Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 1001 posts

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#451

Post by rayiner »

notafraudster wrote: post #156
alex_young wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There would seem to be precedent for this now. Justice Antonin Scalia died in February of 2016, a replacement was nominated in March of 2016, and because Scalia's seat had become vacant during an election year, the Senate would not even consider a nomination from the president [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrick_Garland_Supreme_Court_...

McConnell immediately clarified his position was "the Senate shouldn't consider a nomination in an election year if it's controlled by my party and the president isn't in my party" -- no kidding, this was his actual clarification.

That is, in fact, the actual practice. The constitution splits the appointment between the presidency and the senate. When the same party controls both, vacancies are filled immediately. Otherwise, the party controlling the senate can exercise its heckler’s veto: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/history-is-on-the-sid...

What happened with Garland had happened numerous times before:

> In short: There have been ten vacancies resulting in a presidential election-year or post-election nomination when the president and Senate were from opposite parties. In six of the ten cases, a nomination was made before Election Day. Only one of those, Chief Justice Melville Fuller’s nomination by Grover Cleveland in 1888, was confirmed before the election.

By contrast, if Trump doesn’t put up a nominee, it will be literally unprecedented.

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#452

Post by erichocean »

bscphil wrote: post #259
dexterdog wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that was a republican senate that had the power to confirm or not. Now you have a republican president and senate so if they want to ram somebody through they can do that.

I don't think anyone disputing that they can do it, the point is that it's hypocritical. And the Republican Senate didn't "not confirm" Obama's pick, they refused to consider him at all, arguably a dereliction of their duty under Article 2 of the US Constitution.

> it's hypocritical

If Obama had a Democratic Senate majority in 2016, Merrick Garland would have been confirmed. That's the precedent.

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#453

Post by gorbachev15 »

ncallaway wrote: post #337
ghufran_syed wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why wouldn’t the Republicans do the same thing next time they win an election? Or would the Democrats somehow guarantee that never happens again?

They will. The SCOTUS as a nonpartisan institution that isn't a political football is 100% dead if McConnell confirms a nominee before the election. It's time Democrats recognize that, and play offense when they have the ball. It's sad to see the institution end as a non-political body, but it's been happening for the last couple of decades. This will be the absolute end of it.

SCOTUS is already clearly partisan if the newly departed justice's final wish is for a different president to appoint her replacement. Playing politics up until the end.

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#454

Post by smcameron »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #302
smcameron wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The constitution means what the Supreme court says it means. Doesn't have to make sense.

Ok, are you honestly saying that you think a majority of the Supreme Court justices will rule against a direct and clear Constitutional Amendment just to help a President that has no control over them or their jobs? Has this post really gotten to this point, that we’re just posting crazy claims without any merit or knowledge or research at all? Isn’t HN better than this?

Parent asked how they could do it, not why. So I told how. Never said I thought they would do it. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me as much as it should though.

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#455

Post by slg »

op03 wrote: post #188

Remove the Publicly visible Like Count and those kind of conversations and connections are easy. The Like count makes people defensive or aggressive especially when they are called out in public leading to never ending reaction and counter reaction cycles. Without that dumb random signal interfering in conversations all kinds of strange connections are possible. I see it at work meetings between highly competitive pe…

I'm sorry, but this is wildly naive. It isn't "likes" that are causing the problem. It is things like the fact that one side appears to be in the early stages[1] of a UN defined genocide[2]. I'm not going to be friendly to you if you think lower taxes or some other excuse is more important than the human and civil rights abuses that party supports.

[1] - https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/09/17/hyster...

[2] - https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#456

Post by p1necone »

seibelj wrote: post #178
theshadowknows wrote: post #162

Absolutely. My family is feverishly working on how to leave this hellscape of a country we’re in. The United States is dead.

I’m sad to say you may find the grass is always greener on the other side - government corruption exists everywhere that government exists.

As someone from outside of the United States, no. The treasonous corruption in the American Republican party is uniquely much much worse than basically anything going on in the rest of the western world.

Edit: The clusterfuck that was Brexit was pretty bad though.

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#457

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

rayiner wrote: post #398
alex_young wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There would seem to be precedent for this now. Justice Antonin Scalia died in February of 2016, a replacement was nominated in March of 2016, and because Scalia's seat had become vacant during an election year, the Senate would not even consider a nomination from the president [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrick_Garland_Supreme_Court_...

That is not the precedent: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/history-is-on-the-sid... > History supports Republicans filling the seat. Doing so would not be in any way inconsistent with Senate Republicans’ holding open the seat vacated by Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. The reason is simple, and was explained by Mitch McConnell at the time. Historically, throughout American history, when their party controls the…

Just curious: does dem-controlled senate behave differently?

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#458

Post by alistairSH »

drainge wrote: post #78

Vote

Too late. 2016 was the time to vote.

Also, why bother? Electoral College means my vote counts for shit and half the Presidents since I’ve been able to vote were elected by losing the popular vote. It’s tyranNy of the minority and it sucks. I still vote, but it feels more and more Sisyphean as time goes on.

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#459

Post by goodluckchuck »

ncallaway wrote: post #185
tyre wrote: post #86

For every one of the coming takes that Republicans will be hypocrites to appoint and confirm a justice (which they will) They do not give a fuck. That’s not how they see power and it is why they have a far disproportionate share of power/representation than their support across the electorate. This is about power. In politics, nothing else matters.

Then it's time to fight back. Make it absolutely clear to McConnell and Democratic leaders in the Senate that if McConnell fills this seat in an election year, then the Democrats must increase the size of the SCOTUS. McConnell needs to fear the reprisal more than he fears the delay. Because you're right, this is about power. Nothing else matters to them. So make them fear this.

Uhhh, the Senate confirms nominees. Expanding the court would just allow Republicans to name more justices...

Re: Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

#460

Post by bargl »

ng12 wrote: post #334
WhompingWindows wrote: post #318

Why are there life-terms on the Supreme Court? Doesn't that incentivize the justices to hold on past their prime, dying waiting for a new president or resigning in a politically motivated fashion? And don't life terms create a race to the bottom where younger justices are favored for longer remaining life? Why not 20 year limits?

Most likely because the founding fathers didn't expect the justices to be split on party lines. They were intended to be impartial judges ruling on a limited set of federal laws.

I would assume also because people also just didn't live as long back then. Life was in general a 20 year term. Average life span in 1800 of 50 years. Today it's 78.6.

https://clickamericana.com/topics/health-medicine/us-life-ex... https://www.everydayhealth.com/senior-health/what-life-expec...

Those probably aren't the best places for me to get numbers, but I think they're good enough for a rough example of what I mean.

Post reply on HN