No. That's a temporary status. They went out of their way to ensure that a nationwide abortion ban was still 'constitutional' but the nationwide right to one was not.
The Supreme Court didn't fix a damn thing. They made bodily autonomy subject to majority votes in state legislatures. Bodily autonomy is too important to be trusted to a majority vote, and Democrats failed the country miserably by not pushing to amend the Constitution to guarantee the rights of all Americans to ownership over their own bodies.
It's this way by design. In retrospect, we could have probably avoided the problem of the party in power trying to appoint 'their' judges by requiring a three-quarters majority in the Senate for appointments, but that didn't happen and never will.
> The Supreme Court is an unelected political entity. Can this be fixed?
Not really. The Senate and possibly House are expected to flip this fall. Our supreme court is taking a crack at reducing civil liberties and empowering conservative culture war positions. Precedent doesn't matter apparently. Only literal, conservative-justice interpretations of the constitution matter now. They're unqualified and unfit to run our nation's highest court. Radical and idealogical. Libertarians should be angry about this development of encroachment upon personal liberty and rights.
Nominations of the justice is done by people who have been elected though. According to you, does that make them less legitimate that if they were directly elected?
Not OP, but yes, adding additional layers of indirection makes an election/nomination less representative of the will of the people and thus "less legitimate" if you think legitimacy is based on representing the will of the people.
Of course the bigger problem according to this perspective is that there are many more layers of indirection before it even comes to the point where "your" elected representative nominates a judge. Some of them are more prone to "shaping" than others (e.g. via gerrymandering, disenfrachisement, voter suppression in all its forms) but the goal is generally to generate "favorable" election results regardless of what the people currently want.
You can't vote them out. There are only two ways to get rid of a Supreme Court judge: they retire or they die.
As I assume you aren't asking for ways to bring about either of those scenarios in ways that would incur legal issues, the more appropriate answer is that the government can appoint additional judges, which I think is called "packing". Right now the general consensus among Democrats seems to be that they don't want to do it because it would set a precedent Republicans could exploit, although history has shown that the Republicans don't require precedents to "play dirty" (e.g. while Obama refused to appoint a replacement judge because he was on his way out of his second term, Republicans happily appointed replacement judges when Trump was on his way out, not to mention that a significant number of Republicans supported the claim that Biden "stole the election" and Trump was the real winner).
If you're asking for a systemic long-term solution: no, it can't be fixed. The problem is that the Supreme Court lacks a clear mission statement and effectively acts to reinforce whichever party is in power at the time. The current SCOTUS majority leading to these decisions are "constitutional originalists". While you can argue that this is bad (or that this is still relying on interpretation and inferrences), it's impossible to say that this is wrong because it's an entirely valid interpretation of what the SCOTUS is for.
If you want to "fix" the SCOTUS because it's undemocratic, the problem is that it's only one of many aspects of the structure of US government that's undemocratic. The system was never meant to allow all people to equally influence the government. The system exists as much to curtail the power of the ruling politicians as to curtail the direct power of the people.
In other words SCOTUS isn't broken, you just don't like the political system itself. That's fine, but it requires a different framing in order to understand your goals and options.
That's what it was when they came down with Roe originally, they are just returning to NOT being a legislative body and returning this decision to where it belongs.... the legislature.
Like it or not, ever since SCOTUS seized the unconstitutional power to overturn legislation, they have been a political entity, effectively legislating.
The difference with recent rulings is that they've abandoned any pretense of political independence or legitimacy.
johnchristopher|3 years ago
mikeyouse|3 years ago
EddieDante|3 years ago
CommieBobDole|3 years ago
formerkrogemp|3 years ago
Not really. The Senate and possibly House are expected to flip this fall. Our supreme court is taking a crack at reducing civil liberties and empowering conservative culture war positions. Precedent doesn't matter apparently. Only literal, conservative-justice interpretations of the constitution matter now. They're unqualified and unfit to run our nation's highest court. Radical and idealogical. Libertarians should be angry about this development of encroachment upon personal liberty and rights.
pyronik19|3 years ago
[deleted]
vdddv|3 years ago
hnbad|3 years ago
Of course the bigger problem according to this perspective is that there are many more layers of indirection before it even comes to the point where "your" elected representative nominates a judge. Some of them are more prone to "shaping" than others (e.g. via gerrymandering, disenfrachisement, voter suppression in all its forms) but the goal is generally to generate "favorable" election results regardless of what the people currently want.
rmorey|3 years ago
hnbad|3 years ago
As I assume you aren't asking for ways to bring about either of those scenarios in ways that would incur legal issues, the more appropriate answer is that the government can appoint additional judges, which I think is called "packing". Right now the general consensus among Democrats seems to be that they don't want to do it because it would set a precedent Republicans could exploit, although history has shown that the Republicans don't require precedents to "play dirty" (e.g. while Obama refused to appoint a replacement judge because he was on his way out of his second term, Republicans happily appointed replacement judges when Trump was on his way out, not to mention that a significant number of Republicans supported the claim that Biden "stole the election" and Trump was the real winner).
If you're asking for a systemic long-term solution: no, it can't be fixed. The problem is that the Supreme Court lacks a clear mission statement and effectively acts to reinforce whichever party is in power at the time. The current SCOTUS majority leading to these decisions are "constitutional originalists". While you can argue that this is bad (or that this is still relying on interpretation and inferrences), it's impossible to say that this is wrong because it's an entirely valid interpretation of what the SCOTUS is for.
If you want to "fix" the SCOTUS because it's undemocratic, the problem is that it's only one of many aspects of the structure of US government that's undemocratic. The system was never meant to allow all people to equally influence the government. The system exists as much to curtail the power of the ruling politicians as to curtail the direct power of the people.
In other words SCOTUS isn't broken, you just don't like the political system itself. That's fine, but it requires a different framing in order to understand your goals and options.
nescioquid|3 years ago
They can be impeached by congress.
pyronik19|3 years ago
hackyhacky|3 years ago
The difference with recent rulings is that they've abandoned any pretense of political independence or legitimacy.
vkou|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]