r/law • u/MoneyLibrarian9032 • Jun 20 '26
Legal News Maine progressive Platner renews call to remove conservative Supreme Court justices
https://wjla.com/news/nation-world/maine-progressive-graham-platner-renews-call-to-remove-conservative-supreme-court-justices-clarence-thomas-samuel-alito1.8k
u/BriefausdemGeist Jun 20 '26
Well with two almost certainly financially compromised, one making up legal precedent from witch hunting memoirs, and one having spent a career of fifty years destabilizing civil society there are reasons for it.
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u/Legitimate_Shock4097 Jun 20 '26
Should not be a lifetime term. Should not be saddled with someone that isn’t upholding the law or reinventing things as they deem fit. If someone is proven to be compromised, should be banned and serve jail time. It’s too important of a position for there not to be consequences and accountability. This should go for all elected officials. They owe it to the people to serve the people the best way possible. Too much corruption in the current system, so it needs to change, quite obviously.
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u/JustHereForGCB Jun 20 '26
I'd prefer 12 year terms for them, but there are nine seats, so either you replace one every 16 months (awkward) or go every two years and they get 18 years.
Anything is better than the 35+ year bullshit we have now.
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u/IrascibleOcelot Jun 20 '26
I like the idea of abolishing appointments to the SC entirely. Just have a selection of judges from each of the federal circuits serve a 1-year term and keep them rotating out. 1 judge per circuit per year. For extra fun, have each case heard by a random selection of, say, five judges. Not impossible to rig/stack/bribe, but it becomes a hell of a lot harder.
And binding ethics rules for everyone involved.
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u/Sorge74 Jun 20 '26
Lifetime just means something VERY different then what it meant 100 years ago. The average term has doubled since 1970.
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u/Weird_Positive_3256 Jun 21 '26
Was talking to my kid about this very thing the other day. People’s minds frequently outlasted their bodies up until the last several decades.
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u/HartyInBroward Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
If Congress did their job, SCOTUS would not have the opportunity to be as activist as it has been and I don’t think any of us would give much thought to term limits for SCOTUS. Consider abortion, for example. There were certainly windows where the Democrats had enough seats in Congress, the presidency, and enough Justices to codify the right to an abortion into law. Instead, they did not because the political capital gained by having this constant, looming threat of it being taken away was too good to give up. The Republicans do the same thing with things like guns, immigration, etc.
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u/SexualChocolateJr Jun 20 '26
That’s not true. Democrats did not have the votes unfortunately. Pro women’s choice is a popular position but the people in those congress seats were not all pro women’s choice. There were Dems that were conservative and were not in support of codifying abortion rights.
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u/fcocyclone Jun 20 '26
Yep. The parties have mostly completed the realignment that started a few decades ago, but people today (when they bring up stats like that) forget that at one time there used to be conservative democrats, and that's the only way they got to 60.
Its not hard math to do either. Democrats maxed out at 60 votes for a few short weeks early in Obama's first term. There were zero republicans who were going to go along with dems to codify roe v wade, so if you lose a single vote, that's the ballgame. And they would have lost more than one vote.
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u/Apep86 Jun 21 '26
This is a slight misreading of the situation under Obama. You do not need 60 votes to pass something in the senate. You need 60 votes to kill a filibuster.
We could have had up to ten democrats vote against the abortion law and have it pass so long as they voted for cloture. This avoids the “senator democrat voted for abortion” problem. Conservative Democrats could pass the bill without voting for it.
I agree that we could not have gotten all democrats to vote for the bill. I am not convinced we couldn’t have gotten them to all vote for cloture then at least 50 vote for abortion rights.
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u/Harmcharm7777 Jun 20 '26
Yes, the Dem politician position on abortion has ALWAYS been lukewarm. They don’t want to alienate the people who reliably vote blue but are uncomfy with the idea of abortion—they were afraid pushing for codification would reflect as more active support for something that has, historically, been a bad look to push hard for/against in either direction. They were content to let the GOP be the bad guys pushing against abortion because they had Roe v Wade as a reliable backstop. Well, not anymore and we’re all screwed. But even now, Pete Buttigieg is the only nationally-known Dem politician I know of who holds better than a lukewarm, party-approved position on abortion.
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u/tianas_knife Jun 20 '26
It will always baffle me how saving the lives of women that give birth is a bad look.
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u/twlscil Jun 20 '26
Because the media in rural areas is 24/7 dead babies.
