this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
442 points (98.9% liked)

News

22876 readers
4099 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Justice Elena Kagan declined Thursday to outright answer the question of whether Congress could impose an ethics code on the Supreme Court, but she did allow that it could do “various things” to regulate the high court.

“It just can’t be that the court is the only institution that is somehow not subject to any checks and balances from anybody else,” she said, adding, “I mean, we are not imperial.”

“We, too, are part of a checks and balances system,” she said.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 74 points 1 year ago (4 children)

my own country doesn't have absolute democracy, but when I read things about the American Supreme Court it just seems so crazy, so much absolute power held by so few. Incredibly easy to influence and corrupt and their decisions are so wide ranging and impactful. It has no place in a democracy in the form that America does it.

make it a few hundred Justices that all vote and you have something closer to the UK's house of Lords, unelected and corruptible, but it's much harder to corrupt hundreds than three.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What do you mean? The UK created a Supreme Court in 2009 that has 12 justices, which has similar functions to the US Supreme Court (9 justices). UK’s House of Lords is closer to the US Senate.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

UK’s House of Lords is closer to the US Senate.

I understand what you are trying to say, but no, it isn't.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sure, there’s no direct equivalent for the House of Lords in the American system.

At the same time, unlike the Supreme Court in both the US and the UK, the House of Lords is not a judicial body. That’s why I thought it was odd that you chose a legislative body like the House of Lords to make your point.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm curious because I just know not.

How is it not closer?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@SendMePhotos @echo64

Mainly because the UK's parliament is Westminster-based, the House of Lords are appointed (not elected) for life, and it's there to act as a check against the House of Commons (who are elected) so no majority gov't could just pass any laws, etc that they want.

Canada's gov't is the same (except we call it the Senate vs House of Lords instead).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Senators used to be appointed, and the House of Lords can no longer check the house of Commons, only delay.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It absolutely is, and actually it used to be even closer to the house of lords. Up until this last century the US Senate was not directly elected, the state government would appoint the state's senators. IIRC the Senate was inspired by the house of lords, the major difference being term limits instead of lifetime appointments.

(I imagine the Senate was more meaningful back when the state government couldn't talk to people in Washington in seconds)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What I find so ironic is that the US always wants to be the world's law enforcer, trying to dictate where and how democracy should be run and followed, yet it doesn't follow what it preaches.

Source: I live in the USA, and I see it going on on one way or another every day.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I can promise you, as an outsider, that the rest of the world regards the US as neither democratic nor free

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Idea behind the American SC was that their life long appointment would eliminate the need to be corrupt as they (theoretically) wouldn’t have the ‘pro quo’ part of ‘quid pro quo’ to corrupt them. In reality, that doesn’t seem to work calling into question the necessity of term limits and of course corruption checking.

Packing the court to a few hundred justices isn’t really necessary as it would just be more like the US Senate which does exist.

But I agree, they seem to have too much power as is.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Packing the court to a few dozen and having the justices rotate randomly would do a lot to prevent corruption. Nobody would know which justices are going to hear their case and there would be more justices to bribe. Do both of those together and we're most of the way to restoring the court's legitimacy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The house of lords actually served as the highest court before the supreme court was introduced