Ted Cruz Ping! If you want on/off this ping list, please let me know.
Please beware, this is a high-volume ping list!
CRUZ or LOSE!
Posted on 07/03/2015 5:22:21 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Right found itself thoroughly defeated at the Supreme Court earlier this month, and Senator Ted Cruz offered one of the biggest and boldest proposals in response: Force Supreme Court justices to run for reelection every eight years.
“I am proposing an amendment to the United States Constitution that would subject the justices of the Supreme Court to periodic judicial-retention elections,” Cruz wrote in an NR piece last week. “Every justice, beginning with the second national election after his or her appointment, will answer to the American people and the states in a retention election every eight years. Those justices deemed unfit for retention by both a majority of the American people as a whole and by majorities of the electorates in at least half of the 50 states will be removed from office and disqualified from future service on the Court.”
The specific details of the proposal remain unresolved, and they’re important: Would current Supreme Court justices get grandfathered in and be exempt from the retention elections? Is a “national election” a presidential election or a midterm election? What if a judge has a majority but that majority comes from running up high margins in fewer than 25 states? How quickly would a rejected judge need to resign?
Most important of all, at a time when Republicans find winning 270 electoral votes in a presidential race challenging, how could conservatives be sure that the justices they prefer — Scalia, Thomas, Alito — would be retained under this proposal?
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Something certainly needs to be done. The myth of an independent judiciary that doesn’t legislate from the bench has been thoroughly debunked at this point. If the judiciary branch wants to exercise legislative power, it must come at the price of having the same sort of limits as the legislative branch.
The SCOTUS might not be so quick to step on the states if their asses were on the line like that.
Like his idea logic always is a wonderful thing.
I like your idea a lot—bringing it back to the states.
Also, there should be no judge on the court over 80, period. That alone would bring us some relief.
Exactly.
This will only politicize the SC even more.......just as the popular vote should NEVER elect our president, it should never elect anyone.
Support for gay marriage is said to be 54% - so what would voting for the Supreme’s change here?
Luvya, Ted. But on this one, you’re off. A band-aid solution that will only make things worse.
Sadly, the politicization of the SC is, I believe, an irreversible disaster. It’s not new, has been there for generations (see Roosevelt’s court), but is now worse than ever.
Not one of the branches of our government is working as designed - another proof that for the US - it’s over........
“NO MORE LIFE TIME JUDGES.”
Exactly. Give them term limits to begin with.
I think you have hit on a good idea with the legislatures voting. Let’s face it, the average voter has no clue what the outcomes of Supreme Court cases are and they do not know the Constitution.
I think that there should be a law passed giving states the right to reject SCOTUS decisions that disagree with the will of the people of their state. 40 states have voted down gay marriage. Those states should have the right to declare SCOTUS’s decision invalid because it is.
Congress also needs to pass a law that says if SCOTUS rulings have the effect of making law, Congress can nullify such rulings.
Elections are a poor idea. However, there are several other major reforms that are past due.
1) The SCOTUS is the only court created in the US Constitution. All other federal courts are created by the congress, most specifically by the judiciary committees of the House and Senate. So to have major, long needed reforms of the judiciary as a whole, it is essential to have two chairmen who are both conservatives and see the need for change.
2) Congress also determines the *jurisdiction* of the federal courts, so a major part of these reforms would be to include those cases that are *not* within their jurisdiction, so activist federal judges could not take them though they wanted to.
3) FDR threatened the SCOTUS with enlargement until they would agree to his agenda. Ironically, they *do* need to be enlarged, not for a particular political agenda, but for practical reasons. That is, each year the Circuit courts send at least 8,000 cases to the SCOTUS, which can only hear and adjudicate a few dozen of them. In practical terms, the court needs to have four more justices added to their number, over the course of two presidential elections.
4) Likewise, the 13 Circuit courts need to be rearranged for demographic reasons.
http://i.imgur.com/jYpNPcI.png
The 9th Circuit, in California, for example, controls almost 20% of the American people. The 5th, 6th and 11th about 10% each.
Ted is right, you are wrong.
Moreover, the so-called legal experts who commented in the NR article couldn’t hold a candle to Ted’s resume as a constitutional expert.
(1) No mention is made about how retention elections have already worked successfully in Iowa, since 2010, because Iowa judges overruled the will of Iowa voters on same sex marriage,
(2) The alternative is simply more of the same. Nonsense. One “expert” suggests having SC nominees who won’t flip once on the SC. That is joke material.
Nonsense.
It is already working well in Iowa.
You hand wringers and naysayers have nothing.
Ted Cruz has already stated that SC decisions only directly impact the direct parties involved in the case.
I’ve never seen retention elections improve a judiciary. The good news is, he’ll never get this passed so it doesn’t matter.
Ted Cruz Ping! You need to look harder.
Iowa in 2010 ousted 3 judges for overruling the will of Iowans in striking the ban on same sex marriage.
But were they replaced with better judges? Or were like minded judges appointed by the same people that appointed them? Vengeance is fun and all but it doesn’t actually IMPROVE anything.
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Amen to that!
Solution:
Put the Judicial Retention Elections on a day that would encourage the “right” people to turn out, like Tax Day.
RE: I’ve never seen retention elections improve a judiciary.
Do you have retention elections in your state?
I think a 10 year term limit would be a better plan.
RE: I think a 10 year term limit would be a better plan.
I’m not sure how that solves the problem we have today.
Say in 2004 GW Bush appoints Sam Alito to the SCOTUS, what happens in 2014? Obama gets to appoint his replacement.
Aren’t we back to where we are today and even worse?
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