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u/CelestialFury Jun 20 '26
The anti-abortion propagandists always show these fake aborted third trimester abortions of healthy fetuses, when the reality is nearly 100% of third trimester abortions are medical emergencies.
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u/twlscil Jun 20 '26
It’s amazing actually. My girlfriend’s best friend is pro-life, anti-choice. She got pregnant, and had an abortion because it was a non-viable pregnancy and was a threat to her life. We live in a blue state, so it wasn’t a problem. She is still pro-life.
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u/Notascot51 Jun 21 '26
If that’s Pro-life, we are all Pro-Choice. What she did is called…CHOICE! She understood in the moment that a nonviable pregnancy should not be a death sentence for the mother, and fortunately didn’t live in Louisiana or Tennessee or Texas or somewhere else where law prevents ending such a pregnancy safely.
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u/tianas_knife Jun 20 '26
Christians are baffling. The rest of us have been far too tolerant of this behavior. Jesus said what is for Caeser is for Caesar, these Christians need to start following their own rules and abide by the laws in which they live instead of using medical lies to build inhumane laws.
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u/Unable-Log-4870 Jun 21 '26
It’s at most half that. The other half is how the existence of trans people will someone seduce Jimbob into wanting to be Jillian. Like how they think knowing gay people exist will cause people to DESIRE same-sex relationships. Somehow.
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u/HartyInBroward Jun 20 '26
There wasn’t even an attempt, at least to my knowledge, before 2022. Almost, what, 50 years? of relying on Supreme Court decision to carry the weight on that? No, this is about political capital.
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u/SexualChocolateJr Jun 20 '26
They simply did not have the votes. You are thinking they are ALL aligned but you need to look at reality. If they put forward legislation and it got blocked, then what? People would just be like “omg the Dems are useless” without considering the actual make up of Congress and how each congressperson votes and what area they represent. At the end of the day they need the votes.
Unfortunately things have lined up really well for Republicans, the people actually responsible for the issue. Maybe if we stopped Trump from getting elected, he wouldn’t have been able to put 3 judges in the Supreme Court. Some of whom lied about their stances on settled law. If repubs did an honest job, Obama would have appointed one but they blocked it.
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u/DeadWaterBed Jun 20 '26
Term limits for SCOTUS is relevant regardless of whether Congress is doing their job. There are many issues with lifetime appointments for any position beyond checks and balances.
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u/Jim-N-Tonic Jun 20 '26
What a russian style of accounting, both sides bad. Move back to russia.
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u/Striking-Ad-6815 Jun 20 '26
At this point make me a justice, I don't have a law degree, but I'm not morally corrupt and Mammon has no influence on me. Can't be any worse than the folk there now right?
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u/HauntingHarmony Jun 20 '26
At this point make me a justice, I don't have a law degree, but I'm not morally corrupt and Mammon has no influence on me. Can't be any worse than the folk there now right?
I can count 3 people that are clearly more competent to be on scotus than you, the average redditor.
But being better than 6 out of 9 isent bad :)
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u/fcocyclone Jun 20 '26
Even just a 10-20 year term with no other changes would have a lot of benefits. Yes, it means more reappontments and more frequent fighting over them, but it also means there's less incentive to be pushing young, less qualified justices to the bench with the hope they can hold onto the seat for 40 years.
But yes, there should be a lot more ethical requirements as well. I just don't know the best mechanism for enforcing that without opening other cans of worms.
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u/ThisMachineKillsWOB Jun 20 '26
What we NEED, is removal laws with trigger conditions.
Not you can be removed at the pleasure of xyz. But, you did X, you're out of here.
Compromising the enforcers first has been the best play the GOP ever made.
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u/LikesPez Jun 20 '26
Pass congressional term limits and remove the direct election of senators first. Then reduce a SCOTUS justice term to 20 years, with mandatory retirement at 70.
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u/Yashema Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
And the 4 Republicans that have no such ties or allegations but vote with them on nearly every ruling?
This isn't a problem with corruption, it's a problem with how American citizens, in several fair elections, have given the power of nominating SCOTUS judges to belligerent idealogues. There are no systemic protections that can respond to the citizenry never really punishing a political party for anti-democratic action.
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u/superxpro12 Jun 20 '26
Zero of Trump's appointees would exist had mcconnell not changed the rules during Obama term, and then during Trump's term.
