'We are not imperial': Justice Kagan says Supreme Court still subject to checks and balances
'We are not imperial': Justice Kagan says Supreme Court still subject to checks and balances
Justice Elena Kagan declined Thursday to outright answer the question of whether Congress could impose an ethics code on the Supreme Court, but she did allow that it could do “various things” to regulate the high court.
Justice Elena Kagan declined Thursday to outright answer the question of whether Congress could impose an ethics code on the Supreme Court, but she did allow that it could do “various things” to regulate the high court.
“It just can’t be that the court is the only institution that is somehow not subject to any checks and balances from anybody else,” she said, adding, “I mean, we are not imperial.”
“We, too, are part of a checks and balances system,” she said.
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my own country doesn't have absolute democracy, but when I read things about the American Supreme Court it just seems so crazy, so much absolute power held by so few. Incredibly easy to influence and corrupt and their decisions are so wide ranging and impactful. It has no place in a democracy in the form that America does it.
make it a few hundred Justices that all vote and you have something closer to the UK's house of Lords, unelected and corruptible, but it's much harder to corrupt hundreds than three.
What do you mean? The UK created a Supreme Court in 2009 that has 12 justices, which has similar functions to the US Supreme Court (9 justices). UK’s House of Lords is closer to the US Senate.
UK’s House of Lords is closer to the US Senate.
I understand what you are trying to say, but no, it isn't.
Sure, there’s no direct equivalent for the House of Lords in the American system.
At the same time, unlike the Supreme Court in both the US and the UK, the House of Lords is not a judicial body. That’s why I thought it was odd that you chose a legislative body like the House of Lords to make your point.
I'm curious because I just know not.
How is it not closer?
Mainly because the UK's parliament is Westminster-based, the House of Lords are appointed (not elected) for life, and it's there to act as a check against the House of Commons (who are elected) so no majority gov't could just pass any laws, etc that they want.
Canada's gov't is the same (except we call it the Senate vs House of Lords instead).
Senators used to be appointed, and the House of Lords can no longer check the house of Commons, only delay.
It absolutely is, and actually it used to be even closer to the house of lords. Up until this last century the US Senate was not directly elected, the state government would appoint the state's senators. IIRC the Senate was inspired by the house of lords, the major difference being term limits instead of lifetime appointments.
(I imagine the Senate was more meaningful back when the state government couldn't talk to people in Washington in seconds)
What I find so ironic is that the US always wants to be the world's law enforcer, trying to dictate where and how democracy should be run and followed, yet it doesn't follow what it preaches.
Source: I live in the USA, and I see it going on on one way or another every day.
I can promise you, as an outsider, that the rest of the world regards the US as neither democratic nor free
The Idea behind the American SC was that their life long appointment would eliminate the need to be corrupt as they (theoretically) wouldn’t have the ‘pro quo’ part of ‘quid pro quo’ to corrupt them. In reality, that doesn’t seem to work calling into question the necessity of term limits and of course corruption checking.
Packing the court to a few hundred justices isn’t really necessary as it would just be more like the US Senate which does exist.
But I agree, they seem to have too much power as is.
Packing the court to a few dozen and having the justices rotate randomly would do a lot to prevent corruption. Nobody would know which justices are going to hear their case and there would be more justices to bribe. Do both of those together and we're most of the way to restoring the court's legitimacy.
The house of lords actually served as the highest court before the supreme court was introduced