Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Senate Confirmation Hearings: Let’s Get Rid Of ‘Em
Problem: judicial confirmation hearings have turned into a circus, especially when it’s a Republican president making the nomination.
Solution: let’s ditch the public hearing.
There’s no Constitutional requirement that the Senate hold a public hearing so that committee members can make nice clips for media consumption. The only reason why we have them is because Brandeis, who was Jewish, was nominated and it caused an outcry so he went to the hearing to reassure everyone he wasn’t that radical.
The nominee can still go to Capitol Hill to make the rounds and visit with Senators and answer their questions. Senators can still issue their template press releases stating their opposition. The media-savvy ones can even come up with entertaining ways of making their opposition known. But the main thing is you get rid of the show that the hearings have become and that should benefit the republic.
Published in Law
Works for me!
This is anarchy.
You are advocating the dismemberment of the Constitution and Article III judicial system. What distinguishes democracies from Authortarian systems of Soviet Russia, Mao’s China and fascist Germany and Italy is the Rule of Law and an independent judiciary.
I suggest fidelity to the Constitution and the separation of powers.
I am not advocating anything. I am talking about what might happen in a hypothetical situation. What is wrong with you, Gary? Why are you making this into something I am calling for, when I am talking about what could happen in the right circumstances? Why do you think Jackson got away with it? It was because the majority of the people did not care. This has already happened and the Republic did not become Red China. That is the point I am making.
Since, Gary, you refuse to even entertain me talking about a hypothetical without insisting my stated goal is to destroy America, I’ll stop talking to you on this topic. If you want to actually engage in what I am talking about, we can do so.
Peace:
Jackson getting away with it is a stain on our country not alike the internment of American citizens during the Second World War, or Jim Crow. It is a deep mark of shame. Jackson should have been impeached and removed for disobeying the Supreme Court. Instead Congress censured him. Utterly ineffective.
I stand with the Rule of Law, not the Rule of the Mob.
When the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to hand over the tapes, he complied. Would Trump (and/or Jackson) comply? This is why Republicans in the suburbs are voting for Democrats to put an effective check on Trump. Trump has said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Not on my watch, not on my watch. Ignoring the Court’s is a bright line that cannot be accepted, and won’t be accepted by me.
The underlying concern, raised initially in Antifederalist essays by “Brutus,” is that the Constitution was ill-designed to actually keep the Court under the Constitution, rather than the Court declaring for itself such meaning as suits the Court’s members’ political intent/whim.
Likewise, the administrative state has effectively become a fourth branch of government, not expressly accounted for and checked by appropriate Constitutional provisions.
The 11th and 12th Amendments were rapidly rolled out to address defects, that became obvious as soon as the nation started operating under the Constitution. Likewise an amendment addressing checks on the Court should have been rapidly proposed and ratified after Marbury v. Madison.
Mark Levin has offered model language for amendments addressing the administrative state and the judiciary.
I would love to see two OP’s on these, one on the Administrative State and one on the Judiciary. I would support a Constitutional Amendment to set 18 year term limits on Supreme Court Justices.
Also, one suggestion I like is to slowly increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court, say adding two every four years until we are up to 19 justices. These massive confirmation fights are not in the best interests of our country.
There is one solution to help in this regard, namely to increase the Supreme Court to 11, namely by an agreement to nominate Merrick Garland and Miguel Estrada to the new seats. This would take a level of trust we have not seen with Trump and/or Schumer, but it would right two wrongs that greatly upset the left and the right.
I’ll take a swing at the two topics, soonish.