#checks and balances

[kp777]

Kagan enters fray over Congress’ power to police Supreme Court - POLITICO

"It just can’t be that the court is the only institution that somehow is not subject to checks and balances from anybody else. We’re not imperial,” Kagan told the audience of judges and lawyers attending the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference. “Can Congress do various things to regulate the Supreme Court? I think the answer is: yes.”

[odinsblog]

Although the three branches of the American government were designed to be coequal, the structure of the Constitution tells us something about the relative power of each branch, as envisioned by the framers.

Article I establishes the legislature. Article II establishes the executive branch. And Article III establishes the federal judiciary. It is true that the branches share powers and responsibilities. But it’s also true that the framers trusted Congress — the representative branch — with far more authority than it did the president or the Supreme Court.

Congress makes laws. Congress spends money. Congress approves the president’s cabinet and says whether he can appoint a judge or not. Congress structures the judiciary and Congress sets the size of the Supreme Court and the scope of its business.

The upshot of all of this is that when Congress calls, the other branches are supposed to answer — not as a courtesy, but as an affirmation of the rules of the American constitutional order. The modern Congress might be weak, and the presidency, against the expectations of the framers, might be the center of American political life, but it’s still newsworthy when a member of the executive branch says he or she won’t meet with the legislature.

Chief Justice John Roberts is in a different branch of government, the judiciary. But he — a constitutional officer confirmed to his seat by the Senate — is still subject to the power of Congress to question and investigate his conduct. When Congress calls, he too should answer.

Last week, Congress called the chief justice. In the wake of revelations concerning the friendship between Justice Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow, a billionaire Republican donor, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, invited Roberts to testify at an upcoming hearing on Supreme Court ethics rules.

“There has been a steady stream of revelations regarding justices falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges and, indeed, of public servants generally,” Durbin wrote in his letter to the chief justice. “These problems were already apparent back in 2011, and the Court’s decade-long failure to address them has contributed to a crisis of public confidence.”

“The time has come for a new public conversation on ways to restore confidence in the Court’s ethical standards,” Durbin went on to say. “I invite you to join it, and I look forward to your response.”

This week Roberts answered. He said, in a word, no.

“I must respectfully decline your invitation,” Roberts wrote. “Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by the chief justice of the United States is exceedingly rare as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.”

This deceptively polite reply sounds reasonable for as long as you can manage to forget the fact that it is questions about the ethical conduct of the court and its members that have compromised the independence of the court. Was Thomas influenced by the largess of his billionaire benefactor? Was Justice Samuel Alito influenced by an explicit campaign to curry favor with the conservative justices? Was Justice Neil Gorsuch influenced by the lucrative sale of a Colorado property, in the wake of his confirmation, to the head of a powerful law firm with ample business before the court?

It is with real chutzpah, in other words, that Roberts has claimed judicial independence in order to circumvent an investigation into judicial independence.

More striking than this evasion is the manner in which Roberts ended his reply. Faced with serious questions about the integrity of the court, he pointed to a nonbinding ethics document that has done almost nothing to prevent these situations from arising in the first place. “In regard to the Court’s approach to ethics matters,” he wrote, “I attached a Statement of Ethics Principles and Practices to which all of the current members of the Supreme Court subscribe.”

Roberts did not write an aggressive or confrontational letter. And yet, he is quietly making an aggressive and confrontational claim about his own power and authority and that of the court’s. “Separation of powers,” in Roberts’s view, means the court is outside the system of checks and balances that governs the other branches of government. “Judicial independence,” likewise, means neither he nor any other member of the court has any obligation to speak to Congress about their behavior.

The court checks, according to Roberts, but cannot be checked.

