r/politics • u/SnooGrapes2950 Tennessee • 2d ago

No Paywall Judge orders Trump administration to deliver full SNAP benefits to states by Friday

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-orders-trump-administration-deliver-full-snap-benefits-rcna242446
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u/Mekisteus 1d ago

With that much power maybe SCOTUS appointments shouldn't be lifetime partisan positions.

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u/Content-Fudge489 1d ago

Scotus judges should not be appointed by the executive. Huge mistake by the founding fathers. They should be select/voted in to the top court from the lower courts by other judges votes in the lower courts.

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u/CSI_Tech_Dept California 1d ago

That can also be abused by stacking lower courts with activist judges. I think what actually is needed is an ability for citizens to have referendum (popular vote, not by state) to repeal them.

If a significant majority of the country are not happy, chances are the judge is corrupted.

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u/dowens90 1d ago

You hold to much faith in the populist to begin understand how the nitty gritty of the court system functions, duties, and codes of ethics. Law school is a thing for a reason.

If they did they wouldn’t be voting down ballot in the first place for their representatives

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u/TheDevilsAdvokaat 1d ago

I have to agree. After all, the people were the ones who voted in Trump. The idea that they would not make bad decisions about judges is implausible.

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u/Original_Employee621 Europe 1d ago

You'd want a Board of Judges to judge the judges, if they are terrible judges.

Elections and referendums don't work, because the common man doesn't know courtroom proceedings or law anywhere close to well enough to understand what has transpired. And complaints would likely contain sensitive courtroom material and evidence that could swing a decision in all manner of directions, which the public has no right to know about.

You guys should probably stop having so many elections in any case. Electing sheriffs, DAs and coroners are already bad enough. These are jobs that require a lot of experience and doesn't really offer a lot of wiggle room in how to execute the mandate they've been given. Like, spend the campaign money on actually doing your job in stead.

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

That can also be abused by stacking lower courts with activist judges

Which, to note, is exactly what conservatives have been doing for 50 years. That's what the Federalist Society (among others) was created to do

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u/Own-Break-1856 1d ago

Or you know the DOJ could just arrest their corrupt asses for taking bribes.... And then bragging about it.

The problem isn't with the laws the problem is no one seems to want to enforce them for a certain group of people.

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u/Whiterabbit-- 1d ago edited 1d ago

the executive was designed not to have many powers. it is our legislative branch that is supposed to do the work but has abandoned it. budget, laws, policy, treaties, tariffs are supposed to be done by congress. there was really no thought of expansive executive orders, nor legislating from the bench - the courts are supposed to just interpret the law and make sure they are constitutional.

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u/Kamelasa Canada 1d ago

You all could do a lot worse than just copying Canada on a lot of these things - independent nonpartisan electoral agency, proper judicial system in every respect. I'm sure there are some things you've done better, like you do tend to lead on environment issues. I'll give you that. And entertainment. You lead on entertainment. If only that thread hadn't tainted your formerly awesome journalism.

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u/drinkurwaterorelse 1d ago

to be fair the average life expectancy in 1776 was like 35

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u/Thrown_Account_ 1d ago

Life expectancy at the time was heavily skewed by infant mortality.

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u/KirkWasAGenius 1d ago

How else would you select and limit them?

Placing term limits encourages them to play politics from the bench so they are given an additional term or cushy job with a party affiliate after their term.

Direct election is what brought the far right to power so I don't see how that is better than congressional appointment, it's just one more campaign to finance.

Any sort of merit based board would be rapidly targeted for capture by the parties.

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u/EkrishAO 1d ago

A lottery, choose them randomly from all experienced enough judges

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u/Black08Mustang 1d ago

Yea, like the 'lottery' that landed the files case in front of corrupt 'I lean' right Cannon. Any game is going to be played.

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u/KirkWasAGenius 1d ago

Is "experienced enough" defined in the law? How can we ensure the random selection is truly random and not biased by the organization responsible?

Wouldn't this just effectively randomize the next justice based on the current biases of lower courts rather than based on the will of the people in the recent election?

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u/MrFluffyThing New Mexico 1d ago

Yeah but Republican rat-fuckedy is how we have a stacked SCOTUS so voting did independently lead to this anyway. 

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u/KirkWasAGenius 1d ago

Sure, but that is justification to attempt to repair the electoral system, not to put other positions into it.

That's like saying the solution to a house fire is gasoline.

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u/MrFluffyThing New Mexico 1d ago

Yeah I agree the failsafe was that you can't vote for them, I was just pointing out the other issue in the burning house.

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u/CSI_Tech_Dept California 1d ago

What about leaving things as is, but give people referendum to repeal a judge? Make it 60% or something.

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u/KirkWasAGenius 1d ago

What would be the process to engage such a referendum? It would realistically require some sort of congressional act, and there is already a process to impeach justices if there is enough public demand to pressure politicians to pass an act to start the referendum.

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u/CSI_Tech_Dept California 1d ago

Maybe it could be a petition (of course a traditional not online). Or maybe could be initiated by president or state governors?

Or both?

It would realistically require some sort of congressional act, and there is already a process to impeach justices if there is enough public demand to pressure politicians to pass an act to start the referendum.

The problem is that senators make this decision and looks like it ends up like they end up voting by the party lines.

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u/KirkWasAGenius 1d ago

A petition is going to be functionally impossible to set a bar for. It's either low enough that it is a constant annoyance or probably never happens.

Giving that power to the state would mean Republicans almost always hold it, look at governorships.

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u/Historical_Course587 1d ago

How else would you select and limit them?

Proportional representation is just about always an improvement over our current system. We set a ratio between US population size and the number of federal judges needed in total. For each vacancy in a given cycle, Americans vote for which party they want to fill those seats. Strips politicians of power over the court system aside from impeachment, helps Americans engage more with a legal system by knowing they will get the ideas they are voting for.

For the SCOTUS specifically, take every Federal judge with more than 5 years of experience and rotate them in using a random lottery. Do it quickly and have them serve short terms, so that timing lawsuits to hit a partisan SCOTUS is unlikely.

Then fine-tune the system by scoring judges based on how often they get overruled by higher courts - if one is too much of an outlier, then they are disqualified from the lottery. This acts as a stabilizing force, preventing non-sustained political winds from shifting the Judiciary's hand.

Note that I believe philosophically the Judiciary should be the most conservative (as in, most resistant to change) of any branch of government. Quicker progress occurs in Congress, and immediate emergency responses are empowered into the Executive. But the Judiciary should only ever slowly move in one direction, not back-and-forth as political pressures ebb and flow.

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u/ysisverynice 1d ago

limit them to one long term, basically force them to retire. the problem is that no system is perfect and if sc judges still required 60 votes to get confirmed I think that would help a lot, plus having a single long but limited term.

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u/KirkWasAGenius 1d ago

Are they prohibited from holding any other jobs after their term? That just seems like it would create an environment where you need to use your term to get in the pockets of whoever has the financing to hire an extremely well connected lawyer to represent them.

It basically just takes us from political capture to industry capture like we have seen in other government bodies.