The whole institution is absurd and undemocratic and, as Clarence Thomas has proved [0], ripe with opportunities for corruption. A non-binding code of ethics doesn't change that.
Your guess is as good as mine what the current Supreme Court will decide the constitution says or doesn't say. And on some issues they take decades of latency to come to these decisions.
I do think it is insane that we allow this in the modern world. Not to mention all the self-righteous posturing of lawyers absolutely convinced this system epitomizes "justice".
Despite that being passed in 186X, the court didn't have a clue if it applied to the involuntary draft, peonage contracts, or chain gangs until decades later.
The courts are so slow in this country.
I always had respect for the legal profession, but the way the Supreme Court is acting and the fact that nothing is being done about it has made me lose all respect for anyone in the legal profession.
Sure, most lawyers and judges might disagree with the actions of the Supreme Court, but lawyers are hesitant to say anything because they might end up as counsel in a Supreme Court case and don't want the court's ire.
The state of affairs really highlights how much of a dress-up, make-believe game the Legal profession has become.
Guy is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the addiction of millions. He wasn't elected and he wont be punished.
> Curtis Wright, once a director at the US Food and Drug Administration who oversaw evaluation for pain medication, got a position with a first-year compensation package of $400,000 at Purdue Pharma a year after he led the approval of OxyContin
> Wright had confessed in a sworn deposition that he "might" have written the portion of the FDA package insert that said OxyContin was "believed to reduce the abuse liability of the drug."
> OxyContin was the "most prescribed brand name narcotic medication" for treating moderate to severe pain by 2001, according to a report by the US Government Accountability Office. Deaths from prescription opioid overdose quadrupled between 1999 to 2019, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 247,000 deaths from prescription opioid overdose over the last two decades.
>>7 FDA commissioners since 2017
hmmm... were they fired or did they take very high paying Big Pharma Jobs further enriching themselves from the corrupt deep state?
Or the actual Dept Heads, the ones that actually do the regulation and enforcement, the ones that have been there for decades and work for every administration
yes, by design and it should remain so..
This idea that democracy is the end all be all is false and dangerous, very dangerous. Mob rule is never the solution to anything (as we are seeing with the massive mobs in support of terrorist organization Hamas)
There are all kinds of checks built into the American REPUBLIC that are undemocratic purposefully to prevent the whims of the mob for ruling.
Personally I would like to remove many of the "democratic" processes we have put in place since the founding, namely the election of senators by popular vote, The senate should be returned to be appointed by State Legislators.
If you want to reform the Court system end Stare decisis and make the court rule on the constitutionally of each case on their merits based on the actual words of the Constitution as was their original charge and their constitutional mandate
The lifetime appointments are designed to put them outside of the scope of politicians and the need to run for re-election. I guess you could serve a single 15 year term with no option to rejoin the court.
> zero accountability
Supreme Court justices can be impeached and removed from office.
They can be impeached?
It's accountability, but in theory only.
That's true for much more than the Supreme Court though.
To answer your question: yes.
And what's the problem? That's exactly the point of this system — a part of government that is still _appointed by elected representatives_, but is not populist.
The fact that there are problems with an alternative set up (oh no, unstable populism!) doesn’t mean the current paradigm is itself flawless.
The parts of government that exist to slow things are always “very important to stability/safety/growth of the nation” but a lot of us just see them as the artifacts the rich and powerful put in place to ensure they and their friends and family stay rich and powerful for as long as possible.
Move fast and break things, especially governments.
You're absolutely technically correct. In the same vain, this doesn't mean that there's any better alternative.
> the artifacts the rich and powerful put in place to ensure they and their friends and family stay rich and powerful for as long as possible
You could say the same about many other things that benefit society as a whole. Turns out, things that make society rich and stable often help those in power stay in power.
> Move fast and break things, especially governments.
Unfortunately, I've been on the internet too long to be 100% sure it's sarcasm. So, just in case — please don't break governments. And may be don't actually move fast with them. Thank you.
It's a balance between politicians playing the circlejerk game to help each other with their misdeeds, and average joes voting for imbeciles.
I am going to take slight issue with this, The reason the Senate was appointed as not because "normal citizens usually don't have the political involvement necessary to make educated decisions" it was because we are a Union of States. ie the United States. The states are suppose to have some level of sovereignty from the Federal Government, Previous to the Civil War most citizens were loyal to their State first, then the country.
Post Civil War the federal government started to rewrite the relationship, however the Senate was to be the States representative in the Federal Government, thus why there are 2 for every State. The House Represented the people, thus why it is apportioned by population.
A Senator was not meant to be the citizens voice in the Federal government, but was meant be the Voice of the State Government from which they were appointed.
> Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that established the principle of judicial review in the United States, meaning that American courts have the power to strike down laws and statutes they find to violate the Constitution of the United States.
I'm from The Netherlands, so I'm lacking certain insights into the US