news Supreme Court 🇺🇸 issues Code of Conduct for its 9 justices

[Sergi91]

Thoughts ?

[HEAVYONIT]

Appears to be very vague in general. They just all agreed to it to try to save face. 

[LustSpell]

Fire yourselves

[byzantium]

This is not going to save the rotten court but ok…

[VOSS]

Feels pointless if the only way of enforcing it is impeachment

[getBusy]

Most of them will rot in hell, i just know it

[G.U.Y. Gaga]

They are getting ahead of themselves 

[SimpleKindofLife]

Personally I think their positions should be abolished and so should the electoral college. Both are purely undemocratic and riddled with personal agendas.

Edited November 13, 2023 by SimpleKindofLife

[wastedpotential]

We'll have to see how the enforcement mechanisms are implemented, but this looks to be a pretty promising first step as Joan Biskupic said in the linked clip. 

[AMIT]

27 minutes ago, wastedpotential said:

We'll have to see how the enforcement mechanisms are implemented, but this looks to be a pretty promising first step as Joan Biskupic said in the linked clip. 

It's simple: they won't be. 

 

The SCOTUS is like one of the most undemocratic institutions there is, period. This is all just PR to write something down, say they'll follow it and then things will go back to business as usual where no one there is held accountable to anything as long as it doesn't affect their corporate owners. 

 

"promising first step" please. 

 

It should be ABOLISHED and nothing else matters, you can't reform something that is inherently hierarchichal and power condensing so that it becomes less hiararchical and power condensing. What's not clicking? 

[wastedpotential]

36 minutes ago, AMIT said:

It's simple: they won't be. 

 

The SCOTUS is like one of the most undemocratic institutions there is, period. This is all just PR to write something down, say they'll follow it and then things will go back to business as usual where no one there is held accountable to anything as long as it doesn't affect their corporate owners. 

 

"promising first step" please. 

 

It should be ABOLISHED and nothing else matters, you can't reform something that is inherently hierarchichal and power condensing so that it becomes less hiararchical and power condensing. What's not clicking? 

What's your issue with it being hierarchical and power condensing? That's by design, and while it hasn't been perfect, it has largely worked as intended. Any political system that allows for dissent and disagreement with the law and the powers that be needs some sort of mechanism for the people to legally challenge the law, and in almost every democracy that mechanism is a Supreme Court that is the court of last resort and holds ultimate authority over deciding what is and is not the law of the land under the constitution and the existing social contract between the regime and the people. Even countries that have re-written their constitutions to be as democratic as possible (thinking of Germany) have created an incredibly powerful Supereme Court to act as an arbiter against popular whims or extremism. This is pretty much PoliSci 101. 

 

I haven't seen much of your political opinion, but based on what I've seen you downvote and the few comments I've seen, I get the general feeling that you're pretty far to the left on most issues and are firmly in the "burn it down because it's all run by some evil capitalist overlords" camp, which I can respect to some degree for at least being pretty novel, if not something I can agree with. I guess it would explain your issue with hierarchy, but I don't want to incorrectly assume anything here. Please let me know what your preferred method of totalitarianism is, so I can better respond to your comments going forward. 

 

Nonetheless, aside from adopting a strategy of Bolshevism or Maoism where there was a council of men or a single man who dictated what would and would not be legal with no room for any criticism or challenge from any other part of the political system let alone from the general population (which seems pretty hierarchical to me), how would you recommend that state-individual disputes be resolved, especially in a non-hierarchical manner? Short of establishing some sort of dynastic Chinese style Mandate of Heaven, where the people are given the room to overthrow the regime whenever they find it to be unjust (and I'd love to see how that would go over with the modern political apparatus), what sort of legal dispute mechanism would you prefer? Sure, you want to abolish the institution, but who would you go to with some means of doing that who would support you? Joe Biden? The Joint Chiefs of Staff? How would you make that work? There always will be someone on top, be they a King, a Lord, a Secretary General of the Party, or a Supreme Court composed of rigorously and scrupulously vetted legal scholars with an (albeit very indirect) power-removal mechanism. Frankly, I'm glad that a group above me in the hierarchy is even willing to entertain discussing a code of ethics considering how uncommon that has been throughout recorded history, even if you're right and they throw it out the window the minute their corporate overlords tell them to. 

