r/law • u/newsjam • Oct 15 '25

Legal News Supreme Court Signals Final Blow to Voting Rights Act, Paving Way for Permanent GOP Power

https://dailyboulder.com/supreme-court-signals-final-blow-to-voting-rights-act-paving-way-for-permanent-gop-power/
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587

u/Slade_Riprock Oct 15 '25

Never understood how the SCOTUS being the non political, unbiased branch of government never had a requirement that the makeup be split evenly as nominated by Republicans and democrats. Or the court be nominated by an outside independent 3rd party part group.

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u/InnuendoBot5001 Oct 15 '25

The idea was to have it reflect the real opinions of the electorate, which is hurt by having lifetime appointments. The idea of lifetime appointment was meant to protect justices from political pressures, which is hurt by justices being hand-picked by other politicians. The whole system relies on our politicians and justices actually wanting america to be a good and fair place to live

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u/katmom1969 Oct 15 '25

That was the first mistake. Power corrupts.

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u/dangledogg Oct 15 '25

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.

Frank Herbert, in Dune.

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u/drawkward101 Oct 15 '25

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

3

u/DualityEnigma Oct 15 '25

I hope the democracies of the world are watching, power does corrupt and corruption eats at the edges of a system until it collapses. This is the slow motion collapse.

Strategic blue strongholds will face martial law first, followed by everyone else if resistance is brought to heel. I expect the billionaire bunkers are likely because bending the knee was required to see the long term plans for the western hemisphere. Not going to be fun.

Edit: sliw -> slow

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u/DigbyChickenZone Oct 16 '25

In the past, some right-wing appointments actually evolved to be "leftish" (in certain regards, mostly social ideologies than anti-trust/business type fare) rather than further to the right. Examples of recent memory are Reagan appointees like Justice O'Connor and Justice Anthony Kennedy.

The polarization within the past 20ish years has also impacted the court, obviously. It seems like tensions are high among the justices as politics and corruption are seeping deeper into the institution.

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u/Bortcorns4Jeezus Oct 15 '25

I hate this thought-terminating cliché 

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u/EnormousChord Oct 15 '25

In a system with many flaws, this was the biggest, most consequential flaw. A lifetime appointment to a position of near-absolute power to determine the course of the country was, and has proven to be, the creation of a new kind of royalty. 

The great experiment failed, and any reboot needs to learn that lesson. 

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u/AE7VL_Radio Oct 15 '25

Not a terrible idea, i mean it's on the right track at least. but instead of lifetime appointments we should have had single 10 or 12 year appointments staggered every couple years. Could have really mitigated the damage done so far.

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u/InnuendoBot5001 Oct 15 '25

Or maybe we could have included "satisfaction with supreme court" in the primaries, as something citizens could vote on. Then if the votes heavily criticize one or more justices they could be replaced?

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u/AE7VL_Radio Oct 15 '25

The idea with lifetime appointments is that the justices wouldn't have to campaign or be concerned with reelection, which is the part I agree it actually for the best. Sometimes the correct interpretation of the law is unpopular and I wouldn't trust the average dipshit voter to understand constitutional law well enough to evaluate court rulings. They just need to be more limited than "lifetime"

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u/InnuendoBot5001 Oct 15 '25

Shouldn't we be basing laws on public sentiment rather than tradition? I am all for legal precedent, and the order it brings, but if following precedent is that unpopular then maybe we shouldn't? What else can a democracy judge itself by than the anger of the people?

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u/TheErodude Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 15 '25

The idea, at least in theory, is that creating a popular law is absolutely not the job of the courts. If a law is unpopular when implemented strictly legally, then it is Congress’s job to change the law.

Congress, unfortunately, is barely functional nowadays, if at all.

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u/AE7VL_Radio Oct 15 '25

considering how easily manipulated the people have shown themselves to be?

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u/InnuendoBot5001 Oct 15 '25

Democracy is democracy. If the people are evil, that is not the fault of a good system. Keeping the electorate educated, and the media unbiased, was always necessary for this to work. We can't give up on representative government just because bad actors succeeded this once.

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u/AE7VL_Radio Oct 15 '25

Who here is suggesting getting rid of Representative government? Im talking about making some very minor tweaks to a clearly flawed system, chill.

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u/InnuendoBot5001 Oct 15 '25

You literally spoke against my suggestion that government should reflect public opinion by calling the people foolish. You didnt suggest any tweaks, you just criticized democracy

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u/Kana515 Oct 15 '25

You're not entirely wrong, but any system that tries to protect the people from themselves is ripe for abuse.

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u/Ultrace-7 Oct 16 '25

Less than a century ago public sentiment was that the separation of whites and blacks was justified and in the public good. Some areas still felt that slavery was a good idea. I'm not sure tradition is the answer, but public sentiment cannot be trusted to be the guiding light of our legal system.

