What's The Deal with "Court Packing" The Supreme Court? 

Any plans for Christmas?

@yung sh4d0w that’s the excuse. but SCOTUS should be BALANCED regardless of size.

yes

In my opinion, if they are doing this for a political gain, and to suppress republican votes, then no. If they are doing this for another reason, I'd have to ask what their reasoning is for it. It should be even, though.

@yung sh4d0w Who is a commie?

This channel should not be your solitary source of info if you intend to learn about the US legal system, as the author tends to present information that benefits one political party over the other, and equally importantly, chooses not to present information that does the opposite, even when relevant to the discussion. But the format of the videos is certainly excellent and easily digestible!

@@crimsonhawk52 What other sources could you suggest to balance it out?

@aaron guest Of course. Could you suggest some other reliable sources?

@@crimsonhawk52 Well actually he only presents information that is confirmable...

@@crimsonhawk52 Are you someone that tends to believe anonymous commenters on faith and instinct?

He's so one dimensional, I just want his inevitable and predictable comeuppance to happen and then never see the character again.

They're all hypocritical in the interests of their parties. McConnell, Graham, but also Schumer and the Democrats fighting against ACB's hearing on the same basis as McConnell's for Garland's hearing.

Having a handlebar moustache that he could twirl while laughing sinisterly would complete the look.

He's not a hypocrite because he's totally nihilistic. He doesn't have principles for others which he doesn't follow. He just straight up has no principles

@@winser21 Ten months from an election is much different than two weeks. YOUR bias is showing.

Did you meant transition?

It’s well produced. But he’s basically a shock jock that will talk up anything. It’s all ratings driven. No depth to his show. Just flash and low hanging fruit treated like... low hanging fruit.

@@justicebrewing9449 i would not have known any of that had you not informed me. I find LE extremely interesting and I'm able to understand his explanations-teachings better than i can understand my legal eagle Harvard brother, Dan Wolf, of DemocracyCounts.org, also a professor of international law. I'd much rather listen to LE and THEN discuss-question with Dan. It just seems to me you are keying 'sour grapes'.

@@janaleland9038 - the quotation marks added some snap to its contents 😃

Definitely breaks some aviation ordinances by flying at higher than supersonic speeds near population centers.

He has an army of elves, he probably has all the required visas and permits. Also his sleigh is magic so probably does not actually fly at supersonic speeds. Also is it breaking an entering when we all leave milk and cookies out inviting him into our homes?

@@Creationweek you mean it is NOT breaking and entering if he is invited...

@@ulrichkalber9039 I'm sure he could get by in a court of law insisting that the leaving of milk and cookies was an implicit invitation for him to enter the house lol

I've always wondered about how many patent laws he breaks in building computers, game systems, toys, etc.

Some take longer than others to learn to write proficiently

Typos, running hair dye, and parking lot press conferences force those with 'superior intellect' to stare at things they otherwise might not.

*Stares at the oligarchy*

She, rights just fine

@ARCH Lab7 Based on your sentence, I don't think you're qualified to _judge_ that. Pun intended.

They do. You just miss it when there's 99.9% noise out there.

Also me, a 1L whose read judge’s decisions.

@@TheAwesome45 sorry, but doing my job here: *who's *judges'

@@TheAwesome45 What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 50? . . . . . . . . Your Honor

I looked it up: still just over 50 in 1790s (Change and Persistence in the Age of Modernization, 2020)

Law degrees across the world don't spend enough time teaching history.

@@ryankelly2109 - but what sounds better to a jury/judge/whoever? A nice mathematical statistic or an essay answer? You just made me wonder about historical law and how many people specialize in it ...

Not necessarily the 70's due to things like smoking and poor medical care later in life. But certainly your 50's or 60s. Even in ancient times, once you made it to adulthood, you were expected to make it to your middle ages unless you were murdered or died in war.

@@Sean-xq3qo Sure, although, 'life expectancy at judicial appointment' would have been higher still, given that most people appointed to be judges would been high socio-economic status men in their 40s-50s, who would have 'dodged the bullet' of mortality due to combat and would also, probably, be less likely to die from homicide, workplace accidents or poverty-related morality. Given the Founding Fathers were also mainly high socio-economic status men in their 40s-50s (often with a legal background to boot), they probably were able to imagine justices living into their 80s or early 90s.

AND BOOM ROE IS OVERTURNED AND SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE . We are screwed .

You'd be surprised as to how many legal documents have been written in prose.

@@MagmarFire Well, it would probably be a bit awkward if they were written in poetry...

@@BaronSengir1008 Awkward? Sure. Potentially more entertaining? Most definitely 😆

@@Chas-OTE There once was a man from Nantucket...

@@noesunyoutuber7680 who murdered his wife with a bucket. As he sat in his trial, his lawyer spewed bile, and eventually he just just said "aw f*ck it!" I just had to take a whack at it. My brain won't leave those alone.