 

EDIT: I just realized the irony in you complaining about the concept of a Supreme Court being undemocratic when you've literally gone up and down multiple threads in the past month telling people not to vote 

Edited November 13, 2023 by wastedpotential

[AMIT]

1 hour ago, wastedpotential said:

What's your issue with it being hierarchical and power condensing? That's by design, and while it hasn't been perfect, it has largely worked as intended.

Yes, it is by design, but by whose design? Who created it? What do you mean by ''it hasn't been perfect''? Please elaborate. What is its intend, other than taking power away from people to make decisions for themselves? Because that would be in line with a hierarchical power structure, something which is inherently at odds with democracy, a principle you are supposedly for according to this post. Just because you subject yourself to an institution you had no hand in creating and with no reasonable way to challenge its decisions that claims control over people living within a certain geographic location doesn't mean anyone else should. 

 

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and I'd love to see how that would go over with the modern political apparatus), what sort of legal dispute mechanism would you prefer?

Maybe the modern political apparatus itself is the problem. Why do I (or anyone, really) have to abide by something a couple of people with power have decided is ''legal''? Do you think you live a perfectly legal life? Do you think historical changes happen by people working through ''legal'' means? 

 

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There always will be someone on top

This is a fallacious argument that just begs the question: why? Because that's the way we live right now? That's not something you can conclude as if it's fact because there's no way to prove it, that's only your assumption. This type of rhetoric also exposes how much you've been propagandized by the system you live in that you somehow think human history has always been one defined by class divide and subsequently class struggle. Big yikes. 

 

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Frankly, I'm glad that a group above me in the hierarchy is even willing to entertain discussing a code of ethics

This part kind of shows that you know how power structures work but then... you somehow think anything that undermines their authority and power will actually be entertained by them? Sorry, but it just feels like you are taking a contrarian position, which is further marked by the fact that you brought up Maoism and Leninism - because you correctly assumed I'm a leftist going by my posts in general - as if the USSR and Mao China are examples of Socialist countries and are trying to gauge my political leaning (did you also claim that being a leftist is a 'novel' thing? in which way exactly?) as if you could not just, you know, respond to my actual arguments. 

Edited November 14, 2023 by AMIT

[wastedpotential]

21 minutes ago, AMIT said:

Yes, it is by design, but by whose design? Who created it?

In the case of the US Supreme Court, that would be men like James Madison, Oliver Ellsworth, Rufus King, Benjamin Franklin, and other delegates to the US Constitutional Convention in 1787. They essentially invented the modern concept of a Supreme Court. I would hope that you could google this.

 

 

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What do you mean by ''it hasn't been perfect''? Please elaborate. What is its intend, other than taking power away from people to make decisions for themselves? Because that would be in line with a hierarchical power structure, something which is inherently at odds with democracy, a principle you are supposedly for according to this post. Just because you subject yourself to an institution you had no hand in creating and with no reasonable way to challenge its decisions that claims control over people living within a certain geographic location doesn't mean anyone else should. 

The reason I included that statement was to account for the fact that there have been several decisions (Dred Scott, Buck v. Bell, Korematsu v. United States, Plessy v. Ferguson, Bowers v. Hardwick, Hammer v. Dagenhart etc.) that today would be unconscionable. As I stated, the intention of a Supreme Court is to serve as a last point of arbitration between individuals, and between individuals and the government regarding the laws of the state. Unless you want to go back to living in a pre-societal structure (as in, pre-Hammurabi), you're not going to find an example of a functional state apparatus that didn't at least have an informal system of governance. You've obviously been misled in your understanding of democracy, which is not practiced anywhere beyond at a local level due to sheer impracticality. The US system is a representative democracy, a republic, if you will, in which the citizens elect individuals to represent them in a legislative body to determine what should and should not be law. Do you not already see the hierarchy? You can revolt against the hierarchical system and its institutions all you want, but you're going to come across like one of those sovereign-immunity idiots who think they can drive without a license or ignore speed limits.  

 

 

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Maybe the modern political apparatus itself is the problem. Why do I (or anyone, really) have to abide by something a couple of people with power have decided is ''legal''? Do you think you live a perfectly legal life? Do you think historical changes happen by people working through ''legal'' means? 