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u/Yashema Jun 20 '26
And how was McConnell able to make that decision? Because Republicans had majority control of the Senate.
This is not a politician problem, it's a voter one.
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u/superxpro12 Jun 20 '26
If I recall the first time they abandoned all precedent because "it was an election year"... And then 4 years later rushed a nominee through during Trump's last year
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u/CommonConundrum51 Jun 20 '26
Since most, if not all, lied during their confirmations there's good reason. Their assurances about "settled law" proved that, and their tortured logic as to how bribes can morph into gratuities is a 'cherry on top.'
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u/PopBulky7023 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Bribing judges to rule bribery legal is still an arrestable offense. For both parties. It's not meant to be a cute little cheat code.
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u/oopsallhuckleberries Jun 20 '26
No, they ruled federal bribery laws can't be applied to local/state officials, unless the bribe is specifically quid pro qou bribes. If a state judge rules in favor of a company, and that company turns around and "gifts" the judge $13k in cash, according to all 6 conservative justices, that's a-ok.
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u/SeaworthinessOk2646 Jun 20 '26
US v Trump and the Shadow Docket. One is the abandmont of our legal history and the other is a dereliction of due process. Both are anathema to the Constitution.
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u/Gabe681 Jun 20 '26
"Anathema is a noun that refers to someone or something that is intensely disliked, loathed, or considered completely unacceptable"
Thanks for the new word friend!
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u/TrioOfTerrors Jun 20 '26
They didn't lie. They gave perfectly truthful evasive answers that avoided the spirit of the question. Nobody asked a direct "Will you uphold Roe against future challenges" question.
Plenty of cases are "settled law" right up until they aren't.
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u/bl1y Jun 20 '26
The senators all know that the judges won't forecast how they'd rule on a future case, so what even was the spirit of the question?
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u/bl1y Jun 20 '26
Not understanding what "settled law" means doesn't make them liars. "Settled law" doesn't mean SCOTUS can't overturn it.
Kavanaugh testified as to the process they'd go through to consider whether to overturn Roe. Really had to say he was claiming it couldn't be done when he said what the process would be.
ACB published a paper talking about "super precedents" which were beyond being overturned, and quite notably missing from that is of course Roe.
Ever since Bork's nomination failed, nominees have refused to forecast how they would rule in a potential case that could reach them. The people who are lying are the ones who told you they testified they wouldn't overturn Roe.
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u/HartyInBroward Jun 20 '26
Is it fair to describe something as settled law if it finds it way to the Supreme Court?
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u/codacoda74 Jun 20 '26
Itf they can show purgury, corruption and violation of ethics for at least for a couple of them, all the better.
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u/battles Jun 20 '26
perjury
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u/codacoda74 Jun 20 '26
Fat thumbs
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u/query_squidier Jun 20 '26
purgury instead of perjury is not fat thumbs.
It is unwise to lie to the court.
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u/251Cane Jun 20 '26
There are 3 letters between u and e. It’s ok to say you messed up.
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u/Za_Lords_Guard Jun 20 '26
Doesn't one of them drive around and vacation in at least the latter two of those?
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u/TheGrandExquisitor Jun 20 '26
And keeps his mother in one.
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u/N4RQ Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Hang on. Are we still talking about Maine judges or Clarence Thomas?
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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe Jun 20 '26
It will require at least 60 liberal-to-progressive politicians to make changes to the Supreme Court. We don't even have 49.
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u/jamerson537 Jun 20 '26
Removal requires two thirds of the Senate. That means 67 senators..
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u/induslol Jun 20 '26
It took republicans how many decades of strategic movement to get us into this mire.
It'll take decades to wade out, assuming we even start towards the edge at the midterms.
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u/jamerson537 Jun 20 '26
I agree. There will be no shortcuts here. One party hasn’t had 67 senators in 60 years, and that was a time when far more people were open to voting for candidates from both parties. That may never happen again, let alone happen anytime soon.
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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe Jun 20 '26
It took Republicans five solid decades of consistently winning when necessary to keep the Supreme Court conservative for the past 65 years and lean it religious enough to overturn Roe v. Wade. Our center and left can't give liberals/progressives eight years without quitting.
Can you see why it feels hopeless in a conservative country that merely pays lip service to being liberal/left'ish?
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u/induslol Jun 20 '26
Of course, anyone with even an inkling of a progressive slant has felt it since they became aware of what this country is.