I wish people would bring this up more.

Yes and no. Modern medicine has greatly increased life expectancy beyond lowering infant mortality. In the time before antibiotics and vaccines any number of now easily treatable or preventable diseases would have been a death sentence, no matter your age.

@@GumaroRVillamil Still living to 80 years or so was completely normal even 200 years back.

@@ruukinen yes, but a far lower percentage of the population reached that age than today

The only point being made by your objections is that wealth has a proportionally smaller impact on mortality rates today than it did back then.

All while stealing the 6th hourrux from Voldemort's grave

additionally they did it whilst ignoring the deceased justices dying wishes, so disgusting, don't know how anyone can say they did it in good faith

@@Park501 Dying wishes of government employees are utterly meaningless.

It was Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader at the time that did away with the 60% threshold for confirming judicial nominees. And like the other commenter said, the dying wishes of a justice should have no bearing on who the President nominates or if the Senate will begin a confirmation hearing.

Pelosi did the same exact thing 🤦🏼‍♂️

Also, Israeli justices are not appointed by a political process, but are nominated by a professional process and then represented by a committee made up of a third elected politicians, a third elected bar representatives and a third unaffiliated public representatives. So the Israeli supreme court is astoundingly apolitical and as a result they have been taking a lot of flak in recent years for being too "ivory tower" and not addressing "the plight of the people". So maybe that system isn't so good either.

Normally just three judges though, unless their decision gets appealed to a larger panel. I find that system interesting and a bit surprising. Of course, the role of the SCOI is somewhat different from SCOTUS, and as I understand it, the precedent for changing the enforcement of Knesset law is relatively young. So they aren't directly comparable.

I like the IG system that I read in a book (Psyber War). The inspector-general (IG) is the chief justice and figurehead head of state, but he has teams of justices for various constitutional issues (eg speech, religion, federalism)--essemtially meaning the supreme court has 90ish justices, but don't all meet together. Each team (5 members) reviews the case and submits their recommendation to the IG (eg unconstitutional and why, constitutional). The IG usually signs off on it. For fellow commonwealth members, this is like a governor-general that proactively conducts judicial review (rather than reactive judicial review that requires someone to file case), but has absolutely no executive power.

@@EebstertheGreat as far as I understand, a SCOI decision can't be appealed, even if given with a panel of only 3 justices - and I have never heard of such a thing. OTOH, 5 justices panels happen from time to time and with high profile cases - especially "High Justice Court" cases - a 7 justice panel is common. Which is the major thing that the Israeli court differs from the US court, IMHO: in cases of a citizen against governmental bodies, a case may be filed directly with the supreme court as the "High Justice Court", which is where the (indeed relatively new) theory of being able to cancel legislation can take practice. So yes - the courts aren't very similar in their duties, but I'd claim that the with a similar setup SCOTUS can be much improved in taking its current duties, and it will likely leave them time to maybe exercise some Israeli style "High Justice".

@@guss77 I think it's called a "petition for further hearing" (rather than an appeal). But it definitely happens, both in appellate and original (high court of justice) cases. It can sit with any odd number of justices, but in most low-profile cases it has just three. In a rehearing, I think there has to be more than three (not sure about that though).

How I envy the UK

@@tarod3 The country is in a mess politically though. Although they'd be worse off with Labor in power, hence why the party performed the worst that it ever has since 1920 in the recent election.

This should be pinned.

The UK supreme court doesn't have divisions. There are 12 justices and 5 normally sit on each case. The panel is chosen based on what the case is about. So a Scottish case would normally have both the Scottish judges on the panel. The court only sits 11 judges in cases of constitutional importance. They have only been two cases where this has happened: the prorogation case and the article 50 cases. The only courts with divisions (in England and wales) are the High Court and the Court of Appeal.

@@lukebraithwaite8652 Distinguish between “Division” in the High Court and and Court of Appeal and my generic reference to “division” in my comment.

Is it coincidence that there are as many constitutional judges as German Länder?

@@joman563 yes it is. to my knowledge it has been like that before the new Länder entered.

@@joman563 Probably. The number changed several times.

Because it is more modern. Our constitution and its systems of government are 231 years old. Yours are 71, or 30 depending on how you want to look at it.

Yes! Please do that!

YES!

I think we all very much need Top 10 Ways to Get the Baliff to Tackle You.

@@aceofarrows yes!

It's the human skin over the lizard skin that gives him an uncanny appearance.

I shouldn't have laughed at that, but I did anyway.

Under rated Comment. Well played.

@@jjones7837 i second that

That is ageist since many people that are over 70 are as sharp as they ever were. There should be a process like for the president where they can be deemed mentally unfit if the signs are there.

British. It’s the British Supreme Court.

