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Elections to the US Supreme Court are excessively politicized. Arbitrariness and cynicism hurt the Supreme Court. The reform is overdue.
An important institution of American democracy: the Supreme Court with the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the front row.
Photo: Reuters
The measure was worthy of a dictatorship: because the President of the Republic was in constant dispute with the Supreme Court, he wanted to appoint half a dozen more judges there to force sentences in his favor. This episode sounds like a military regime, but it comes from the United States: Franklin D. Roosevelt pointed it out at the Supreme Court in 1937. As even the friends of the party were outraged, the judicial correction failed.
Also in democracies there is always the temptation to lend a hand to the law. Since the death of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg Now the Supreme Court threatens to get into trouble. After Washington politicians ruined the executive and legislative branches, they are now tackling one of the most venerable institutions in the Western world.
The court persistently defended freedom and was always the last instance where common ground could still be found between those in dispute, even if it was only everyone’s will to accept the final judgment. The question now is whether it will continue like this. The haunting spectacle of Ginsburg’s successor is likely to be a lasting warning against the judiciary’s obsession with party politics.
As politics became increasingly polarized, the importance grew
the judiciary – as the only authority capable of making decisions.
The conflict has been latent since 1973 when the Supreme Court granted women the right to abortion. The Christian-conservative part of the United States has always viewed it as an original sin, also because, from their point of view, the court had become the legislature. Soon the Republicans also decided to create a more conservative society through the courts.
Increasingly they brought Democratic judgeships under their control, pursued a left-wing agenda, leading to total blocks on the confirmation of new judges. In the end, exasperated, the Democrats reduced the two-thirds majority needed for federal judges in the Senate to a simple majority. This made a consensus that no longer existed less necessary.
As politics became increasingly polarized and the President and Congress blocked each other more and more frequently, the importance of the judiciary grew, as the only authority capable of making decisions. Many of the Supreme Court rulings achieved a scope previously reserved for the law, further prompting the parties to secure power in court.
Because judges are idiosyncratic personalities, they don’t always vote for their party’s interests, but that is precisely why Republicans make sure their candidates are ideologically trustworthy.
The representation of the Supreme Court is at risk
Thus, the relative equilibrium recently maintained by the Supreme Court is likely to be largely over. President Donald Trump and his party want to quickly replace Ginsburg with a conservative and then he would have a comfortable six to three majority on the Supreme Court.
Republicans in the Senate are breaking their own “rule,” according to which no judges are confirmed in the election year. In 2016 this rule helped them avoid a democratic judge, today the rule is broken, so it disappears again.
This mixture of arbitrariness and cynicism damages the reputation of the court and politics, so the court,
Unlike some Capitol shooters, he actually has a reputation to lose.
Farewell to an icon of the American judiciary: the flagged casket with the body of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Capitol in Washington.
Photo: Keystone
Republicans are now waiting for the desired success: with the Supreme Court they can still control the country if they lose the majority of the White House and the Senate. For example, the Supreme Court could crush Barack Obama’s health care reform or even the abortion ruling.
Trump, who cares as little about institutions as the truth, shouldn’t care: his only concern is winning and preparing for a possible legal dispute after the presidential election.
Even glorious constitutional courts can have societies
that they no longer want to stay together.
However, the representativeness of the Supreme Court is now likely to be permanently in doubt, especially for Democratic voters, who constitute the majority in the country. As expected, more and more Democrats are demanding revenge, for example, by creating new Supreme Court justices and filling them with leftists. Fans of the “House of Cards” series may find this retaliation appropriate.
But it would irreparably damage the institution. The final authority in the state would then be the political party that has the best tricks up its sleeve. And at some point, a United States government would simply refuse to submit to the Supreme Court’s rulings. An overly politicized reform of the election of judges
so it would be necessary.
Even glorious constitutional courts cannot hold together societies that no longer want to stay together. If one considers the other party’s supporters to be fundamentally wrong or even vile, one declares that the judiciary is legitimate only when the people themselves have the floor there.