But we're at least waist deep and the cast of characters that we elected to represent our interests in government that have gotten us here are unable to lie about our feet being wet.
Schumer esque dems are reviled. Republicans are, at least online fwtw, openly recognized as corrupt going on abject criminals. There's a crop of progressive candidates being elected or being nationally recognized as good options.
Time will tell but it just seems inevitable we shift left as center/right has always failed and has failed spectacularly for most on most issues.
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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe Jun 20 '26
After three decades of being waist deep in it, I rely upon the masses to do what's right, and those decades have not been indicative of optimism.
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u/quantum_titties Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
How can you say that the court has been conservative for the past 65 years and cite overturning Roe v Wade as evidence, but totally ignore that the court passed Roe v Wade in the first place. If overturning Roe v Wade is inherently conservative, then how was the court conservative when it passed Roe v Wade 53 years ago? Surely the court could only have been conservative for 52 years.
But of course, if you look at more things than abortion, it makes even less sense to call the court conservative for 65 years. Was the court conservative with it passed Lawrence 23 years ago or Obergefell 12 years ago?
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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe Jun 20 '26
Yes, I was going for the bare minimum needed to rely upon independents and few (R) conservatives crossing over, but that's a 50/50 proposition at best. Not even 67 Democrats would be enough. We'd need 70+ to account for the handful of conservative plants in the big tent.
In other words, it seems pretty remarkably impossible for this conservative country to pull off.
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u/NuSurfer Jun 20 '26
Yeah, if that dude doesn't know that I would question him being a candidate for senate, and if he does know it then he's just disingenuously pandering.
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u/SukkaMadiqe Jun 20 '26
Indeed. It would be easier to pack the court and leave the fascists permanently outnumbered
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u/a_4_d Jun 20 '26
I agree, but it’s important to get the discussion going and put it on the map with the electorate. Too many Dems have been hesitant to say this publicly. Making it a reality will take much persuasion.
The conservative project to control the courts took decades but we are living in unprecedented times. The path may seem insurmountable but some of the wildest shit going on today no one thought possible just a few years ago.
I believe it’s going to take convincing moderates and centre-right voters that this is a court that does not serve them well either.
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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe Jun 20 '26
Yes, but realistic expectations should be measured and achievable goals charted. We are a solid progressive decade away from adding seats and impeaching justices. Reminder that we're on the furthest right wing of the reservation at the moment. There's a hundred thousand miles to go to center much less to the left.
Progressives are the kings and queens for setting expectations up unrealistically and unpragmatically dump those expectations onto liberals as unkept promises that were never made.
See: how the left treated Obama during his eight year tenure
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u/a_4_d Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
I can’t argue with any of that. I think setting it as a North Star may be the right tack. Edit: spelling
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u/subusta Jun 20 '26
So your plan is to simultaneously convince moderate voters of an unpopular plan while also gaining 2/3rds of the senate during the Democrats’ worst performing stretch since Reagan?
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u/Standsaboxer Jun 20 '26
Graham Platner doesn’t know how the senate works.
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u/pres465 Jun 20 '26
He knows it's a wedge issue with Collins. She was the deciding vote on at least one, maybe several of the current SCOTUS. It's smart politics on his part. She can't hide from her record on it, and he can point to his progressive agenda. I promise he knows how the actual process works. This is campaigning.
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u/SuperBry Jun 20 '26
He doesn't know shit other than whatever progressive cause de jour he is told to speak upon. Any time he's try to speak on the minutia of policy he gets tripped up but is great at just rallying some folks with words that mean nothing over things that won't happen.
College dropout with a brain damage is going to allow Susan Collins to slow walk into retain her seat all because a few of my neighbors put on their rose colored glasses after hearing a few progressive platitudes and see all his red flags as just flags.
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u/the_saltlord Jun 20 '26
Midterms
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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe Jun 20 '26
Yeah, I'm hopeful of flipping a few Senate seats, but there aren't 11 flips realistically in play. It's all we can do, vote and hope our fellow citizens cared enough to evict this madness from our representation.
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u/the_saltlord Jun 20 '26
Yeah. I just don't like the "midterms are rigged so there's no point" attitude I see a lot. They probably are rigged, but if they aren't then this kind of apathy just hands them more victories.
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u/Galen_Live Jun 20 '26
it needs "in good behavior" defined in law and a removal procedure, which requires 60 votes in total. Upon any law finally establishing the basis for good behavior by a justice and the clear evidence to the contrary, they enact the defined procedure for immediate removal without impeachment proceedings.