Law of England & Wales (not Scotland which has its own laws and courts) overseen by Supreme Court. But justices not political. At least, not as yet.

@@murraybeachtel8585 Except it makes sense since the world is an everevolving place and we keep being more dependent on technology, an older person who is not up to touch at all with that might not have the context and insight to make a good decision.

I think it would be much better just to have terms that last for a number of years instead of life.

LMAO I haven't heard Kraka Lacking in a long time. I like your version

It merely appears to me as a 'sine qua non', move along, nothing to see here

@@DenisMaksymowicz The need to learn and speak well is absolutely...merely essential....move along? Better recheck your use of the term, as it seems you think the need is a nonissue lol.

@@kitwhite2640 egg xaka lacky!

@@shkotayd9749 thank you "and" was what I meant to say. Thx for the correction

The data you need to use is roman census data. While it's technically tangential in the fact that 2k years worth of medical advancements happened, modern medicine as we know it was not practiced at both of these times.

This paper has a table for life expediencies before 1900 based on family tree histories (not medical text, but better than nothing). Table on page 12 gives the life expectancy from 1790-99 to be around 62 at age 20, 64 at age 30, and 70 if you've managed to live to age 50: core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6852826.pdf

Objection: You've fallen for a myth that's pretty common when people object to historical life expectancies. According to this paper: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2885717/ The male life expectancy at 20 years of age was still only 41.4 years in the 1790s. Higher than the expectancy at birth of 34 yes, but nowhere near what it is today. People really did not live as long as they do today, even a simple heart attack had virtually no chance of survivability. Even a hospital in the developing world has access to ventilators and basic antibiotics that alone allow for decades of survivability that was just not possible in the 1700s. Yes, people did often live to their 80s, 90s, even 100s back then just as they do today, but the key difference is that it was a significantly lower proportion of the population than do today.

@@ObjectsInMotion granted, but the point I was making was not that people lived as long as they do now, but more the idea that how quickly after they were appointed to the Supreme Court they could be expected to die was somehow a factor in it being ok for the appointments to be lifelong. Even if they could only be expected to live 20 years after their appointment, that's 5 presidential terms. If the worry is that they could become too entrenched in their placements, I would think 5 presidential terms would already be worrisome.

You’re not entirely incorrect(meaning you’re the facts of what you are saying, minus the assumption about the founders at the end as that’s speculation(all anyone can do is speculate even if you’ve actually read the federalist papers, and other contemporary writings))... the thing about statistics is the data can be interpreted in many ways, especially averages, as opposed to 2+2=4 (no room for interpretation). My questions to you what is the source of data we should use to make this assessment? What average methodology was used to make your broader claim (mean, median, mode)? What was the life expectancy average in 1789 that in your view would be a fair comparison for the point made in the video? Ultimately, I’d like to understand a quantifiable difference between the numbers reported in the video, and the life expectancy number you believe would create a fair representation. For example, if one removed infant mortality in 1789 is there a significant difference in the average life expectancy? If you just wanted to pick apart the points made in the video by showing logical inconsistencies then more power to you. However, if you have a sincere point that your trying to make id like to try and understand it. If op happens to catch this, or anyone else can illuminate this position for my understanding I appreciate your time.

From what I understand there are a good deal of judges and lawyers who speak like drunken idiots but their staff makes it all pretty and proper.

@@Thunderwalker87 damn I knew I should've been a layer

@@Joesolo13 laying whom? :D

I think you mean *filled not packed

@@ahamed4152 It's both. For years, they held up traffic. Then when they got control, that filled and packed with people whom they agree with only. Filling is what they should be doing. But when you stop everything until your "friends" arrive, that is packing.

It is in McConnell's power to not hold a hearing to cofirm a judge to the supreme court. He chose not to partially as retribution for what happened to Robert Bork. Also, filling empty seats is NOT packing, it is just filling existing seats.

@@demented9131 But that was not the explanation he gave; thus, Lying Mitch. Even if it is in his power, it does not mean it is ethical or moral -same as the unethical pardons Trump is doing. Why were there empty seats? Because he held up the approval process in prior years. And there is no place for retribution. This is not the mob. The only people hurt are Americans and the institution. So, defend him if you want, but that shows the lack of morals that you have or your delusional reality.

Obejection : That is not packing the courts, and to be fair, not filling the seat in the final year of a presidency is actually dubbed the "Biden" rule, as it was presented early in Bidens career. You could say that they were holding the democratic party to their own standards but did not care to follow it themselves. Another argument could be that the difference would be the final term and the potential, and now actual, final term

but "it depends" is always the answer. Not just pampering that one line with huggies and loves.

People really seem to miss that "centrism" is just an ideological bias of its own based on its own biased idea about where the right, left and centre even are.

YES and YES

@@han090 I see you can see in 9 dimensions, far beyond us mere mortals!