—The Polite Disdain of John Roberts

[animatejournal]

Daffy Duck for President Directors: Spike Brandt & Tony Cervone Studio: Warner Bros. | USA, 2004

[edithshead]

from Checks and Balances Binx Walton and Sage Elsesser by Tyler Mitchell styled by Julia Sarr-Jamois for Vogue UK, September 2020

[j-a-n-e--d-o-e]

So this is all bullshit but I've been hyper fixating on mha for months now to the point of having read and watched almost nothing else ( probably obvious given the state of my tumblr ) but what if the reason the hero rankings in MHA are effected by popularity and not just your stats is because The Top 10/20 are meant to act as a balance /overseer to the Commission?

Like we all know the hpsc are a shady organisation with no real public or gov. oversight, but what if that wasn't always the case? What If the Top Heroes were meant to be that oversight with public approval affecting rankings because that meant the top 10 better represented the views and beliefs of the general public. However, over time, as the hpsc grew more corrupt, they suppressed this information, buried the bi-laws related to it & altered hero school lessons so it was forgotten.

Heroes usually die young, rarely living to retirement age, and in the span of a single generation, the most important aspect of being a top 10 hero was completely forgotten. It went from being an important sociopolitical role to a mere Status symbol, and the hpsc were free to do as they please.

I just feel that it makes sense, especially as it feeds into the idea that the way their society is structured has been failing for a while now. The Hpsc Is super corrupt, and in my mind, they're the true evil within MHA, but I doubt they started out that way.

The idea that no one considered the HPSC going rogue when it was founded and raising child soldiers or profiting off what it was meant to stop is insane to me. I mean, they were dealing with the aftermath of societal collapse and government failure.

Bitter, traumatised people and you want me to believe they never worried? never doubted what it was they were doing?

No. They had to have known it was a possibility.

In my mind, the state of Japan in MHA, once you notice the cracks and shit is much more insidious and terrifying if there were checks and balances in place to prevent this outcome, they just weren't enough.

[goodgrammaritan]

What happened to all those checks and balances they always talked about when we were learning about the government in school?

[nuthin-up-my-sleeve]

Trying to explain open shelf inventory, profit/loss, and logistics to the company president I might as well be explaining Russian literature to this fucker. This comes after he questioned my abilities and skill set. I fucking swear his head was about to burst into flames. Just fuck all the way off and let ME worry with the figures man and you just look professional pulling the corporate suits dicks like ya know what’s up. Fuck!

[eaglesnick]

“The bedrock of our democracy is the rule of law and that means we have to have an independent judiciary, judges who can make decisions independent of the political winds that are blowing.”   Caroline Kennedy

Spot the difference.

1. “RUSSIA’S upper house of parliament has approved a plan to grant President Putin new powers over the judiciary, despite growing international outcry over the Kremlin’s efforts to re-establish central government control.”  (The Times: 01/10/04)

2. “In November 2016, The Daily Mail ran a cover story with the now infamous title “Enemies of the People” attacking the three judges of the High Court of England and Wales who had ruled that the UK Government needed Parliament’s consent to give notice of Brexit.” (Springer Link: (05/02/21)

3. “Tens of thousands of Israelis have rallied in Jerusalem in support of controversial plans by the far-right government to reform the judiciary. It was the biggest demonstration of its kind yet. Plans include curbing the Supreme Court and giving the government control over the appointment of judges.”

4. “Home Office accused of pressurising judiciary over immigration    decisions…That the Home Office has sought to pressure the immigration tribunal over its bail decisions during a global pandemic shows alarming disrespect for the right to liberty, the rule of law and the separation of powers.” (Guardian: 06/05/20)

5. According to the (Cuban) constitution, the National Assembly controls judicial appointments and suspensions, and the Council of State exercises these powers when the assembly is not in session. The Council of State is also empowered to issue “instructions of a general character” to the courts, whose rulings typically conform to the interests of the PCC in practice. Judges are tasked with enforcing laws on vaguely defined offences such as “public disorder,” “contempt,” “disrespect for authority,” “precriminal dangerousness,” and “aggression,” which are used to prosecute the regime’s political opponents.”  (Freedom House; Cuba: 2021)

