We're WEIRD. Get over it.

[David Horn]

(10-02-2020, 02:39 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The Bill of Rights contains some pretty basic values.  Rights should not be added or subtracted from the bench.  The Founding Father had a mechanism for change, and it has been ignored.  Presidents have deliberately chosen Supreme Court justices who will follow political agendas rather than interpret the text or the intent of the authors.  The result is a very broken legal system.

The Founders, living in a society that never changed rapidly in its 12,000 year history, built a change mechanism into the Constitution that makes change almost impossible.  Even more to the point, they were the elites of the time, and built the document with safeguards for people like them.  I have a hard time seeing that as even more restraining than it already is.

Bob Butler Wrote:Scalia and Ginsburg were apparently friends, even if pursuing different legal agendas.  Scalia would look at the original intent and meaning of the text. Ginsburg would pursue every excuse to believe the Founding Fathers were not prejudiced against women having political power.  At least both trends were legal rather than political.  We have had too many decisions where the Court will vote according to the political agenda of the president that appointed the justice.  The president and senate are motivated to encourage selecting Supreme Court justices who will legislate from the bench.  Depending on the president, this may mean rights are invented which would have been considered foul at the time the Constitution was invented, which includes both the liberal rights for the people and the conservative rights for the corporation.

To a farcical extent, this is like two combatants agreeing to settle issues of life and death with a pillow fight.  The law is already clumsy enough without overlaying it with a veneer of myth and pseudo religion.  Of course there will be legislating from the bench if there is no legislating from the body intended to legislate.  Worse, people and organizations with resources will always appeal to the bench, and do it continuously if the math looks good.  A 6-3 court will be inundated with appeals to do or undo in service to a dyspeptic conservative vision. 

Bob Butler Wrote:I will renounce both.  People who cheer their faction's contempt for the Constitution are reprehensible.

Congress needs to set some new rules. It has the power, and its the legislative branch after all.

Bob Butler Wrote:This does not mean we shouldn't have a pretty busy 'never again' period coming up.

The rending of garments will continue unabated.