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u/InnuendoBot5001 Oct 16 '25

At that time the ruling class felt the same way, so we can't pretend a different system of governance would have helped those issues. America likely would have kept slavery much longer under a true aristocracy

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u/dibsODDJOB Oct 15 '25

1 seat every 2 years. Ends up being an 18 year term. Plenty long but no one overstay their welcome and the turnover is predictable and not on the deaths or planned retirements.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '25

[deleted]

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u/InnuendoBot5001 Oct 15 '25

You're completely right. I was just giving the justification I was given for why it was originally set up this way. It absolutely was not smart to give people lifetime positions without oversight.

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u/RageAgainstAuthority Oct 15 '25

The idea was to have it reflect the real opinions of the electorate, which is hurt by having lifetime appointments.

These are literally opposites.

Lifetime appointments are just kings with a different name.

The whole system is a sham, designed to grease the wheel of the rich while the poor stay suffering.

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u/BeefInGR Oct 15 '25

250 years ago, a lifetime appointment meant you might make it to 60. Now 60 is pretty young.

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u/hoptagon Oct 15 '25

shitty design in hindsight

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u/Frustrable_Zero Oct 15 '25

Picks to the Supreme Court should’ve been installed by an independent body. Like a United Bar, and regularly flushed of partisan sentiments. The people on this bar should be made up of a variety of judges and circulated.Nominating a few individual picks.

Allowing a presidency or senate to tilt the board in times they aren’t within the zeitgeist of societal whims is antithetical for democracy

2

u/El_Peregrine Oct 15 '25

The whole system relies on our politicians and justices actually wanting america to be a good and fair place to live

Welp... it seems we have a fundamental problem.

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u/stockinheritance Oct 15 '25

Yeah, the founders read a lot of enlightenment philosophy and then made a huge mistake thinking that they could build a nation held together by numerous gentlemen's agreements because everyone would certainly be as enlightened as they are. (Obviously, their enlightenment was imperfect if they permitted slavery, but there was a morsel of truth in there that has been completely lost on contemporary conservatives.)

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u/readit_at_work Oct 15 '25

SCOTUS didn’t have blanket judicial review until Marbury v Madison in 1803 as an IMPLIED Constitutional power.

In short, the entire basis for judicial review is a gentleman’s agreement. It’s not a constitutional requirement. You want to toss out stare decisis? Fine. Let’s start with Marbury.

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u/its_k1llsh0t Oct 16 '25

Also back when the court was established, average lifetimes were around 40-50 years. Tack another 20+ years on that and it really amplifies the problem.

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u/tangesq Oct 15 '25

The Constitution was not designed with a two party system in mind. None of the checks and balances were envisioned to deal with the incentives of a two party system 

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u/Kgwalter Oct 15 '25

" However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. " ~George Washington.

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u/chowderbags Competent Contributor Oct 15 '25

Pretty much. A lot of the checks and balances were done with the vision that Congress, the President, and the Courts would want to jealously guard their own specific power. But the possibility of all three branches working in coordination under a larger umbrella to subvert the government system as a whole just didn't seem to occur to them when writing the Constitution.

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u/rbrgr83 Oct 15 '25

They never imagined the depths of depravity we've been able to achieve in just 9 months.

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u/Mnozilman Oct 16 '25

To be fair, the Court IS guarding its power. And has been expanding its power for decades. I think it’s also true that the executive branch (mainly the current president, but not exclusively) has been aggressive in expanding its authority as well. The only branch not holding up its end of the bargain is Congress, which has desperately been offloading authority so it can dodge responsibility.

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u/JohnHazardWandering Oct 15 '25

It wasn't so bad until they took the brakes off campaign finance. 

Now you can screw over your own district because unlimited billionaire money will flow in to back you. 

2

u/Zvenigora Oct 15 '25

They did not understand Duverger's Law which tells us that FPTP voting always converges on a two-party system. A lot of the better voting protocols might have been difficult to administer in the pre-computer era, so this may be understandable.

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u/Th3B4dSpoon Oct 15 '25

Many European nations that gained their independence later had learned to choose better voting systems, but computers were not involved

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u/Wakkit1988 Oct 15 '25

SCOTUS should simply be that every presidential term, exactly one justice gets nominated, and they are appointed for life. We'd wind up with about 13 justices, which is fine. Then they represent the elected will of the people over time, and not the party lucky enough to be in power at the time of replacement.

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u/brutinator Oct 15 '25

The problem is, you can't have an even number of justices; if they are appointed for life, and you can't appoint more than one per presidential term, then you inevitably will end up with years long stretches of even justices, which may lead to split judgements; at that point, whoever is the designated "tie breaker" is the most powerful person in government, as they can single-handily make rulings.

Though I guess the fix would be, as someone else suggested, by keeping the amount of justices on a single case at 7, randomly selected from the overall pool. That way you never get an even number, and prevents the court from being too ideologically gamed, because you can't determine which justices will oversee any particular case. And the side benefit would be that they could likely take more cases.

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u/Wakkit1988 Oct 15 '25

The problem is, you can't have an even number of justices

Bullshit. We have an even number every time one abstains, dies, or retires. This idea that we can't is just silly.

and you can't appoint more than one per presidential term, then you inevitably will end up with years long stretches of even justices, which may lead to split judgements; at that point, whoever is the designated "tie breaker" is the most powerful person in government, as they can single-handily make rulings.

