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BTW, one reform I can think of is criminal penalties for Congressmen who pass laws ruled unconstitutional, and for the President who signs them, as well as criminal penalties for executive actions that are ruled unconstitutional. Fines for laws struck down by slim margins, jail time for 9-0 smackdowns.
There's no penalty for trying to get around the Constitution. Yet trying is a clear violation of their oaths of office.
Of course today is really the first time I've thought in depth about this so I could be way off base here.
If not the supreme court, then who? Certainly not congress. It would completely eradicate checks and balances to allow congress to declare its own laws constitutional.
The supreme court's position as arbiters of constitutionality serve as an excellent balance against congress, and allow revisiting of older problems later down the line. That our court system, as a whole, is equipped to analyze whether or not a law is a valid is a great thing.
I've wondered, if the Supreme Court is meant to be the ultimate arbiter of what is constitutional, how about this: Deep Blue and Watson have mastered chess and Jeopardy. Would we be comfortable arguing Supreme Court cases before a supercomputer that could objectively give unbiased confirmation or rejection of a case's constitutionality? I'm not joking, that seems to be the only authentic way of determining the truth in these hyper-partisan times.
BTW, one reform I can think of is criminal penalties for Congressmen who pass laws ruled unconstitutional, and for the President who signs them, as well as criminal penalties for executive actions that are ruled unconstitutional. Fines for laws struck down by slim margins, jail time for 9-0 smackdowns.
There's no penalty for trying to get around the Constitution. Yet trying is a clear violation of their oaths of office.
I've wondered, if the Supreme Court is meant to be the ultimate arbiter of what is constitutional, how about this: Deep Blue and Watson have mastered chess and Jeopardy. Would we be comfortable arguing Supreme Court cases before a supercomputer that could objectively give unbiased confirmation or rejection of a case's constitutionality? I'm not joking, that seems to be the only authentic way of determining the truth in these hyper-partisan times.
What was supposed to happen is that Congress and the President would also be arbiters of what was constitutional, and thus the Supreme Court would mainly rule on statutes.
Instead, right away we found that the other two branches didn't care about whether what they did was legal or not, so SCOTUS had to step in and assume the role it has today. So no, it's not perfect, but it's the best we can do.
BTW, one reform I can think of is criminal penalties for Congressmen who pass laws ruled unconstitutional, and for the President who signs them, as well as criminal penalties for executive actions that are ruled unconstitutional. Fines for laws struck down by slim margins, jail time for 9-0 smackdowns.
There's no penalty for trying to get around the Constitution. Yet trying is a clear violation of their oaths of office.
I'm concerned that would lead to even more incentive to pack the court with partisans rather than good justices.
I fully agree with the need for criminal consequences for any public servant who overtly and willfully violates the Constitution.
Think about the consequences that occur when such a violation occurs. Gun control, for example.
The situation now, every where in the United States, is that an honest citizen can be arrested and prosecuted for a “crime”*that consists of nothing more than legitimately exercising his Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms. He can spend hard time in prison,he can bear a felony record for the rest of his life,and he can generally have his life ruined. All for doing what the Constitution explicitly affirms that he has a right to do.
Shouldn't those who bear any responsibility for allowing this situation to exist, also face consequences at least as severe as those that they would unjustly impose on an honest citizen?
I see the Supreme Court as intended to be the ultimate arbiter for constitutionality in the United States. I also think that it was intended to be that way. I know there are some schools of thought that the Supreme Court was never intended to have judicial review, and while I see the merits of that based on a few Jefferson quotes, ultimately I believe that it was intended. Alexander Hamilton seems to surmise as much in Federalist 78 and 80, as well as anti-federalist Robert Yates in anti-Federalist 78. There is also a Stanford study making a good case for it being in use long before the Marbury.
