When the system proves impervious to reform, and there is no evidence of self-policing, it’s either circumvented or overturned. #SCOTUS #politics #USA https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/10/politics/supreme-court-ethics-bill-clarence-thomas/index.html
But there is evidence of self-policing.
The justices engage with each other to discuss these controversies, and it's even reported that the internal processes were followed even in these specific charges being circulated lately.
I don't know if you're being serious or sarcastic.
It would be instructive to poll Americans on whether they take these discussions and "internal processes" to be adequate measures of self-policing.
I'd bet my house and dog that +60 percent do not. Already in September 2022, 58% of Americans in Gallop polling disapproved of how SCOTUS was performing. I don't imagine that ProPublica's excellent reporting this summer has done much to turn the tide.
Well that gets a bit circular: Americans who aren't informed about the protections will consider inadequate the protections that they're not informed of?
Anyway, really the general public has so little understanding of basic civics, things like the role of the Court in the US judicial system, that such polling isn't all that meaningful, ESPECIALLY considering that the Court was specifically set up to be independent of such political questions.
“Should judges accept huge gifts from individuals who have or a likely to have business before the Court?” seems more like an ethical question than a political question.
Possibly that’s why every other court in the land has answered in the same way—NO.
It's both.
Instead of a pedantic tweet about the line between ethical and political, I’m going to say instead: you seem generally skeptical about liberal democracy, i.e., whether the will of the majority is worth adhering to and what core values we must preserve no matter which way the political winds are blowing.
That makes it tough to have any kind of productive discussion here.
I’m not going to debate whether the crisis of legitimacy that confronts #SCOTUS is real.
Oh no it's quite the opposite: It is in support of liberal democracy that we need to highlight the political branch, the representative branch, and focus on electing better congresspeople instead of being distracted with all this mess.
After all, if we don't want a particular justice on the court anymore the process for making that happen runs right through the people we elect to Congress.
They are free to impeach and remove any justice anytime their political responsibility to voters arrives at that compulsion.
It is BECAUSE liberal democracy is so important that we need to focus much more solidly on the branch that is there to engage liberal democracy.