@@aoikemono6414 um most of the world considers our left, center right

Also, why should a political ideology get permanent equal representation when the people could easily wind up rejecting one, or the other, or adopting a completely new one later?

25 justices replaced at the rate of one every two years means each serves a fifty year term. If they die on the bench, how does the system respond? A replacement would either have to keep their term count-down going, or you’d get situations where it’s a president’s turn to appoint someone and there are no empty seats. Or I suppose you could leave the seat empty?

@@zizkazenit7885 I'd leave the seat empty until filled or until the emergency procedure kicks in. But likely the amount does have to be tweaked here and there. 3 per term might be the better option, still weighing that.

Let me throw in a suggestion from the German Federal Constitutional Court: new appointments alternate between House and Senate.

But then further down the line they have to suffer the long term consequences of breaking integrity.

That thing I said nine months ago is so weird it feels like someone else wrote it. What exactly was I thinking?

@@Tarvok maybe you were thinking that they would have to deal with the consequences to their reputation and image?

I actually like that idea. I doubt that term limits will ever be placed on the judges here in the U.S., but a minimum experience requirement like that would make me feels more at ease with lifetime appointments.

In Germany there's a term limit of 12 years and an age limit of 68 for supreme court justices. And there are 16 of them divided into 2 so called senates.

Except that the Supreme Court justices aren't making the laws, they're interpreting them. Justices have to use precedent, even all the way back to the beginning when the Founders wrote the Bill of Rights. How could Jefferson write law for online retailers? It's up to lawmakers to keep up. It's up to the Supreme Court to interpret whether those laws violate the Constitution. It takes a LONG time to understand it, in its context, and interpret it correctly in a modern context. You want somebody who's been doing this for decades teaching the newbs what their job means. And as politicized as it gets to get them on the bench, we are WAY better at getting Supreme Court Justices who actually understand that their politics are not legally relevant once they're there than we used to be (don't even talk to me about CJ Taney). It shocked the hell out of me each time Kavanaugh and Gorsuch voted AGAINST what their Republican lackeys wanted them to do and then the first time Barrett got a chance to show her loyalty for that insane Texas lawsuit, she gave her loyalty to the bench where it belongs. I don't like every justice that gets in. I don't agree with most of them when they're off the bench but they know how to interpret the law even if we don't like it (that's what Congress is for). And the longer they sit there, the more likely they are to make the right decisions based in LAW. ...Unless you're Clarence Thomas.

@@jnewcomb They're not required to use precedent, or when they use precedent, go all the way back to 1789. They can rule however they want and can use precedent from anytime.

@@jnewcomb I kind of agree with you in an idealized situation. But there is a lack of humanity in those judges. How does a Gorsuch understand a poor kid from a chicago zipcode? Clarence doesn't think racism exists or even systemic issues. That Barrett creature believes in magic from my perspective as an atheist. Look at that court. Do they have much in common with the average American? All of them went to law school. That means they had money and support most likely. If they were poor, they were exceptional because most people fall. How do they understand Americans who don't have a college degree or some college? How are these "justices" capable of administering justice to people in society if they have more in common with Kings and Queens? We've seen prior SCOTUS rulings that have had a horrific impact on US society and harmed thousands of people. Plessy vs. Fergusson. The place where we get the idea of "separate but equal". That was 1896. We get that reversed with Brown v. Topeka in 1954. I mean, what exactly changed in the Constitution? I mean, we did have some amendments after that Plessy ruling. Mostly they were administrative such as "You can't drink", "whoopie, you can drink". No president can have more than 2 terms. Where was that fundamental legal line that flipped that understanding? How many Americans were harmed by that primitive Plessy V. Ferguson SCOTUS court? And Plessy isn't the only one. Right now, I see a US government that is perverted. Trump won the electoral college but he lost the popular vote. Trump retaliated on those states and those voters. Remember how he wasn't interested in helping California battle wildfires on federal land? We have a legislative branch that isn't very responsive. I mean, 1200 dollar stimulus check? Republicans are so eager to protect big business from liability to endangering their employees during a pandemic but not so concerned about American citizens dying. The minority party can't even pass legislation because Senate won't do it's due diligence. And that's not including the freedom of speech to lie and engage in speech that harms other people on a large platform. Remember Bill O'Reilly talking about "Tiller the baby killer". And then, somebody hear that and decided to do something about it. Or when the courts say "Hey, Tucker is crazy. Nobody is supposed to believe him".. except that the reality is that people do believe Tucker. What about the Smartmatic nonsense? A reporter doing their due diligence wouldn't have spread that lie. But Fox News is allowed to. One America NEWS is allowed to. Because what? It's an opinion on a "news" channel? I'm not saying that this isn't a tricky issue.. but how many people need to be gaslit before we acknowledge the poison. Would Kyle RIttenhouse have taken arms and killed people but for conservatives media babbling and overhyping the protests? (and Scalia should have been burned alive. I mean, he chopped of entire words from the 2nd amendment. He had an interpretation that claimed that victims couldn't seek justice from the courts EVEN IF the evidence had been fabricated or exonerating evidence was deliberately hidden. What kind of judge is that? He wasn't the judge of a human society. Maybe a society of guns.) Do you really trust this SCOTUS? I don't. I believe that the majority of the people on that court are not legitimate. They're confederate.. wait, conservative judges who have a conservative interpretation of a legal document that is quite .. progressive considering when it was written. I mean, the US Constitution was designed to be updateable. No written in stone commandments. A living document. That's a progressive idea. The preamble is incredibly progressive and beautiful. We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. I think that SCOTUS forgot that part of the US constitution.

