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Comment by polski-g | Hacker News Reader

America is a system of judicial supremacy. Judges can do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whoever they want. If you complain, they can hold you in contempt of court and jail you indefinitely.

I can't even remember the last time a judge was actually impeached.

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This is true, and it's why Republicans spent the last 40 years getting the federal courts, and then the Supreme Court loaded with partisan ideologues. For example, proposed laws to limit abortions fail in a lot of places: the majority of the population favors access to abortions. The Republicans got a Supreme Court that will judicially do what would be legislative suicide.

There's a ton of other issues that are like this, from marriage equality to drug de-criminalization to "intellectual property" to regressive taxing that would be legislatively impossible (Republicans losing power) but will almost certainly be accomplished judicially.

> For example, proposed laws to limit abortions fail in a lot of places: the majority of the population favors access to abortions. The Republicans got a Supreme Court that will judicially do what would be legislative suicide.

It's more complicated than that. You certainly have states where the majority of the population doesn't favor abortion access or doesn't care that much, and all any conceivable Supreme Court decision will do is allow the state legislators in those areas to legislate in ways the local population accepts, which won't be political suicide for them. That much is a fact, because restricting abortion access (regardless if it stands or not) has been a winning issue for those legislators for a decade or more.

> There's a ton of other issues that are like this, from marriage equality to drug de-criminalization to "intellectual property" to regressive taxing that would be legislatively impossible (Republicans losing power) but will almost certainly be accomplished judicially.

What you say would be true if the US was a "unitary" government, with non-geographic elections (e.g. by party list), but that's just not how it's structured.

If what I say isn't true, why have national-level Republicans worked so hard to get a very ideological SCOTUS? I mean, McConnell holding an open seat after Scalia's death for months, and then ramming Coney Barrett through in just weeks makes me very skeptical that a conservative SCOTUS wasn't important.

Sure, the US has built-in geographic divisions, and the states do voting very differently. Yes, a few states (southern, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama) will outlaw abortion given half a chance, but the rest of the issues I noted are hot-button for some small fraction of some states, but are pretty popular in the rest of the states. If Republicans somehow got national legislation to repress marijuana again, for example, they would lose a lot of regions leading to loss of national dominance.

Abortion permissibility was itself a result of judicial supremacy. The majority of the population favors restrictions on what is currently allowed federally.

“Currently, 59% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 39% say it should be illegal in all or most cases.”

https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-aborti...

Please don’t assert false facts, especially when the truth is a Google query away.

I didn't say they supported making it illegal. I said they supported restrictions on the current level of permissibility:

https://news.yahoo.com/poll-most-americans-support-abortion-...

> In fact, a majority of pro-choice respondents said they would limit abortion to the first three months of pregnancy, the so-called hard cases, or not at all

Depends. Some judges can be threaten. This had happened many times and quite obvious during 2020 riots in America and elections. Also, the keys to judicial "edicts" lie at the prosecutors. If you have low quality prosecutors or death-targeted prosecutors' family members, then judicial can't funxtion properly. Look up how Scott Peterson got convicted purely on circumstancial proof including "he doesn't act the way we expected him to". I do expect assassinations of judges will be more common in decades to come. It is important congress to ensure judges have good statistic of being punished if misconduct.

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