14
votes
A better reason to delay Kennedy’s replacement (People under the cloud of investigation do not get to pick the judges who may preside over their cases.)
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- Title
- Opinion | A Better Reason to Delay Kennedy's Replacement
- Published
- Jun 29 2018
- Word count
- 797 words
How realistic do you guys really think it is that the Republicans don't get to pick their man for the vacancy?
Realpolitik's been the name of the game in US politics for a long time, not moral arguments,
It all depends on Nancy Pelosi's gumption it would seem.
How? What possible mechanism do the Democrats have for blocking an appointment?
With John McCain out of action, if ALL of the Democrats refuse to show up and participate in roll call, then the Senate doesn't have enough people for a quorum, and they can't conduct ANY business.
I've heard that idea tossed around, but the problem is that someone has to call for a role call for that to work. If they don't it's presumed there's a quorum and the Republicans can just continue as usual. Also the Sergeant-at-Arms could just arrest the walkouts and bring them into the senate to compel a quorum.
Well, they need 51 votes to confirm, and there are 47 D, 2 I, 51 R. So it sounds like she needs to do anything possible to to convince 1-2 of those R's to do the right thing for the country. If normal maneuvers don't work then get their kids jobs at Google, give them money through a third party.. swamp it up for a good cause.
gumption
edit: math problems, clarity
I know what gumption means. It's just that there's no way to block the pick without enlisting Republican aid and getting that aid is not remotely realistic, regardless of how much gumption you have. Kennedy's retirement gives the GOP the chance to build a court with an unshakeable right-wing majority, potentially for decades, a dream they've held for over a generation. No Republican's gonna toss that opportunity aside for anything the Democrats have to offer, and implying that this is in any way the fault of Democratic leadership is unreasonable and fuels the political apathy that's the reason we're in this mess in the first place.
An uglier way of dealing with the issue that I think would be more likely to succeed would be to push the Democrats to embrace a court reform bill. The size of the SCOTUS isn't enshrined in the constitution; increase the number of justices to 11, put them on rotating 22 year terms so that you appoint a new one every 2 years. Every president gets their picks so the ideological balance of the court isn't so deeply impacted by the blind chance of life expectancies, and there's no longer the issue of justices retiring at politically convenient times, nor the perverse incentive to appoint incredibly young justices to maximize your impact.
A perspective a family member shared with me: If we prevented Trump from appointing the replacement, wouldn't that be implying guilt when the point of our justice system is presuming innocence?
My addendum: I know we Americans are all about suspending presumption of innocence when convenient for our personal agendas, but it is an important ethical guideline as well.
To some extent, I'd say so. It really doesn't seem to have any utility aside from satisfying our societal bloodlust.
I suppose it also prevents them from possibly re-committing, but doing it for that reason definitely presumes guilt.
Not necessarily. That's why we have protections regarding maximum jail time without being charged for a crime, for example. With that in mind, you also wouldn't want to e.g. tell a suspect "we're going to be questioning you tomorrow regarding a crime, so show up at X time" because then you're pretty much guaranteeing that if they are guilty, they'll just skip town. Especially in the case of actually charging someone with a crime, you definitely don't want to allow them to skip town, so arresting them--even monitored house arrest--is ideal so you can guarantee that they'll be around long enough to be forced to court on their trial date.
It's certainly true that we hold the ideal of "innocent until proven guilty", but there is also clear precedent of a more nuanced ideal of "innocent until proven guilty, but let's take some precautions to prevent them from avoiding the consequences of their actions if they do happen to be guilty".
To give a clear example using a complete different scenario: Even if all you hear is that someone was accused of being a child predator, you'll probably opt to not leave your child alone with them until such time that a trial has taken place and they've been found not guilty. The same logic applies here.
tl;dr - It's insurance, not presumption of guilt.