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Comment by Clubber | Hacker News Reader

>In 2013, Senator Harry Reid did it for federal judges (and not supreme court judges).

Yes, it was an extremely aggressive and short sighted thing for him to do. Most people don't know this story though, so it seems the Democratic Party gets a pass.

Here's McConnell lambasting Reid about it in 2013.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?316395-12/minority-leader-mcco...

>It appears to have led to an era of unprecedented judicial activism.

Judicial activism is a judicial philosophy holding that the courts can and should go beyond the applicable law to consider broader societal implications of its decisions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_activism

Based on recent decisions, we seem to be currently in an era of judicial restraint, not activism. Again, the SCOTUS doesn't create laws, congress does. That's the way the system was designed. I hope the Citizens United decision will get overturned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_restraint

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But there is likewise nothing preventing court packing right now except the concern of some democrats right? They could assign 8 more, then next time there is a swap the gop would add 16 etc. You have to go exponential by nature of the vote to account for deaths. So in as little as 116 years the whole population might be on the bench! I don't like that the macro level policy of our nation is getting decided based on rules of order and who is willing to change them. I'm not a historian, but it seems like the filibuster was already a hack around intended operation of the legislature. Time limiting it would still serve the purpose of preventing the minority from getting shut down with no chance to speak, but also prevent its abuse to require 60 votes on absolutely everything.

>But there is likewise nothing preventing court packing right now except the concern of some democrats right?

Right. FDR threatened this during his administration and bullied the SCOTUS into deciding his way. He was quite Machiavellian. For me, doing something like this would neuter one of the tiers of the check and balance system.

https://www.history.com/news/franklin-roosevelt-tried-packin...

>I'm not a historian, but it seems like the filibuster was already a hack around intended operation of the legislature.

Yes, but it's procedure that the senate had agreed on for quite some time. There's nothing in the constitution that says how many votes are needed to pass, the senate decides that, and for most things, it's 60.

>require 60 votes on absolutely everything.

Depends on how you look at it. Do you want a political party to make laws of the land with only 25+ states supporting it? It sounds good when it's something you support, but doesn't sound great when it isn't. The idea of the 60 vote rule is the federal government can't enact legislation that a supermajority of the country isn't in favor of. Regardless of your party affiliation, you can imagine what horrible legislation would be passed if the opposing party was allowed to pass anything with just 50+1 votes in the senate.

No it was a wise and practical decision. And the fillibuster has always been a stupid accident of the rules. It delayed civil rights bills by over a decade

Everyone knew that McConnell was lying and would have overturned the fillibuster on judges the second a supreme court fillibuster started. And we would have gotten the same extremist supreme court that laughs at restaint and takes away fundamental rights

Apparently he had the option to do it under Bush when Democrats were obstructing Bush's nominees to the federal courts, and he chose not to, so the evidence suggests that he would not have just removed the filibuster for the fun of it.

Imagine McConell blaming Democrats for his own unpopular actions.

>No it was a wise and practical decision.

Well the Democrats just lost all chance of any new gun control and will probably have some gun control repealed. Not only that, they lost the power of Democrat controlled states to enact gun control at the state level and will have much of state gun control repealed. They completely lost the right to abortion at the federal/constitutional level as well. What did they gain for that immense cost? Some federal judges back in 2013. If you think that was wise and in no way short sighted, I really don't know what to say.

The GOP in two years from now if they control Congress will ignore the filibuster and pass a national abortion ban at the federal level at the first opportunity. Anyone believing these folks haven't been lying or won't be complete hypocrites by now are living in an alternate reality.

You literally don't know that though. All signs point to them not doing that, because allowing abortions is actually popular. The only people telling you that Republicans will do that are Democrats. Also, even if they take a majority, they won't have a veto-proof majority, so there is no reason to go nuclear in the Senate when Biden is going to veto everything they do.

If they cared about popular will, almost every GOP controlled state in the USA wouldn't be as we speak trying to implement the most extreme abortion bans they can.

Mitch has said a national ban is a possibility: https://twitter.com/foxnews/status/1523246341173952517

Pence has said this should happen: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/abortion-...

Popular will doesn't matter when you don't need to listen to popular will to keep power. If your insane, extreme base is all you have to pander to to keep power, the GOP is doing just that.

The Democrats could have been smarter tactically. Trump’s first SC nominee was Gorsuch, certainly conservative but a stellar jurist, and an uncharacteristically good pick from Trump (compare to the other names on his 2016 shortlist). The Democrats had no cards besides obstruction, which would certainly lead McConnell to kill the filibuster. If they had made the reasonable guess that Trump’s next pick would be easier to beat, saved their powder, and reluctantly let Gorsuch through, McConnell would have had to kill the filibuster for Kavanaugh. For Kavanaugh, a far more controversial pick than Gorsuch, he wouldn’t have had the votes.

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