@@jenniferhunter4074 I agree with almost everything you said except the part about justice. Justice is a construct we created to mean fairness. Fairness under the law. Except that laws are not made (historically) to increase justice. They are made to increase power, whether that means power over blacks (slavery), power over whites (affirmative action), power over the poor (indentures) or power over the wealthy (capital gains taxes). No matter which you feel were positive laws or negative laws, someone, somewhere disagrees. The Supreme Court is **not** a body to administer law and order, fairness under the law or justice to those underrepresented. They are to interpret what the Constitution means weighed against the law presented to them in each case. **We** are here to fight for justice. **We** are here to tell the people in power what sort of laws we feel are needed, those that need to be changed and those that no longer apply to our values. DO NOT FORGET, abolitionists were not against separate but equal, lower pay for blacks, or many Jim Crow laws. The North had a lot of those already. Instead of treating blacks as equals, they treated them with pity. Attitudes had to change before the law could. And with that goes a change in interpretation of the law. **We the People** are responsible for that. As Devon said, whether 9 justices or 900, their job would remain the same. Interpret the Constitution. I don't know why we don't have MORE constitutional amendments at this point or why the 1st amendment has never been more clearly codified later in the amended Constitution. It seems like those should be happening regularly and in 244 years we've only added 17 more things (and one of them was just to get rid of another) and it's been 28 years since we've even ratified any amendment at all. So as I was saying with my original post, it's not the Supreme Court who doesn't keep up with the times, it's the laws and Congress themselves. I honestly think that's where the greatest restructuring needs to be done. Only problem is the only way to fix that is for Congress to suddenly make themselves more representational, less ideologically divided, accountable to those that voted for them (we can't remove our own representatives, OTHER state representatives have to), and incentivized to come to a compromise rather than holding one side hostage over the other's agenda. I don't see that happening any time soon and I don't know that there's a solution on the horizon.

@@AVeryRandomPerson That's true but that's not how lawyers are taught. Lawyers are taught to work on precedent. I'm not saying it **won't** happen. Look at Trump, he tests what the law can and can't do for him all the time and it's really pushing the "what we meant" versus the "what we said" of legalism. So yes, technically, completely true.

Weren't there 10 justices under Lincoln?

@@SamAronow Give me a second to fanboi (I've followed you ever since your collab with Useful Charts) And I'm sorry, you're right, I was mistaken the 9 thing was under Grant and the number of circuit courts was the justification.

I think the best way to handle this is to not "pack the court" but to pass legislation to tie the number of justices to number of courts. Effectively the court gets packed but it won't have the downside of changing the numbers all the time.

They don't usually, but they do have histories of legal decision making and thinking, some of which align more with democratic preferences and some of which align with republican preferences. They are picked on the basis of said histories, not on the basis of naked political affiliation. This is evident in the fact that many Trump appointed judges excoriated his anti-election suits.

It shouldn't be that way but it is. Mitch Mcconnell made that painfully obvious when he blocked Obama's appointment.

@@travis1240 appointments*

They're human. Only normal. I mean in theory they should be bipartisan but this is reality.

Anyone who goes by purely facts is not part of the republican party.

15 judges, 15 years, every year a new justice is nominated. Death etc will be handled by the remaining judges.

The decision to be apolitical in itself is a political decision.

In my eyes an entity being apolitical isn't necessarily so much about it's views as it's about its members dealing with political job insecurity. In essence, it let's them not worry about getting re-elected.

They might be political but there's the potential for them to be far more political.

Typical "I'm apolitical" to claim smug sanctimony. The judgmental bystanders who have no problem reaping the rewards of others' labor. I don't sully myself with the dirty deed of politics! Also love it when doctors keep on popping up on the local news saying "The pandemic is not political! We are talking about people's lives!" Doctors being automatically considered smart is one of the greatest running jokes in modern culture. They apparently can't even read a basic dictionary. Politics is about making policy. Whether the pandemic is real or not and how to respond to it? Also a matter of policy.

