#POTUS #Biden proposed major changes to #SCOTUS on Mon, including 18-yr #TermLimits for justices & a binding code of conduct.
Under Biden’s term-limit plan, presidents would appoint a new #SupremeCourt justice every 2 yrs. If that rule had already been in effect over the past 2 decades & each justice had served the full 18-yr term, the court’s ideological split would be flipped.
#law
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/29/us/politics/supreme-court-biden-term-limits.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
#SCOTUS now has 6 #conservative justices, appointed by fmr Presidents #Trump, #GeorgeWBush & #GeorgeHWBush, & 3 #liberal ones, appointed by #POTUS #Biden & fmr Pres Barack #Obama. 3 justices, all #conservatives, have served >18 yrs: CJ #JohnRoberts, &Justices #Alito & #ClarenceThomas.
If #TermLimits had allowed the president to choose a justice every 2yrs during the most recent 4 admins, those numbers would be reversed: 6 would have been appointed by #Democratic presidents, & 3 by #Republicans.
#SCOTUS appointments have become completely politicized ; term limits seem the best way to address the problem of random turnover due to death or retirements.
Any justice appointed several decades ago is naturally going to have outdated values or prejudices which are out of step with current public attitudes and ideals. 18 years is long enough.
Question: how do we prevent the #Senate from blocking appointments by the other party on partisan grounds?
@BohemianPeasant but it's not the role of the Supreme Court in the US system to reflect current perspectives.
Wrong branch of government. That's the legislative branch that's supposed to be reflecting the opinions of the people as they evolve over time.
And the Senate doesn't block appointments. That's not how the process works. Rather, the president works with the Senate to settle on an appointee that our elected senators can accept.
This process was set up this way to ensure that presidents don't wield too much power. It's really important to get it right.
@BohemianPeasant Oh this is one of my favorite hobby horses.
People really don't understand what McConnell did because they don't understand how the Senate operates, so that let all of these politicians really pull the wool over people's eyes.
It was a win-win-win arrangement though, so they were really happy to promote it.
The rules of the Senate really emphasize equality, for the most part all of the senators are equal, even the leaders. The president of the Senate has special powers but never mind the sidetrack talking about how we misunderstand the role of the VP these days...
Any Senator could have walked to the podium to start the nomination process, and if the Senate wanted to do it then McConnell could not have stopped it. That's just how the equality rules in the Senate work.
But! As happened so often, Democrats were happy to blame McConnell as a campaign stunt, Republicans were happy to blame him to get out of votes they would rather not deal with, and McConnell himself got to present himself to his own constituents as super duper powerful because everyone else was saying so.
It was a win-win-win arrangement, even though it was terribly misleading of the American public.
To emphasize it, if the Senate wanted to confirm Garland then they would have outvoted McConnell and It would have gone through. The Senate functions largely on pantomime, they negotiate behind the scenes what they're going to say on the floor and script it, and what we see is just the script that they all agreed to.
@volkris
> The Senate doesn’t block appointments…
Well, what do you think McConnell did in 2016? He didn’t even let #Garland’s nomination have a vote although Garland was considered a moderate justice.
When was the last time that a #Senate controlled by a different party than #potus confirmed a nominee? 30 years?