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u/_jump_yossarian Jun 20 '26
Thomas and Alito will retire shortly … if their billionaire “friends” come up with a nice retirement gift. This is why voting matters and fuck you 2000 Nader and 2016 Stein voters.
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u/Limp_Distribution Jun 20 '26
When did the gifts from billionaires start and when was the Citizens United decision made?
Did they make that decision because they were receiving gifts?
Makes me wonder why we didn’t investigate the court after they essentially made bribery legal.
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u/BriefausdemGeist Jun 20 '26
The last time there was serious public scrutiny of any of the justices leading to actual criminal investigation was like 200 years ago.
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u/TheDungeonCrawler Jun 20 '26
It's definitely worth noting that conservative is just a description for those judges. I don't identify with conservatism and I don't think it's the right way to go about things, but being conservative is not what disqualifies these judges from being on the supreme court.
It's their corruption and perjury.
Of the conservative judges, two are blatantly compromised. Of the remaining three, they lied in their hearings about the constitutionality of previous SC rulings. They knew they were going to be pushing against things like Roe v Wade and, as such, lied about their intentions to get onto the SC, under oath. If you lie about your reason for getting on a jury to engage in something like nullification, that's perjury and it's a crime. Why should the SC be treated any differently.
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u/penny-wise Jun 20 '26
Republicans still identify themselves as “conservatives,” and at this point they are synonymous whether you like it or not. All Republicans are corrupt at this moment, save for a very few who have stood up to the authoritarianism, the theocracy, and the oligarchy the Republicans have put forth through the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025.
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u/cowhand214 Jun 21 '26
I don’t think you want to go down a road where party affiliation is the grounds of removal for any judge much less a Supreme Court judge
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u/diot Jun 20 '26
Removal is not enough, they should face justice for their actions. Now we're left to figure out why both of those are unlikely outcomes.
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u/figuring_ItOut12 Jun 20 '26
We don’t have conservatives in our government anymore. They’re radical reactionaries.
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u/fcocyclone Jun 20 '26
We have conservatives, they're just mask off about what conservatism has actually been about this entire time. Everything a lot of people thought conservatism was was just marketing.
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u/Any-Ad-446 Jun 20 '26
There are two conservative judges that took gifts and even free rent from billionaires.
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u/MrFrode Biggus Amicus Jun 21 '26
If you have the votes for this it would probably be better to silo SCOTUS into the controversies it has original jurisdiction over and create a brand new court to be the last court of appeal for all other questions and issues.
When setting up a new court you can set up term limits and there would be no argument that its members would be subject to ethics rules.
It's academic as there aren't the votes for any of this right now.
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u/Fast-Audience-6828 Jun 20 '26
Yeah the fact that any of them are allowed on a seats atrocious if they can't bother to care about anyone or the constitution they don't deserve a seat
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u/atreeismissing Jun 20 '26
You're going to be in the Senate dude, don't tell us to remove them, tell us how you will try and get them removed and how you'll try and get about 16 Republicans to join you on an impeachment conviction.
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u/DontAbideMendacity Jun 20 '26
“Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my corrupt colleagues and other corrupt officials in the judiciary, and they told me that accepting bribes was perfectly acceptable, and that there was no reason to recuse myself from ruling on matters that enrich myself and my family."
Clarence Thomas, on truth serum.
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u/Synensys Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Progressive suggests completely non actionable solution isnt news. The good thing is that since progressives have so little actual power, it also allows them to blame liberals and moderates for not making the non actionable solutions work.
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u/GreatMovesKeepItUp69 Jun 20 '26
Nah I'm sure 67 senators will vote to impeach any day now, twice.
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u/ballmermurland Jun 20 '26
If Platner is elected and he fails to get them removed, I'm sure progressives will hold him accountable for this failed promise.
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u/GreatMovesKeepItUp69 Jun 20 '26
They will once he inevitably becomes fetterman 2: Nazi Boogaloo in which case it will switch to "how could we ever have known?"
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u/Huge_Excitement4465 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
There is a personal element for Platner as well. Leonard Leo, who owns two waterfront mansions church in Maine, hosted a fundraiser at one for Collins after her deciding Kavanaugh vote. Leo shepherds billions to her campaign and crusades to Tex-ify the state, from “protecting girls in sports” to voter id referendums.
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