@@aoikemono6414 No, whether a pandemic does or doesn't exist isn't a matter of policy... the response to it, yes. The existence of it, no. Simply deciding not to do something about it doesn't magically mean it doesn't exist.

That’s the problem with labeling justices “conservative” or “liberal”. Often times the appointed justices rule against their “party”

Justices don't have political ties. They aren't re-appointed in a sense, so there's no incentive for them to go along for or against party lines. The justices are well aware they are more of a last line of defense, defenders of the constitution. Unlike presidents or congress, if they mess things up the ramifications are huge. Plus congressmen and presidents are elected. But the S.C. have a pretty grueling process to go through to get nominated. The standards are just higher for a justice.

The problem is that certain "issues" like the death penalty and abortion should be considered as dead issues that have long since been determined by the courts but that can't happen because you have psychotic activists on the left who believe in bizarre fantasies about conspiracies that don't exist and love to scaremonger about them while the other side plays up to them to make them think they're right when the reality is they're not.

5 of 9 justices were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote.

@@Hammerhead547 Dunno, the right have been pushing some pretty bizarre conspiracies of late. It's like they're both morphing into each other...

The last thing that anybody should want is congressional leadership becoming the next justices. "Justice Pelosi" and "Justice McConnell" sound terrible. The Court handles around a hundred cases each year, the vast majority of which require justices with a strong grasp of the law to interpret what the statute means. They do more than just sprout their philosophical ideas half a dozen times a year. McConnell has not practiced law in decades, and Pelosi has no legal training whatsoever.

@@charlesevanshughes3638 I meant "5. Nomination is by" not "5. Appointment is by" (though "appointment is by" still wouldn't mean they fill the position themselves). Now corrected.

On average that should mean a lower proportion are senile at any one time

I like to believe that the founding fathers would be horrified by the few changes we've made. Also that women and other ethnicities have rights.

Yes, but it is also good that it is so hard to change it (peacefully). as it provides a stable structure on which we can depend, against the slings and arrows of political BS and grandstanding that passes for them doing their jobs.

@@christinebenson518 True, they were very flawed individuals and so is the constitution but it's lauded as this perfect and untouchable document.

@@MonkeyJedi99 or places the country in a rut of corruption that it can't escape. Stability is fine, but if the will of the people isn't being served then something is deeply wrong. Democracy is a work in progress, you're basically saying Americans have nothing else to learn and there lies the problem.

It's not that we're "allergic" -- it's that there can be no agreement -- any changes the Left would make will be fought to the death by the Right, & any changes the Right would make will be fought to the death by the Left -- since Constitutional amendments require cooperation in Congress, as well as agreement by a majority of states, there's simply no way this divided country could possibly come to an agreement on changes...

If it gets decreased, you would simply not replace a justice. Firing would be illegal.

Who wants to go down for creating a civil war?

Nice

The first case. You mom jokes vs That’s what she said.

@@ianpage2509 VS "-er? i hardly know her" jokes. y'know like liquor? i hardly know her

You’re doing the Lord’s work.

Nice.

Recall that this argument was used heavily by republicans during the Clinton presidency and every republican that got a new seat immediately abandoned the idea of term limits. If a politician is popular they should stay. How about increasing the margin required to win in each reelection?

Why? If they keep getting elected and keep being the preferred candidate for the people why shouldn't they have more terms?;Supreme court justices are not elected and they can't be unelected. That's the problem, not term limits.

@@elliotsmith9812 what do you mean by increasing the margin they have to win re-election by? How is that at all fair and equal?

The current process promotes justices to serve until the end of their life, and regardless of the political motives behind their appointment, the inherent cognative decline while working at that age is not ideal. Term limits can be long, but they should next extend far beyond a person's reasonable life expectancy.

There aren’t terms to Supreme Court justices because it never mattered that they be switched out. Although Supreme Court justices have opinions they rule on the basis of the constitution. Read any judges opinion on a case and it will be from the perspective of constitutionality. Due to this party affiliation really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Clearly 51 judges is where it's at. One for each state plus one representing the federation itself.

I like it. The cry about ageism would start up. But I like it anyways.

@@harvbegal6868 a cushy pension will shut 'em up

@@linkspeaks Oh no not the judges that would cry about ageism. The legislators that would have to pass the 75 years age law would cry about. And they would definitely cry about giving them benefits as well.

No. Age limits are too arbitrary. Some of these judges are far past the stage of dementia even in their 60s. Term limits at least give a new infusion of blood into the system, one less anachronistic.

Term limits would be simpler

I can't support that because that would entrench the idea of the 2 party system. I agree with the founders when they said it would be the death of democracy.

And so unattractive to see how biased he is.

@@darkaquatus everyone is

@@joshzickus8394 Yeah, except this guy is trying to come across as an objective lawyer.