I know I don't live a perfectly legal life, but I'm also aware of the fact that this is literally the best social contract that has ever been settled between the rulers and the ruled. The socialist system that you thirst over would have long thrown you into a re-education camp, a labor camp, or a death chamber for expressing such anti-regime thoughts, you know that, right? A great deal of the best social change has come when external societal pressures align with internal desires for improvement. Peasants began their march for legal person-hood after 1/3 of their number were killed during the Black Death and the nobles literally could not treat them as they had been treated previously because the competition was so stiff. The right of a peasant wasn't established until the 16th century, when some members of the Catholic Church came to the ultimate conclusion that if God made man and man was to worship God, and if man was equal before God, then surely man was equal before other men. The French Revolution took your anti-hierarchical ideals and tried to make it into an ideology of its own, and then by the end of the decade, France was under the supreme leadership of Napoleon. In 1848, peasants in almost every European country rose up against their leaders for repressing their rights, and the outcome was almost entirely a wash. The Taiping Rebellion in China, which was supposed to equate man to the Emperor, failed and led to the deaths of 40 million in the process. There have been some successful methods of enacting historical change through "illegal" means, ironically enough a great example would be the American Revolution that birthed the concept of a Supreme Court in the first place, but they are rather rare and are generally less revolutionary and more evolutionary in their thinking. Surely if the Americans had pushed their revolution to a more revolutionary degree by stripping the power from the wealthy elite class at the start, the l'Ancien Regime France would have never supported them and the French Revolution would've probably been delayed or neutered. If you'd crack open a history book from time to time (I will peruse through leftist history books, so I'd say it's probably good for you to open up something a little more mainstream from time to time), you might learn to appreciate that almost every revolution that burns an entire society to the ground leads to an immediate and violent failure. 

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This is a fallacious argument that just begs the question: why? Because that's the way we live right now? That's not something you can conclude as if it's fact because there's no way to prove it, that's only your assumption. This type of rhetoric also exposes how much you've been propagandized by the system you live in that you somehow think human history has always been one defined by class divide and subsequently class struggle. Big yikes. 

Why is someone on top? Because that's literally the way humanity developed. I hate to break it to you, but someone always had access to better water or better animals to hunt, and after a few thousand years, they figured out how to leverage that to place themselves above those around them, which then led to the concept of government and law, of have's and have not's. You can trace it back to the ancient Egyptians or the ancient Mesopotamians and follow the line of nearly unbroken hierarchy through to the present day in every part of the planet inhabited by a cluster of people who had organized themselves into a society. It's basic human nature to want to get ahead, and ideologies that try to suppress or ignore that fact (socialism being an excellent example) are doomed to reap the consequences. Political squabbling and infighting amongst the members of the Soviet Politburo is the stuff of legend, because the individual members all wanted to be on top of the hierarchy.

 

 

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This part kind of shows that you know how power structures work but then... you somehow think anything that undermines their authority and power will actually be entertained by them? Sorry, but it just feels like you are taking a contrarian position, which is further marked by the fact that you brought up Maoism and Leninism - because you correctly assumed I'm a leftist going by my posts in general - as if the USSR and Mao China are examples of Socialist countries and are trying to gauge my political leaning (did you also claim that being a leftist is a 'novel' thing? in which way exactly?) as if you could not just, you know, respond to my actual arguments. 

Oh, so you're one of the leftists of the belief that real socialism hasn't been implemented yet and that the true utopia is still possible if only we just keep trying (and ignore the millions that die each time we try). I'd love to hear your interpretation of how a true socialist state can be implemented that doesn't follow the pitfalls of the Soviets or the Chinese (or any of the other dozen countries that tried it), especially one that manages to overcome the personal drive for power? Surely you can recognize that in order for the working class to seize control of the means of production (the equivalent to which in 2023 would be the interns seizing control of the company), some group has to lead that push - right? That group will inherently be on top of the political hierarchy if their push for socialism is successful - right? How do you convince this group that has been afforded all this immense power over basically everything to then turn around and hand that power off to the collective people? How do you arbitrate disputes between those people? If there is no one above the people, how are laws determined? Even in some sort of extreme direct democracy (Swiss but on steroids, where all you do is sit around and vote on issues), how are those laws enforced? It's not that I'm not trying to respond to your arguments, it's that your arguments are thin and incoherent and I'm having a hard time taking them seriously when you're questioning things that have been anthropologically settled parts of human nature for millennia. 

[AMIT]

...anyways I thought I'd share some videos about the history of the US Supreme Court and why it is such an authoritarian mess that can't really be reformed (which then makes this ''code of conduct'' they are supposedly adopting incredibly contentious), enjoy: