirty-judge proposal, I think the biggest issue with that one is the level of variance you would have. Unless you really revise the system so that precedence is ironclad, you could have the SCOTUS do something like outlaw abortion nationwide in a ruling of a certain panel, and then subsequently go to the complete opposite side of the spectrum and invalidate all state abortion restrictions when a new case makes its way up through the system and the panel changes. (And of course if precedent is ironclad, then its just luck of the draw on who gets to decide on a big issue first).

There's a little bit of an issue with random panels in circuit courts, and the failsafe is having en banc review, all the judges at once, but it seems like if that was done at the SCOTUS level then it would basically just be expanding the court with extra steps, since any controversial case would presumably have to go en banc.

Noso eawe wrote:

Thanks guys for the advice on the question I had asked above.
I made a (provisional) flag for my state.
It’s a simple tricolour design, made to represent the Holy Trinity, since my state is Catholic. Green represents the Father, Purple represents the Son, and Red represents the Holy Spirit. I know not everyone here is Catholic/apostolic or even Christian, but for those of you who are, let me know what you think of it!

Looks nice. The concept of the Trinity is hardly unique to Catholicism- it is clearly taught in the Bible from Genesis 1:1. So clearly, in fact, that unitarian sects like Jehovah's Witnesses have to make their own versions of the Bible with the Trinitarian passages edited out.

Roborian wrote:

I think my actual favorite Court reform proposal is anti-packing.

Just kick off everybody except for Thomas and let him make all the decisions.

Well, yes, that would be nice, wouldn’t it? :P

Got a threatening call from an anti-vaxxer at work yesterday. Apparently the real Bill and Melinda Gates were hanged in India several years ago for causing the deaths of many children with their evil vaccines. Who would have known?

South north of africa wrote:

Any tips on lowering my nations taxes? 94.4% tax rate is a bit ridiculous, not sure how it got to this point!

Basically just cut services and/or privatize. There are a few dedicated issues that give you a tax cut option, but NS tends to raise or lower taxes based on level of government involvement/ownership as well as spending. It looks like your country has 0% private industry, I'd be willing to bet that answering issues to increase that number would lower taxes at the same time based on how NS does it.

Since Roborian has given his political two cents for tonight's debate, I'll share mine from the opposite side. I'm "rooting" for Harris, though a measured Pence will be a relief over the constant bickering and insulting of Trump. I'm not sure that "measured" will be what people are looking for in a debate context (though, again, a vast improvement over Trump) but Harris should be able to have some zingers. I would hope to see the debate rules followed for both sides, which didn't happen last time at all.

I'm expecting that headlines after the debate will no doubt focus on Harris' clothing and appearance more than her issues and content, that's typical for female candidates, unfortunately. I think she'll no doubt attack Trump, but needs to defend Biden more than land punches on an incumbent/ticket who's/that's already badly losing in the polls. As for identity politics, the Republicans and Democratic bases simply see this differently. One base will see that America is a different experience based on your class, age, gender, etc. whereas the other will dismiss all that as mere pandering. Women candidates already have it out for them with the nonsensical electability/likability arguments, so I don't think of her as being handled with kid gloves, I think she'll go in knowing she has to prove twice as more than Trump or Pence would. Pence's job will be to defend Trump more than his own record and his style is way less combative that his boss'. That's not going to get him any brownie points from Trump. I think he'll be a little dull but consistent.

I personally would very much want to see the Senate flip, if Biden would have any hope of getting his agenda through. I'm not opposed to getting rid of the filibuster but am definitely against packing the court when there's many other good reform options on the table. If Trump suffers a BIG loss in November, maybe then the GOP will change from being cravenly Trumpist but I doubt it. Biden would have to win "bigly" to convince all but the strongest Trump die-hards that there wasn't so-called "voter fraud" that Trump will baselessly scream to high heaven about. The federal agencies are already preparing for possible election violence, which is only frothed up the more with a president that continuously undermines election integrity and keeps running his mouth that the 2016 election was "rigged" even though he won it. Trump won't concede, and if he does vacate the WH, he'll be loudly complaining all his life that the deck was stacked against him and that someone cheated. The sad thing is that people will believe that, never mind that Biden has been leading in the polls for months now.

P.S. - As a Bernie backer, Harris was hardly my first, second, or even third person for Pres. or VP. Biden could have picked someone else, but as it is he's already being painted with "Radical" or "extreme" views, when his views are pretty tame for the Democratic base, certainly as regards economic policy, climate policy, or foreign policy. As far as Bernie backers go, Biden isn't extreme at all, he's not the man we even wanted to be in the top slot, but he's better than Trump.

Just wanted to highlight an example of some of the stuff I'm talking about with Harris even pre-debate.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/us/politics/kamala-harris-debate.html

The entire piece is absolutely glowing-nary a mention of any weakness/issue/scandal and plenty of praise, but this is particularly noteworthy.

"While many Democrats view Ms. Harris as a barrier-breaking hero, Fox News hosts and conservative media outlets have mounted racist and sexist assaults on her reputation, painting her as a radical leftist."

Gets both parts of the likely coverage in one-the "barrier-breaking hero", and the simultaneous covering for her record and dismissing any criticism as racist or sexist and thus invalid.

The paper of record not only does not note that Harris is, per GovTrack, the most left-wing Senator in the U.S., which would seem a pertinent piece of information to provide to the public as a factual news source, (so, not the Times, which called her 'moderate' when she was selected) but apparently noting that nonpartisan assessment is both racist and sexist, because you cannot analyze someone's voting record if they are black or a woman.

This is the kind of coverage to expect, even if she bombs. This is not an editorial-this is considered a news article by the NYT. Maybe there will be some racist or sexist coverage against her-honestly, I would like to see examples if there are any-but that coverage is going to be dwarfed by the positive treatment she is already getting due to her race and sex-and probably will be dwarfed as well by media sources up to and including the Grey Lady dismissing criticism-not on clothing or appearance, but actual ideology-as itself racist and sexist.

(As a side note, 'the dogma lives loudly within you' was reported as "a badge of defiance for conservatives battling what they saw as anti-religion bias by Democratic lawmakers." Actively decrying someone's religion is something that only conservatives could think is anti-religious, but criticizing someone's ideology is, of course, objectively racist and sexist.)

Lagrodia wrote:

He did say some aren’t really achievements, and he’s right. The pro-life movement has never achieved many of its goals. “Antiwar movement” and “labor rights” are fairly nebulous terms, and are arguably a bit of a mixed bag (although generally, I would support both, I think GOR likely has a cautious approach to both).

That's right, I critiquing the imprecise logic of calling movements achivements.

I'm going to regret being even slightly optimistic, but holy canoli, Pence is crushing this first part of the debate, he's been almost completely perfect.

Pessimism back on, it'll probably go bad, but what a start, rock-solid.

Chuck Schumer isn’t Catholic.

I’m still waiting for Kamala Harris to tell the truth about a single thing. She has quite literally not said a single true word.

The moderator is awful. She asked Pence and Harris what they would do on abortion for their state. That’s pertinent in what way?

Pence has the biggest opening to crush Harris on her prosecutorial record right here, I cannot believe she is bringing it up after what Gabbard did to her. He just needs to land this plane and the debate is his.