6.” Erdogan criticises top court, stoking judicial crisis in Turkey Main opposition party calls it president’s ‘attempt to eliminate the constitutional order…’ The latest crisis showed that Erdogan wants “more control over what happens in Turkey, including a judicial system that does what he wants, such as prosecuting and imprisoning his critics and opponents”, according to analyst Gareth Jenkins." (Aljazeera: 10/11/23)

7. “Supreme Court Judges branded 'enemies of the people’ after blocking Rwanda plan. Philip Davies MP told the Express that the ruling had sparked a “constitutional crisis”. He said: “I think we have a constitutional crisis on our hands. It is clear that Parliament has passed all the necessary legislation for this to happen, and the job of judges is to implement the laws passed by Parliament, not to rule on whether or not they like the policy.” (Express: 15/11/23)

Did you spot the difference? No, of course not as there are no differences. Dictators,  far-right and far-left governments across the world try - and often succeed - in controlling their   judiciary in order to minimise any legal opposition to their policies. That this is now happening in our country, a country that once prided itself on its democracy and the rule of law is a worrying, dangerous and unwelcome development in UK politics and must be vigorously resisted.

[supermusicallee]

[fufaitazu]

fourloko ingeniously prevents you from chugging it too fast by making it not taste very good at all. after one hearty swallow you need to take like at least 2 minutes to cool down and let the taste leave your mouth. really fourloko is a pillar of responsible alcohol consumption

[amateurconfessions]

Day 22 of posting my entire collage art journal in order

Pages 45-46, October 2022

daily wins, eternal losses, and a meeting of the cult of reason 

[karadin]

Surprisingly, Supreme Court votes in favor of vets and workplace protections

The US Supreme Court said in a 5-4 ruling Wednesday that state agencies are not immune from private lawsuits under a federal law meant to protect employment rights of returning veterans.

The ruling will strengthen work protections for thousands of state-employed veterans returning to work after service in the Reserves or National Guard. The outcome is a victory for Le Roy Torres, a veteran and former employee of the Texas Department of Public Safety. He told the agency that he could no longer serve as a state trooper and sought a comparable job to accommodate his service-related disability. When he was denied the job, he filed suit under federal law but lost in state courts. He appealed the decision to the US Supreme Court.  

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the majority opinion, joined by the other liberals as well as Roberts and in this case half an asshole for a change Kavanaugh.

assholes Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Barrett dissented.

[nodynasty4us]

Court packing has been widely discussed recently. But the Constitution also allows Congress to make exceptions to the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction, to make a law that cases involving particular topics may not be appealed to the Supreme Court.

[bravecrab]

Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers deserves a lot of criticism, from it's use of Bobby Driscoll's tragic history for laughs, to it's promotion of Disney's crusade for increased copyright law. Also that "2D" animation is fucking ugly.

But I want to talk about Copaganda, specifically one part in the film. Chip and Dale are recruited to the case because they are told by a cop that the cops probably won't solve the case due to red tape. They'll have to do a bunch of paperwork, get a warrant, and by then the bad guys will have escaped.

It's a cliche and Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers is far from the first film to include this sort of claim by police characters. It's a persistent claim, one meant to justify police's inability to make streets safer. And it's used to validate policy, for things like warrantless raids, or no knock raids.

It relies on the idea that criminals are easy to identify, that their guilt is without a shadow of a doubt, and police would easily catch the "bad guys" if it wasn't for all the bureaucracy. That's not how policing works. There has to be a presumed innocence, to avoid wrongful arrests. Except in reality Cops do not presume innocence, they racially profile criminals, and not only wrongfully arrest, but murder suspects.

The red tape is meant to stop this.

And in the narrative of movies, this line of dialogue is meant to move us along to cool gun fights and action. But it's copaganda, and it's fucked that in this example, a black police officer who should know the impact of racial profiling is the one to deliver it.

[sassyredheadedmess]

Me @ child person: go to bed! You gotta be up in less than 5 hours!

Child person @ me: ok!!! I know… so do you though, so how come /you/ aren’t asleep?

[high-quality-tiktoks]

What if they all need to get checked? QTNA.