But I'm wondering if this is such a good idea. Many Supreme Court cases are decided 5-4, and after the case becomes fairly rigid precedent forever, with little chance of changing, although the court has certainly reversed itself, with over 100 reversals in the last 80 years. The most obvious example being the difference between Plessy v Ferguson in 1896 and Brown vs Board of Education in 1954. Still though, precedent is fairly likely to stand unless clearly wrong. What bothers me though, is that this near permanence of some of these decisions would be different if one judge retired during a Democrat's term instead of a Republican's or vice versa. Although there are a few David Souter's generally each president knows exactly what he's going to get when he appoints a judge. For instance if Ginsburg or Breyer had retired or died during Bush's presidency, we likely would've had a different opinion against the Health Care Mandate. If Scalia or Thomas had retired in 2009 we would've most likely had a different ruling in Citizen's United. Now we have these same types of problems in Congress, the Presidency, and state legislatures too. Sometimes one of those makes a bad decision. However, it is relatively easy to correct those. If the bad decision was unconstitutional the courts could strike it down, and if it was an otherwise bad decision the people have opportunities relatively frequently to correct them by voting other members in. For Supreme Court mistakes though, not only do you have to wait for the membership to change, which can take years because of their lifelong terms, you must go through the rigorous process of having a case brought to them and accepted by them, and hope that the argument is compelling enough that it overrules the precedent. Chances are that the average person believes the Supreme Court made at least one wrong decision recently between Citizens United and NFIB v. Sebelius among the other hundreds of cases the SCOTUS rules on, but that there will be no opportunity to change the decision any time soon, and possibly for decades.
I think Jefferson is correct when he says: "You seem ... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control."
So I do think there are some problems with the role of the SCOTUS. However, I'm not sure there's anything that can really be done to fix them. I can't think of a better system than the one we have now. I don't think letting individual states overrule Supreme Court cases is the best idea. Having potentially 50 different views on constitutionality with no way to enforce anything nationally if an individual state disagrees. I'm not really sure how to put a check on the power of the Supreme Court on constitutionality, without creating another unchecked body.
So questions:
Do you agree that the SCOTUS is the ultimate arbiter of constitutionality?
Do you agree that it is a problem?
Is there actually away to solve the problem and make things better than they are now?
I don't think criminal penalties for simply being wrong is an answer.
Anyone who says the Constitution isn't open to interpretation in many aspects is wrong. There's plenty of gray areas. Who determines the Constitutionality of a law that could potentially jail the passers of said law? Does everyone who voted for that law get arrested?
This is a terrible idea.
If not the supreme court, then who? Certainly not congress. It would completely eradicate checks and balances to allow congress to declare its own laws constitutional. The supreme court's position as arbiters of constitutionality serve as an excellent balance against congress…
The Constitution does say you have the right to bear arms; nowhere in that document does it say you have the right to use them.
Interesting question. To my mind, some one has to be the final arbiter, and no one is more qualified that the Supreme Court. Since the court can and has reversed itself, I think it works satisfactorily. Is it the best possible system? Probably not, though I cannot think of one better. Are there potential problems? Of course, nothing is perfect. Does it do well enough? Yeah, I think so. I will however think some more on this since it is an interesting question.
I don't think criminal penalties for simply being wrong is an answer.
“Being wrong” is one thing. Enacting, enforcing, or upholding a law that overtly violates the Constitution is entirely another. Yes, I absolutely think that there need to be severe criminal penalties for the latter.
I don't know how it was intended to work, besides the obvious: as part of the checks and balances built into our government. It now functions to determine whether or not laws that congress passes or lower court rulings are constitutional. Of course congress always has the power to amend the constitution with the states.
This use for the Court depends entirely upon their objective analysis of the cases that come before them. You hit the nail on the head when you point out that the endless 5-4 rulings of late are entirely political, based on which seats were vacant under which presidents. The life-long tenures were supposed to isolate the justices from politics, but instead they have become simply an extension of past executive branch administrations that can persist for decades, ruling on cases far into the future based on ideologies carefully selected in another time. Both parties are now in an arms race to fill each vacancy that they can with like-minded justices, lest their successors do.
I've wondered, if the Supreme Court is meant to be the ultimate arbiter of what is constitutional, how about this: Deep Blue and Watson have mastered chess and Jeopardy. Would we be comfortable arguing Supreme Court cases before a supercomputer that could objectively give unbiased confirmation or rejection of a case's constitutionality? I'm not joking, that seems to be the only authentic way of determining the truth in these hyper-partisan times.
If not, then I think the lifetime tenures have to go.
Don't take this wrong, but that is a really really bad argument.
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