Democrats Introduce Historic Bill to Prevent GOP from Having Too Much Control Over SCOTUS

[Judi Lynn]

ELURA NANOS
Sep 29th, 2020, 12:12 pm 10

House Democrats will introduce a historic bill on Tuesday that would change the Supreme Court for the foreseeable future. The “Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act of 2020’’ will be put forth by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Don Beyer (D-Virginia) and Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.). Its purpose is to change the process by which justices serve, leave, and are appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. Many Democrats see this bill as a way to rein in executive power to create an increasingly conservative Supreme Court in the wake of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and President Donald Trump’s quick nomination of Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

Link to tweet

Here’s what the bill would do.

1. Impose term limits.

The bill creates 18-year term limits for sitting SCOTUS justices. After a justice serves for 18 years, they’d have the option of retiring or continuing to serve on the federal bench by serving on a lower court.

2. Create a regular, recurring schedule for Supreme Court nominations.

Future justices would be added to the court in odd (non-election) years, thus allowing every president the same number of opportunities to appoint justices. The bill’s text says that the president “shall, during the first and third years after a year in which there is a Presidential election, nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoint one Justice of the Supreme Court.”

More:
https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/democrats-introduce-historic-bill-to-prevent-gop-from-having-too-much-control-over-scotus/?utm_source=mostpopular

[cos dem]

1. They need one more clause...

Failure of the Senate to hold a vote within a given amount of time (say 90 days) shall be termed "implied consent".

[hedda_foil]

2. It's in there if you read the whole article.

Under the proposed language, the Senate would waive its advice and consent authority in the event that it stalls for more than 120 days. The specific language is as follows:

If the Senate does not exercise its advice and consent authority with respect to a President’s nominee to the Supreme Court within 120 days after the nomination, the Senate shall be deemed to have waived its advice and consent authority with respect to such nominee, and the nominee shall be seated as a Justice of the Supreme Court.’

[cos dem]

3. Oh, excellent, good to know!

[Laelth]

4. I don't like it.

In my experience, SCOTUS judges almost universally get more liberal the longer they stay on the Court. Term limits don’t help us. Expanding the Court would help us. If there were 15, 17, 19, or 21 SCOTUS judges, each new vacancy would carry much less political weight. Expanding the Court would both stabilize it and, to some degree, de-politicize it.

-Laelth

[eppur_se_muova]

7. Yep. Even 11 or 13 would be better than 9, and more manageable. nt

[unblock]

6. Good instinct to try something, but sounds like a bad or even very bad solution

For starters, the wording would appear to give donnie another free nomination in January 2021 as that would be "during the first year after a year with an election."

I don't think they mean to enable lame duck appointments but it appears to be drafted that way.

And this won't prevent a repeat of the merrick garland thing. Yeah, the senate won't be able to do literally nothing, but the senate can kill a nomination in any of a number of ways. Sham hearings and a party line voice vote accomplish the same thing. And it won't work to require the senate to approve someone within some number of days, because then a Republican President would just nominate Nazi after nazi and the best a democratic senate could do would be to pick the least odious nazi.

[Nitram]

8. Excellent. The hard work to repair the damage Trump and his GOP cronies have inflicted on

our democracy has started. Shirt sleeves are being rolled up and skilled, educated committees are beginning the process of plugging the loopholes and shoring up the weaknesses built into a system that never imagined a psychopath would be elected president and then supported by their party no matter what laws and norms the violated.