...of ideology than it is a problem of “lifetime” appointments.if Amy Coney Barrett is on the Supreme Court to the same age Ruth Bader Ginsburg was, she will be a justice still in 2059— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) September 26, 2020
How much of the politics and policy of the country is going to change in 39 years? And how much will Barrett’s thinking change? Why are we giving anyone that much power and authority? The original answer wasn’t to benefit from their wisdom; it was to protect them from ideology. Now who protects us from their ideology?
It was also put into place in a world where the life expectancy was far lower than it is now. A ten year term limit for Supreme Court positions with a future lifetime ban on any kind of commercial or promotional activity based on issues handled while on the court - take away their income and honors so gained as a penalty for violating that - is the only safe way to have a Supreme Court. For any justice you may have wanted to stay on the court for longer than that there is more than one, fractional or complete, who should never have been there to start with. The Constitutional stranglehold on reality is more dangerous the farther removed from election the office holder is, though opening up the Supreme Court to election is probably a bad idea (Wisconsin, case closed) the present means of selecting them is not that much removed from politics and it never has been. I hope that if things get as bad as I'm expecting that it will force a Democratic Congress and President to make fundamental reforms in the Court, the most reactionary force in our history other than, perhaps, the Senate who are given the power of approving or rejecting them. I hope to live long enough to see Roberts watch the Republicans turn his fiefdom to dust.
ReplyDeleteYeah, life expectancy has become the major issue. LBJ was dead at 65 and had been out of office for 4 years. 50 years later we are offered even older white men, and we barely blink at it. This is the major issue of our day, and not just because of SS and Medicare. People living longer (although it’s a privileged cohort, which is yet another problem) is something of a dead hand on the present. That’s another issue we face, which no one is facing.
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