@@darkaquatus And, in the process, succeeds in coming across as an objectionable one!

Thanks to he who did nothing wrong

@@AfterLifeGuru Big oof

Is there some doubt that many of the justices aren't still incredibly sharp legal minds well into their 70s? Was RBG not still fully capable of serving as a justice for the last 17 years (she died at 87, so 17 years ago she would have been 70)?

@@HC130P8419 there's a lot of doubt. Because they are, in fact, in their 70s. I was as much an RBG fan as anyone, but she was too old to be in that position. Hands down. There needs to be an age cap

@@HC130P8419 we don't expect people in their golden years to swing a hammer or drive a bus, so why are they allowed to hold the highest seats of power in the world? Governing over an ever changing world, which they understand less and less with each passing year

@@BigGahmBoss I think the Sam reasoning could be applied to age limits for the Presidency and Congress.

@@rogerlamarche7690 the Sam reasoning? No sarcasm or anything, but I don't know what that is. I apologize if I'm just being slow

With that attitude, "you go high, we go low". Or, as Charles Koch may have put it, "COMPROMISE IS FOR COWARDS!"

True. But the next time the Senate is held by Democrats and a Republican president has the opportunity to make a Supreme Court nomination, I sincerely hope that whomever is the Senate majority leader repeats McConnell's speech, word for word, about not allowing a hearing until the next president is in office. And that includes during the first day of that President's term. The utter outrage will be hilarious, and perhaps it might drive home the lesson about "what's good for the goose, is good for the gander."

@@Amberscion Exactly. The best rules are ones that can't be twisted unfairly against anyone, not those that give you the best immediate outcomes.

That’s it, I’m calling for a ban on Yoga so such a travesty can never occur.

@@Amberscion I have no doubt the Democrats will hold out supreme court nominees in that situation. The "Not hold a vote" was an act of extreme bad faith. They could have got what they wanted by having all of those hearings and votes, and rejecting anyone who wasn't as conservative as they wanted. I'm not quite sure what motivated that decision.

Sorry, no -- the first-past-the-post & winner-take-all aspects of US elections ensures that there will always be 2 major parties -- the American system is simply not designed to accommodate 3rd parties -- which is because, when the system was designed, there really wasn't any such thing as a political party -- the Founding Fathers thought that citizens would just be voting for their preferred candidate, not supporting a national organization -- at this point, if any 3rd party did manage to get more votes, it would just take away from one of the main parties, ensuring that the other main party would always win...

That's kinda the nature of fringe parties, even where I'm from; Canada. The problem with the fringe doesnt really come down to thier coverage either, in Canada there us very little time wasted on political advertising, so noone has a real upper hand there. The issue comes down to they either have too fringe of goals to appeal to enough people who will just go for one of the big two (Liberal or Conservative) or they are too extreme and drive people away for that fact; too big a change is frightening to most people. The other problem with fringe political groups is that they commonly are just half clones of the main party or even eachother, and if they united with either of these mostly like minded parties; they would stand a much better chance. But no, they need to get thier SPECIFIC goals achieved, and it's that lack of compromise that is thier true downfall.

@@MF-R - Yes -- the advantage of parliamentary systems is that they allow for more voices -- & the problem w/ parliamentary system is that they allow for more voices...

they should just make it a 2/3rds of the house vote for the justices and it will not be political anymore.

And an endorsement by the bar association. And at least 15 years experience as a judge

@@benwillems8584 Definitely need years of actual court experience as a judge...

@@ruben307 it was 60 votes to confirm in the senate. The democrat party removed that

@@jackw801 The reason they did that, interestingly, was because the 60 vote system was becoming "too political." Obama couldn't get his lower court nominees through because the Republicans kept pushing confirmations down the line by refusing to vote on Obama appointees. Since the Dems had the majority, they killed the filibuster for those appointments. Then, of course, that bit them in the ass when they lost the Senate majority and a Republican president got to make 3 Supreme Court appointments while they were the minority...

On the flip side of that, older judges/justices mean that there is less "whipsawing" of judicial opinion based on current interpretations and societal fads. Essentially providing a stabilizing influence on the shouting of the few.

@@MonkeyJedi99 I would assume a judicial appointee isn't someone swayed by "fads" so I disagree there. That's essentially suggesting no one born after the 1960's is capable of stability. In fact there would be no women on the supreme court if that were the case because appointing women in those positions would be considered a "fad". Times change and the ppl with it, the scotus should be reflective of those ppl

Someone buy Rubio a dictionary so he can learn what 'amendment' means!

I really like the German system of splitting the constitution into tiers with some being more difficult to change than others.

