• Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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    28 days ago

    That, and stop making the Supremes political appointees. The Australian parliament takes a shortlist of suitable candidates from a judicial review board. Our High Court is law-qualified and peer reviewed. The Government usually takes the first name off the recommended list. No particular political party has an advantage.

    The only difference between this and the US system is that this is done by the US Senate and not a judicial review board. And it can’t change without a constitutional amendment as it’s the Constitution that makes the Supreme Court lifetime political appointees. But even if that were to happen, the only thing is that the power struggle around appointing judges would just shift from the US senate to whatever review board you set up to accomplish the exact same thing.

    With that said, at least in the US, making Supreme Court appointees term-limited would likely just make the situation worse, not better. At least until the current supermajority, the Supreme Court at least had some public trust and appearance of impropriety. If you think it’s bad now, Term-limiting the judges would just make them take the masks off even more and openly make whatever partisan decisions they need to make to get re-elected/re-appointed.

    • slickgoat@lemmy.world
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      28 days ago

      Well, the only difference between the two systems are extremely significant.

      Whoever controls congress makes the pick. Congress comprises political parties. So, political parties make a choice as to how it benefits them. That’s the point.

      In our system an independent process is in play, and it works and has done so since 1901. In our system, the government of the day rubber stamps the selected candidate. Even if it would rather not. That explains the public faith in the system. We also have an independent electoral system that draws up the electorate boundaries. No political power can gerrymander electorate boundaries to preserve power. The electorate system is independent of party interference. All a party can do is make a submission. But anybody can make a submission. Even an individual.

      I think that the US got itself into these problems by letting the inmates run the prison. You distrust your institutions because party politics control them. In your answer above about if anyone besides Congress were to select judges they would become just as corrupt. In the free world this isn’t a particular problem. It is in the US tho.

      Peace out…

      Edit: Soz, where I say Congress, I mean Senate.