StrangeSox

Fun fact: more people voted for the Democrat than for Republican in 6 of the past 7 elections.

Acres aren't people. The Senate was late 18th century political horse-trading and compromising, not some system handed down by philosopher god-kings. Madison even called it a "lesser evil." We don't see this repeated at the state level, and in fact it's expressly forbidden. We don't see other democracies duplicating this structure.

Republicans very concerned about Presumption of Innocence and Due Process

I think it gives the judges discretion based on the case itself rather than having mandatory minimums etc. Each individual shot was an separate instance of aggravated battery, but should we treat this case the same as a person who committed 16 different acts of aggravated battery at different times and against different people? I imagine it also comes into play when someone is up for parole. Maybe they're serving all 16 sentences concurrently, but they're less likely to be let out early than someone serving the same time period for one conviction? Think of non-violent crimes, like dealing drugs or kiting checks. You could be guilty of writing 20 bad checks, each with a sentence of 6 months in prison. Does it make sense to put that person in prison for 10 years? Or does it make more sense to put him in prison for a total of 6 months, but know that he's got this big black mark on his record that can factor in to repeat offenses, parole, etc.? Someone who is actually a lawyer or who has criminal justice experience/background could probably provide a better answer than my guess-work though.

I'm assuming that at least some of the sentences will be run concurrently. So maybe it's 3 years per charge, but they run at the same time, something like that.

abolish the senate tia

Everything we've seen from the Roberts court so far is that they'll continue to legislate from the bench and tie Congress's hands on a wide range of policies.

A non lifetime appointment would also be less contentious and high stakes in the first place.

Might even be best to have a separate constitutional court with explicit and defined powers of judicial review and then a regular supreme appellate court, as some countries do

The scotus can undo what the Congress does, such as Roberts gutting voting rights and campaign finance

You know, if you want to go with the basketball analogy, you'd be defending a league where one team got to play 8 men and could still win with fewer points if they had more assists.

Our democracy is under substantial threat, though. Our democracy is giving more and more power to a shrinking minority control. Our democracy has been dramatically reformed multiple times in the past. It's not about making changes every time "one side is unhappy." It's about constantly striving for a more democratic system. I don't even think my personal left-wing politics would always win in that sort of system! But there is inherent unfairness in our current structure. Millions are given no voice at all. A few hundred thousand are given equal voice to tens of millions. The actual will of the people is constantly undermined by arcane systems giving power to minority government. We're stuck with a rigid two-party system that structurally crushes out any hope for multi-party politics that could better represent the wide range of opinions in this country. This isn't just dumb partisan ranting. There's decades of political science behind better systems.

Possibly. But the "oh yeah well hypothetically your beliefs would be completely different!" is a pretty meaningless game to play because all it does it lets you avoid talking about the topic at hand. I'd be interested in actually discussing hypothetical court and political structures, voting systems etc.

The alternative is "hard right SCOTUS majority for decades to come." I'm not pretending it's not an extreme measure. The last time it was legitimately threatened, by FDR in the 30's, was also a time that called for extreme measures in response to a reactionary court. I was fine with tanking the 60 vote majority to appoint because Republicans were refusing to let Obama appoint anyone to numerous open judicial spots and to various executive functions. I'm fine with it being removed by Republicans for SCOTUS. It hasn't "backfired," because the idea that Republicans would at some point have the Presidency and the WH wasn't some unforeseeable future. Democrats could have put up with two extra years of McConnell blocking nearly every appointment, and we'd still be exactly where we are at now. Republicans would have blown up the judicial fillibuster early on in Trump's Presidency, and there would be that many more spots open on the courts. So if anything, we'd actually be worse off. McConnell raised the stakes significantly when he refused to even hold hearings on Obama's appointment. If one side is constantly trying to be the "reasonable" ones adhering to dead traditions, they're going to get stomped. Yes, it's possible that a future Republican majority/President would then escalate even farther, but the alternative is to lay down and do nothing and watch a SCOTUS gut much of 20th century progressive reforms and block all 21st century progressive reforms on a wide variety of issues. What would you have the Democrats or progressives do instead if not work to reform anti-democratic (small-d there) institutions?

All problems that you are okay with because your "side" does benefit. SCOTUS could have easily gone the other way if 80k people voted differently in 2016, where a sudden and unexpected death swung the court to the left. How does that sort of system make any sense? Why shouldn't we learn from how 50 different states and numerous other countries have structured and reformed their courts over time?

It wouldn't be a law, it would be a Constitutional amendment. You could also set it as an age cap instead of a term limit, as several states do. That wouldn't really be ex post facto, would it? Are judicial nominations entitled to that sort of protection?

love our good and healthy democracy

Essentially, the entire GOP + Joe Manchin has now adopted the Ed Whelan doppleganger theory, at least as a cover story

The rules of basketball have indeed changed since the 1780's. Many times, and in dramatic ways! Political science and philosophy has changed substantially since then as well. No state supreme court follows the SCOTUS model, nor do any other democratic countries. Saying that our electoral and judicial systems need reform to be more democratic, more resilient, and more trustworthy shouldn't be a bad thing. Some states have even begun to experiment with things like ranked-choice voting rather than straight first-past-the-post. We could go with proportional representation rather than single-member districts, like many lower-level offices and how other countries fill parliaments. It would give us better representations of what people actually want, and it would allow for more than a binary political system. The SCOTUS itself isn't even well defined. Does it actually have the power of judicial review? How many members should it have? These are not in the Constitution. Why should appointments be lifetime rather than term- or age-limited? Why have the whole lottery aspect where one ill-timed death or surprise election can swing our political and judicial system for a generation or more?

Somewhere near 0%, yes.

Oh for sure. It's not just Article 3 that's a hot mess when it comes to modern ideas of what a democracy is.

The structure of the Supreme Court is terrible and should be completely overhauled. At a minimum, the Democrats should be strategizing on how to pack the courts after 2020 assuming they win Presidency and Senate to balance this out. Ideally, we'd see term limits for Justices, possibly giving each President a set number of appointments so it isn't such a lottery that can have an impact that lasts decades. A court with Roberts as the median vote is a very conservative court. That just means he's in the middle, not that he's a moderate.

Kennedy was the most moderate of the conservatives, but don't mistake him for a moderate. Replacing Kennedy with a right wing partisan like Kavanaugh definitely shifts the court to the right, though. Roberts will now be the median vote.

The single positive outcome of this is that more and more people will recognize that SCOTUS is just another political branch, and one in need of major reform.

She either thinks Mainers are this stupid, or she is actually this stupid. Possibly it's both. "Hi, I'm Susan Collins, a US Senator who is apparently unaware of anything the Roberts Court has actually done"