You can amend that amendment later... but only if you have an amendment-making majority, which is a LOT rarer in American history than simple majorities. Which means you can't amend the amendment to win the sort of close political fights we've been having for the last half dozen decades. Frankly, we could use an amendment clarifying and making official a bunch of procedures relating to the supreme court, but we'll have to wait for a supermajority to come along to do that.

@@derrickthewhite1 you do not need a supermajority of one party. It is sufficient to make a ruling that is agreed upon by both partys.

This is not accurate either - the parties were both big tent organizations from the 20s to the late 60s.

It's a bit tricky because while the parties absolutely did flip on most social issues when the Southern Strategy was implemented, Republicans have been pretty consistent on their pro-corporate messaging since the beginning (where the Democrats were essentially pro-aristocrat with token support for poor farmers). Labeling either party as wholly liberal or conservative doesn't make much sense until you get to FDR.

@@arachnofiend2859 the parties didn't really flip on social issues. for example, Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger, a Democrat, who wanted to keep blacks from outpopulating whites. in addition, Republicans today want a colorblind society (as they did throughout the 20th century). Democrats on the other hand, are the party of woke mobs who want to roll back anti-discrimination laws so they can discriminate based on race again (California actually had a referendum [which thankfully failed] this past November to repeal part of their constitution banning race-based discrimination). as for the "Southern Strategy," the part that is routinely ignored is that Nixon did not win a majority of votes in any former Confederate state in 1968 (he did in 1972, but that was a 500+ electoral vote landslide), and many of the former Confederate states he did win had gone for Eisenhower in the 50s (Nixon was Eisenhower's VP).

Putting an expiration date on all laws sounds good on paper but is a terrible idea when the rubber hits the road. But can you imagine something as broad as the Americans with Disabilities Act passing now? Or the Family Medical Leave Act? How long should the ADA have had as a provision? How could someone plan on retirement with Social Security constantly being torn up and rewritten every 20 years or so? It is just another one of Jefferson's ideas that shows he was much more of a philosopher than a legislator.

I love Thomas Jefferson, wise and a complicated man. Sometimes, however, his opinions made a constitutional amendment. Because of this, Laws do last forever unless otherwise stated or changed. He was President once, and he could have fought for that rule, but it never came to be, so we’re stuck with the system we have. Congress, and the states, have a system to make Rubio’s amendment. It will last forever if passed until congress changes it. God bless him and his opinion, but unfortunately, it’s just that, an opinion.

@@ericmartin9412 Those are some excellent objections. I do think there is a “happy medium” between the two positions...not sure exactly where that line should be, personally, but I do believe that putting an expiration date on certain categories of legislation would be appropriate, even beneficial as it’s often difficult to overturn an outdated law. But as for the ADA or other such legislation...it definitely seems like a better bet to secure those indefinitely (though the argument could be made that such things really belong as an amendment so that it is more permanently protected). Thanks for the reply. 🤓

That would just then hyper-politicize the lower courts (more than they already are) and restart the whole process.

@@generallegath974 i dont think its even possible for the lower courts to be more politicized than they already are lmao....

Having the president appoint a nominee and having the senate confirm the nomination is one of the hallmarks of checks and balances. We don't want the judicial side of the government to become bureaucratic, whereby they're allowed to interpret laws however they wish without any recourse of action. I'm not saying that checks and balances guarantee a fair system, but the alternative is worse imo, because there have been times where the supreme court has stopped the legislative and executive branches from grabbing too much power, and there are times when the opposite has occurred when corrupt judges have been disbarred for their misconduct.

True, but isn’t modern medicine people who would have died at say 60 are often times living. To 80 or older due to higher quality of healthcare. RBG likely wouldn’t have made it to 80 if she was a justice in the 1800s

@@chrismorgan6472 Oh, for sure, but the way the numbers are presented in this video is super misleading. There have definitely been massive improvements, but not as dramatic as the life expectancy implies It's also very much a pet peeve

Yeah, i wish people would use the life expectancy for people who live past 5 years old, much more useful

@@lucassmart1473 Indeed. Mean life expectancy at birth is not a very useful figure at all when it comes to estimating how old someone can get before inevitably dying of natural causes.

where do you live?

@@alexgray2482 On the beautiful town of Granada, kingdom of Spain.

Dude, this argument is done and over with. She’s on the Supreme Court, like it or not. I thought it was a pretty dumb moment as well, but she’s been confirmed. Just drop it and look towards to future for the next fight.

@@KJ-in4gz I disagree. We don't have to settle for this blatant cronyism, and I will continue to bring it up until something is done.

@@Vohlfied Well... keep fighting the good fight! ACB’s been confirmed though, so not sure what you can do about that one. Choose your battles instead of beating a dead horse, I’d say.

lmao

Really, well; Your doing really well at spelling really well. As you can see I am a pro... really aswell.

Clarence Thomas and Kavanaugh should go XD

I assume you can reduce it but not throw people out by doing that.