@Strandjunker Subpoenas? Congressional subpoenas are pointless.
Name the last #gop justice or official who obeyed a Congressional subpoena?
Does anyone think #scotus will take subpoenas more seriously once it immunizes #Trump from legal consequences? #voteblue
@JBShakerman well right, because in order to have judicial independence we have to prevent the other branches from having power over the courts.
There's a very good reason that justices must call out such subpoenas as invalid.
Should the court come under the control over other branches it would create a conflict of interests that strikes at the heart of the federal design.
@volkris @Strandjunker Laws can be abused. But that is an argument to improve the law, not ignore it.
@JBShakerman no, because it's fundamentally saying that there can be no such law, no matter how good you write it.
If we value an independent court then we cannot have it depend on those laws. Any such law violates that firewall, no matter how it's written.
@JBShakerman do you want an independent judiciary or not?
That's what it really comes down to.
I believe judicial independence is vital to protecting the free society, so I'm willing to accept a court that cannot be policed by the other branches, the branches that they will occasionally be asked to rule against.
You can repeat the slogan that the court cannot be above the law in a free society, and it sounds nice, but pragmatically, when the rubber meets the road, it really must be.
@JBShakerman you have it backwards: the justices are helpless by design.
All the justices can do is write opinions. They're helpless to enforce or otherwise enact their opinions.
This was a critical part of the separation of powers in the US system: unelected, unaccountable justices were intentionally left helpless and reliant on others to actually give force to their opinions.
@volkris @Strandjunker I see no upside to making the country helpless before justices who choose to be independent from facts and precedent but not independent from bribes, blackmail, or radical ideology. EOS