Ask Lemmy

Suppose a nation, rich and poor, high and low, ten millions in number, all assembled together; not more than one or two millions will have lands, houses, or any personal property; if we take into the account the women and children, or even if we leave them out of the question, a great majority of every nation is wholly destitute of property, except a small quantity of clothes, and a few trifles of other movables. Would Mr. Nedham be responsible that, if all were to be decided by a vote of the majority, the eight or nine millions who have no property, would not think of usurping over the rights of the one or two millions who have? - John Adams

The US government is built around trying to put off dealing with the impossibility of a "democracy" swarming with slaves and incredibly rich aristocrats, so it needs unelected people whose job is to say no when people try to vote against the aristocrats. There might be liberals who don't like the racial profiling, but that's the price they pay to have a secretive council of lords who make it illegal for you to vote to make landlords illegal.

For what little I’ve gathered due to separation of powers. The supreme court is just a designated authority. Why hasn’t there been any movement that just aims to de-legitimize the current supreme Court?

Wait, what? Can you explain a bit more? Like what laws are you looking at, and are they less than 200 years old?

At least in practice, the Supreme Court is as strong as any other American institution. Which, to be fair, is saying less and less, but the faction with all the initiative right now is not the one against racial profiling.

Well, that would be a constitutional crisis. And its what we're heading for.

The thing is, once a case goes to the SC, its pretty much written in stone until they themselves overturn it. The Executive branch is beholden to its rulings so what they say is how the law gets handled. So if a, say, district judge makes one ruling, and the SC overtures it, the SC has the Executive branch make sure its enforced.

There aren't really any ways to remove SC justices in the law. Thats exactly why we on the left have been raising concern about these appointees for so long.

Yeah, it's just a farce now. There is no merit to their decisions. They are not passing laws, but political judgements.

They're part of the totally optional "checks and balances" we've depended on for 250 years or so. The Founders never thought the solution would become part of the problem, so there's a limited number of options available. Impeachment is one, but the other part of the checks and balances is Congress, which has also become part of the problem.

Depending on voluntary compliance was a noble idea in the 1700s, but it should have been codified in the federal regulations.

The problem is the difficulty is intentional.

Part of the system of checks and balances is the Supreme Court is appointed for life so should be above the constant swing of politics or popular opinion.

In theory even today’s right wing court is ok (after four years) because they will remain regardless of what party is in power or clown is in the White House. It’ll be interesting to see what they do when politics swing back to sanity, however a non-fascist party resident won’t stretch the legal boundaries so maybe is irrelevant.

Given that positions on the court open up rarely and years apart, it generally stays relatively balanced. However this time around a combination of bad timing and political maneuvering made today’s court more partisan than ever. Violating the norm of requiring that they be competent means they no longer follow existing law or legal precepts

By definition, anything the SCOTUS rules is constitional. Typically, in the US, until a law defines or forbids something, it's legal.

In cases like Roe v. Wade, there not a direct or clear law that says "abortion is legal." It was a right to privacy that Roe leaned on, that a woman's decision to get an abortion or not was covered as a privacy issue. Which is not an altogether permanent ruling over a longer time frame and a change in justices and a new case can change how the law is interpreted. The more permanent version would be a constitutional amendment that would be harder to undo, doesnt rely on the SCOTUS to interpret nuance, and is the result of a push by the American people to change a law.

Ultimately, the way to nullify a SCOTUS ruling is to make a more clear law that says "no, actually, we want this."

There's a process within the law, and there's a process where we replace the current law with something else. Within the law, we can vote for representatives who will impeach the current corrupt justices and approve new ones who are hopefully not corrupt. Let's call that option A.

Option B is the total overthrow of the government, which is ridiculous to even consider, but it's the alternative you're hinting at. Denouncing the SCOTUS doesn't change the ruling government in any way. Society is built on the idea that we all more or less agree to be ruled in exchange for fair rules and national defense. In a democracy, you have the appearance of agency, but you cannot simply withdraw consent to be ruled. The difference between democracy and fascism is that fascism explicitly defines violence as the means of control, while democracy merely implies that violence will be used to keep order. Once a democratically elected ruler decides to become fascist, there is no remedy but violence.

To wit, those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.

That said, I do not think we're quite there yet. I have no doubt Trump will try to go all in to remain in power, but I don't think he actually has enough followers to pull it off.

But that still leaves the corrupt justices on the bench. We need to focus on elections for representatives willing to impeach corrupt justices. If you think that process is too slow, consider that a violent revolution would probably take decades of bloodshed, and there's no guarantee we don't get some other despot as a result. Violence is not the answer to this question.

*We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. *

They could but that would mean effort and sacrifice... so they won't until it affects them directly and personally because "fuck you, got mine... why would I bother to help anyone other than myself?!"

LOL no.

Within the confines of the Constitution, no.

If we realize en masse that this system is broken and there is no internal fix for it, then yes.

The problem is that separation of powers is broken as trump has been able to capture the legislative and judicial branches at least such that they will not challenge him. So checks and balances are currently out the window. You have a good point that the only check left at this point is state vs federal but it is a very dangerous situation as essentially it brings us very close to a civil war situation. The next election will be crucial to the survival of the american system. Without a massive change to allow for a reboot of the system its likely to crash.