Fight over Kavanaugh Proves the Supreme Court Has Become Too Powerful

Is the US Supreme Court too powerful

  • Yes, but there is nothing we can do

    Votes: 1 5.6%
  • No, it is a proper balance for legislative abuse

    Votes: 12 66.7%
  • Not sure, I would have to study the issue more carefully

    Votes: 2 11.1%
  • Yes, and we should attempt to pass an amendment to limit its power

    Votes: 3 16.7%

  • Total voters
    18

Uber Genius

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In this op-ed by Heritage Foundation, Kim Holmes lays out the case for reducing judicial power.

Why was having a 5 vs. 4 liberal court so important that the Democrats had to risk using such dangerous tactics to block a conservative majority?

Is the Supreme Court too powerful?

Fight over Kavanaugh Proves the Supreme Court Has Become Too Powerful
 
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Dan the deacon

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Yarddog

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LivingWordUnity

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The left inflated the importance of the SCOTUS because of the Roe vs Wade decision, and they put all of their stock in it. But when Trump, who had consistently promised to be a Pro-Life president, shocked them by winning the White House, they began to panic because they suddenly realize that one and only argument they use for abortion might be lost if liberals lose the majority on the Supreme Court.
 
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Sistrin

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It is more accurate to state the American left is going apoplectic concerning the Supreme Court because they are desperate to continue their strategy of enacting policy via the courts as opposed to via legislation.
 
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paul1149

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The power of the Court has been badly abused for many years. The activism has been so bad that Richard Neuhaus - accurately, in my view - called the Court a "floating Constitutional convention". Because the Court has the power of ultimate review, it is difficult for the other two branches to countermand its decisions. This level of power was unforeseen by the Framers. The only way to reign in the Court is, I believe, at the ballot box, by electing congressmen and presidents who will nominate and uphold constitutionalists for the bench.
 
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Uber Genius

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Seems those voting in the poll disagree.
So that part is obvious.

Did they read and engage the argument from the article remains very much to be seen.

It seems like as Christians affirming life is a straightforward issue, one where we could agree. Yet 7 SC justices created a new federal law in the 1973 Roe v Wade decision.

As justice White described it:

"I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the woman, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court."

Limiting this type of judicial activism seems more than prudent.

We are at over 40 million babies aborted as a result of 7 justices affirming a right that is no where in the constitution.

So my hope is that people engage intellectually with the material rather than "Just voting."
 
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Uber Genius

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Do you honestly believe there are currently 4libs on the court? As for the question it's worth considering.
So they did this just for spite???

That is sicker than I thought.

Breyer
Kagan
Sotomayor
Ginsberg

by all accounts lean Liberal

Thomas
Aleto
Roberts
Gorsuch

by all accounts lean Conservative

So yes I stand by my 5 to 4 comment.
 
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No Swansong

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So they did this just for spite???

That is sicker than I thought.

Breyer
Kagan
Sotomayor
Ginsberg

by all accounts lean Liberal

Thomas
Aleto
Roberts
Gorsuch

by all accounts lean Conservative

So yes I stand by my 5 to 4 comment.
As you should, I completely blanked on Breyer.
 
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Dale

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I suspect our founding fathers knew exactly what they were doing.


Yet the words "Judicial Review" do not appear in the Constitution. Neither does the concept. There is only one line in the Constitution that supports the whole idea of Judicial Review. The Constitution does say that when two laws are in conflict, the Court will decide which to apply. In other words, when too laws are in conflict, the Court decides which has greater authority, which is more important. From there came the idea that laws in conflict with the Constitution can be and should be overrruled.

Another problem: It is one thing to say that the Supreme Court should act as a check on the President and Congress during the period between elections. It is another thing entirely to say that the Supreme Court is above the citizenry, and it looks like that is what we have come to.
 
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Uber Genius

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As you should, I completely blanked on Breyer.
On average it has been somewhat slightly liberal and with Kavanaugh will be only slightly conservative.

Kavanaugh has been compared to Kennedy who was a swing vote. Kennedy was libertarian, voting to support some limited abortion rights as well as voting to overturn legislation that limited distribution of inappropriate contentography. Originalists are the opposite of activist. But they are also difficult to predict.

BTW Kavanaugh's claim to fame was his judicial fairness. He garnered wide support from liberal lawyers even feminists for his evenhanded rulings. So like Kennedy we may not know what we are in for, but he will not try and usurp the legislature and create new laws ex nehilo like the court did with Roe v. Wade.
 
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Yekcidmij

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Is the Supreme Court too powerful?

The Court has probably been too powerful since Marbury v. Madison and the precedent of judicial review.

I mean, theoretically, what's to stop any President from nominating, and the Senate confirming, as many justices as they want and then those justices initiating judicial review on whatever they/the Senate/the President/the Party want? ....Tradition? Yikes.

https://www.history.com/news/franklin-roosevelt-tried-packing-supreme-court
 
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Uber Genius

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Marbury v. Madison and the precedent of judicial review.

Quite an interesting and significant case. I haven't spent much time investigating the early judiciary branch. Where one falls on this issue will make a huge difference in how the US governs. I have taken judicial review as an important check to congressional/executive overreaching the likes of what we have seen with both Lincoln and FDR. But am anxious to add this to my list of projects. Thanks.
 
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FireDragon76

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SCOTUS isn't too powerful but it has become more political.

The Tea Party is mostly to blame, fueled by desperate fears of cultural change. The truth is evangelicals are having a bit of a swan song as a movement after reaching the zenith of political power and cultural relevance under Bush. This is not political spin, it's demographic facts- the fastest growing religious demographic in this country are "nones". And white evangelicals want to try to pack the courts while they can in one last gasp before they batten down the hatches and try to regroup.
 
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Yekcidmij

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The Tea Party is mostly to blame,

Is that even still around?

fueled by desperate fears of cultural change. The truth is evangelicals are having a bit of a swan song as a movement after reaching the zenith of political power and cultural relevance under Bush. This is not political spin, it's demographic facts- the fastest growing religious demographic in this country are "nones". And white evangelicals want to try to pack the courts while they can in one last gasp before they batten down the hatches and try to regroup.

How is it that you fit demographic facts with your narrative? I mean, it's one thing to point to demographic facts, but it's another thing to establish a causal relation between statistical observations and "desperate fears of cultural change", "having a bit of a swan song", and "trying to pack the courts before they batten down the hatches and try to regroup."
 
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FireDragon76

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This is the politics of resentment and causing pain to ones enemies and enjoying it. It's like in Breaking Bad when Walter White gets cancer, he decides that is a free pass to give up being a decent human being. For white evangelicals, their free pass is their cultural marginalization.

This is resentment and schadenfreude is not Christian behavior.
 
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Ringo84

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FireDragon stated it better in a single paragraph than I probably would have in several.

I agree with the OP that the Supreme Court is too powerful in the sense that far too many right are subject to the whims of out-of-touch people who sit on the Court for life (who thought that lifetime appointments were a good idea?). If it is true that our rights are endowed by our Creator (whichever creator we happen to believe in), then no court should be able to take those rights away because replacement of a justice tilts the court one way or the other.

However, the Court is not quite as powerful as you might think. It does not actually set policy or enforce laws; it merely "calls Constitutional balls and strikes". Expansion of rights to include women, minorities, LGBT etc begin with the people - not with court rulings (which only serve to encase those expansions into law).

Howard Zinn probably expresses this better than I can: Howard Zinn: Don’t Despair about the Supreme Court
Ringo
 
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