The stakes are getting higher

[luzribeiro]

Is it true that the death of SCOTUS justice Scalia has immensely raised the stakes of the presidential campaign, and is about to make it literally about the future of all three branches of government?

I mean, the latest GOP presidential debate seemed to indicate this, as most candidates were very eager to make it clear that Obama should not be

Comments

[htpcl]

I don't get this. Why should the supreme court have liberal judges, conservative judges, and all sort of politically motivated judges? Isn't the judicial branch of power supposed to be independent? If the president and congress are the ones that have quotas to appoint supreme justices, how is this independent? How does it provide checks and balances? Wouldn't the supreme court always end up tilted towards one ideology or another?

[dexeron]

The role and scope of American government has been up for debate since before the ink dried on the Constitution. The meaning of what words mean, not merely in their current plain-text definition, but in their definition back at the time of the Constitution's writing, in addition to how vague phrases were argued by founding fathers who themselves all disagreed on the aforementioned scope... well, it became a partisan political issue the moment Hamilton and Jefferson turned the country into a two-party system. Part of that problem is that (as much as some folks would like to argue otherwise) there is no "right" or "wrong" way to read the Constitution. I have my opinion on what certain phrases mean, but it would be absurd for me to claim that this is the only correct way. I will fight for my opinion, because I think it is the best (and will lead to the best outcomes) but part of a mature Constitutional scholarship is understanding that none of us are qualified to waltz in and settle a debate that's raged for over 200 years

[htpcl]

While we're about Citizens United, how can a handful of people decide the fate of an entire society? Because that's what happened there.

[dexeron]

That's pretty much the way U.S. society has been set up from the beginning, and by design. The framers of the Constitution didn't trust the masses to make their own decisions, and set the entire thing up to avoid direct democracy entirely. Their motives might have been questionable, but there are advantages to a "representative" model as opposed to a more direct model. Ultimately there have got to be some final arbiters for what laws actually mean and how words are defined, and ideally these people should be indisputably qualified and well-educated enough to put partisan feelings far enough aside to make objective rulings on Constitutionality. That, of course, is the problem, though. To avoid the vagaries of the mob, inflamed by human emotion, we instead hope that the equally-human Justices can put aside their own human feelings and act like robots.

I'd argue that it works more often than it doesn't, but sometimes you do end up with a Citizens United. It's just part of the ever swinging pendulum. There are other avenues to

[mahnmut]

They can pray all they want, still doesn't make them any less deluded.

[ddstory]

It'll take much more than a few boos to remove Trump's teflon cover. Still, kudos to him for speaking his mind on this, even if he knew his opinion wouldn't be met with enthusiasm.

He's still a major asshole, though.

[unnamed525]

Anybody Obama nominates will be "too liberal".

[oportet]

Plenty of experts (maybe actual, but at least selfproclaimed) have predicted the next President would be filling 3 seats. I never saw who they were figuring would be out, but assuming Scalia was one - that still leaves two for the next President to pick.

As for Trump - his following probably isn't made up of many people with a completely positive memory of W - his comment may hurt him in SC, and Texas - it could help him in a general though.

[dexeron]

Ginsburg is a pretty often predicted "candidate." If a Democrat wins, she might just retire to make way for a younger justice. If a Republican wins, she might try to hang on, but she's pretty old herself. (I'll be sad to see her go. She's a giant, and a hell of a great human being.)