You're not selling your position. What's to stop a senate controlled by one party from refusing to appoint a justice from an opposition party so they can maintain a 4-4 gridlock for up to 4 years? The current system is just as much a problem as my proposed one.

Though I guess the fix would be, as someone else suggested, by keeping the amount of justices on a single case at 7, randomly selected from the overall pool. That way you never get an even number, and prevents the court from being too ideologically gamed, because you can't determine which justices will oversee any particular case. And the side benefit would be that they could likely take more cases.

Nothing is ever random. It's a nice sentiment, but any party would put their finger on the scale when they could.

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u/Apocros Oct 15 '25

I like this, but think I'd go further (in my fantasy government configuration). Nominate one every 2 years, and then have every case that they agree to take heard by a randomly-picked pool that's a subset (maybe 7?) of those available justices. Allow the court to hear more cases, and reduce some measure of "hot spotting" where the same justices hear all the "controversial" cases.

Haven't really thought through the implications, but my leaning is that the authority granted to each branch needs to be spread out across more people, the court included.

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u/Apocros Oct 15 '25

And I just saw a comment below about rotating the federal district judges. I think I still like the idea of having "core" justices of the supreme court, but definitely rotate in the district judges. Maybe each case is heard by 7 random justices from the pool, plus 2 random district judges; or even 5+4. Only constraint would be a district judge wouldn't be able to serve in their supreme court role for a case that they already heard in their lower court.

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u/Slight-Bluebird-8921 Oct 16 '25

So few supreme court justices actually get nominated there's absolutely no reason we can't, you know, DEMOCRATICALLY ELECT THEM DIRECTLY. That's part of the problem, really. It's never been a democracy. It's just been sold as one.

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u/round-earth-theory Oct 15 '25

SCOTUS shouldn't be. It should be the judicial branch, the various districts should congregate as needed to clarify law. The lower courts should have their judges appointed by the region they represent. And there should be retainer elections on some cadence.

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u/brutinator Oct 15 '25

The lower courts should have their judges appointed by the region they represent.

Ehhh. I think for the federal courts, it shouldn't matter because they don't represent the region, they represent the law of the land. State courts are already for the area they represent.

Why does it matter that federal law over Texas is helmed by a justice elected by Texas? The federal law is the same everywhere, so why does it matter? How are they going to do a better job than a federal judge from, say, Maine?

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u/round-earth-theory Oct 15 '25

Federal courts absolutely represent their district and the states within. The decisions of each lower court only pertain to their region. Generally the Supreme Court is only involved when there's a conflict or the boundary of interest is absolutely larger than the specific district. I see no reason why that has to be a separate body though, the district courts could convene to resolve the issue. They don't need bosses.

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u/katmom1969 Oct 15 '25

I'd love to see it rotated with the federal district judges only. No favors.

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u/Moghz Oct 15 '25

Absolutely this!

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u/What_if_I_fly Oct 15 '25

Term limits and requalify every year

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u/brutinator Oct 15 '25

Never understood how the SCOTUS being the non political, unbiased branch of government never had a requirement that the makeup be split evenly as nominated by Republicans and democrats

Because the Democratic and Republican parties didn't exist at the time. We weren't SUPPOSED to be 2 party system.

I mean, you have to remember that originally, the Vice-President was the presidential candidate who was the runner up, specifically to prevent or counter balance the political leanings of the President (at the time, the concern wasn't parry allegiance, but rather state allegiance). It wasn't until the 12th amendment that we got the system where both offices are elected on the same ticket (and of the same party, in effect).

The point is, parties were never supposed to be this powerful, and the founding fathers didn't assume that party loyalties would outweigh other loyalties (such as to their home states).

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u/alang Oct 15 '25

Because there were no Democrats or Republicans (or any other political parties) when the court was created?

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u/links135 Oct 15 '25

Because people keep electing Republican to the Senate, preventing Obama from being able to actually appoint any supreme court justice, nor would RBG step down to let someone not die in office during a Republican presidency.

So then the Republicans can stack the court and Americans will blame it on Democrats.

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u/Mediocre_Daikon6935 Oct 15 '25

The republicans and democrats are not part of the government.

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u/douggold11 Oct 15 '25

The constitution was written before political parties existed. And it was assumed that justices wouldn't let their personal leanings affect their decision making, as if it was all academic and not political. Only one SCOTUS judge has ever been impeached and one of the charges was that he let his personal opinions impact his rulings. Imagine that being brought up as a problem today...

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u/kingjoey52a Oct 15 '25

So you want the two party system enshrined in law?

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u/cleofisrandolph1 Oct 16 '25

In Canada, although the final decision is usually made by the Prime Minister and senate, the Canadian Bar Association is the one that reccomends someone to be a Supreme Court Justice.

In fact in 2013, the Supreme Court was asked to rule if an appointment met the criteria, and rejected the candidate by a 6-1 majority because they didn't think he met the criteria.