"Impeach and remove judges who do not follow the Constitution"
Yes, this would work.
To do it requires having the same majority in the US Senate as would be required to amend the Constitution.
The US House of Representatives has to vote to impeach, and then 67 Senators have to vote to convict.
Right now, with 55 Senators, the US Republicans cannot achieve the 60 votes necessary to obtain cloture so that the US President can seat any of his higher judicial nominees or his ambassadorial appointments.
Will all 55 Republicans, and 12 Democrats, be found to remove any Supreme Court justice who does not commit a crime?
No?
This method of ending judicial supremacy cannot possibly work in America.
Something simpler is required. US President Abraham Lincoln provided the only precedent that has ever been effective to overrule unwise decisions of the judiciary.
The advantage of US Presidential nullification is that then that impossible burden of finding the votes to impeach is shifted from the justices to the President. It is almost impossible to remove anyone by impeachment. Trying to impeach the judges will fail.
But if the President overrules Supreme Court decisions by ordering the Executive Branch to not enforce them, the Supreme Court's power would be broken: they have no officers. And the only way to restore the Supreme Court's power would be to impeach and remove the President. And that is just as hard to do - probably harder - than removing any of those Supreme Court justices.
There are 45 Democrats in the US Senate. Will 22 Republicans be found in the US Senate to side with them to remove the President?
No?
Then the Presidential veto of a Supreme Court decision would stand.
Clearly the President would have to take care not to abuse this power, because he could be removed if he casually used the political veto he has over the court. But he does in fact have this power. Abraham Lincoln used it effectively. Nobody has since.
If there is no check exercised against the Supreme Court, it will remain supreme. It is impossible to amend the Constitution or to impeach and remove Supreme Court justices. The supermajorities required to do those things do not exist.
But that is the key: it takes a supermajority to impeach.
There is not the supermajority to remove a US President either. And therefore, the President, and only the President, can exercise a veto override of Supreme Court decisions, so long as he is very careful to choose the appropriate causes.
Protecting private homes would be a fine cause for the current US President to take up in vetoing this decision of the Supreme Court.
The fly in your balm ["But if the President overrules Supreme Court decisions by ordering the Executive Branch to not enforce them ..."] is that the State of Conneticut is actually enforcing this and the activist/unconstitutional subpremes merely placed their stamp of 'divided' approval upon it.
But FDR managed to overrule wise decisions on the part of the judiciary. ;-)
"Protecting private homes would be a fine cause for the current US President to take up in vetoing this decision of the Supreme Court." You will have to explain how the President could 'veto' a ruling not involving him or the U.S. Justice Department directly.
>>>>Clearly the President would have to take care not to abuse this power, because he could be removed if he casually used the political veto he has over the court. But he does in fact have this power. Abraham Lincoln used it effectively. Nobody has since.
Can you explain that part a little more?
Thanks.
The advantage of US Presidential nullification is that then that impossible burden of finding the votes to impeach is shifted from the justices to the President. It is almost impossible to remove anyone by impeachment. Trying to impeach the judges will fail.But if the President overrules Supreme Court decisions by ordering the Executive Branch to not enforce them, the Supreme Court's power would be broken: they have no officers. And the only way to restore the Supreme Court's power would be to impeach and remove the President. And that is just as hard to do - probably harder - than removing any of those Supreme Court justices.
This is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard. It's so bad, I had to put it in color and quote it in full, to capture all of its majestic badness.
The growing executive power is one of the worst problems of current American constitutionalism, and your suggestion throws gasoline on the fire. Your suggestion is basically that the President break the law, and get away with it.
The President's party owes the fact that it has been vouchsafed the public confidence to the extent that it now controls the Executive Branch and both Houses of Congress, to its promises to the People to keep the law and the Constitution and roll back the cynical excesses and green-eyed power-hunger of the other party -- which party you now advise us to emulate.
Your suggestion is too cute by half. Adopting it would scandalize the people and cause them to turn away from the GOP, possibly for generations. I know my parents' generation never forgave nor forgot Franklin Roosevelt's attempt to pack the Supreme Court in 1937, and that episode was one of the reasons the People nearly elected a Republican in 1948 and did elect one in 1952 in a walkover. Even afterward, the court-packing episode became part of a legacy of political arrogance that helped people to pull a lever for Richard Milhous Nixon in 1968, ending the Democrats' long run of tenure in the White House and opening the door to a new period of American history, a period of Republican reinvigoration and ascendancy in the Executive.