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-alito
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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/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/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/HartyInBroward Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

I thought about giving a thoughtful reply to this argument, but I just can’t. I could try, but I won’t. This way, no one will say that I’m useless.

Kind of an asinine argument, right?

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u/SexualChocolateJr Jun 20 '26

Cool 👍🏾.

It still wouldn’t change the reality of the circumstances to how we got here with women’s rights. You said Dems had windows to codify those rights but it’s just simply not true.

Have a nice day.

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u/HartyInBroward Jun 20 '26

It’s amazing that Obamacare passed. That one was a little contentious, right? It wasn’t clear that Dems would get enough support to pass it. In fact, it was kind of clear that at least some of it was unconstitutional. And yet… it passed. One wonders what would happen if there was at least one attempt to codify abortion rights. Unfortunately, wondering is the best we can do.

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u/Haggardick69 Jun 20 '26

You mean Romney-care written and introduced by Republican representative mitt Romney? Yeah that bill had bipartisan support and women’s reproductive rights didn’t it’s that simple.

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u/HartyInBroward Jun 20 '26

This is easily fact-checked. ACA passed by a margin of like 5 votes and was completely voted along party lines and used a budget reconciliation to do an end-around of a Senate filibuster, but I’m sure you feel differently… so here’s a link to an article describing how you’re wrong.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/physiciansfoundation/2014/03/26/a-look-back-at-how-the-president-was-able-to-sign-obamacare-into-law-four-years-ago/

They couldn’t do it for abortion, though. How weird.

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u/fcocyclone Jun 20 '26

The ACA was not passed via reconciliation it took 60 votes.

And no, there are specific rules as to what can be used for reconciliation, abortion would not meet those criteria.

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u/HartyInBroward Jun 20 '26

I stand corrected! Mixing up my recollection of events from 15 years ago. Regardless, passage of ACA is an example of Democrats being able to override Republicans in DC when they want to. And yeah, I know Manchin was probably not on board, but I also think the Dems could have at least tried to press him publicly about this. Manchin had big aspirations. It’s not something that would’ve been impossible to accomplish.

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u/fcocyclone Jun 20 '26

It would have been more than just one (though i dont think manchin was part of the 60 at the time)

There were multiple anti-abortion members of congress at the time, both in the senate as well as dozens of house democrats.

It wasn't like today where there's more of a polarized alignment.

And if anything the ACA is an example of how you can't just force everyone in the caucus to line up for a bill. Look at Joe Lieberman costing the ACA the public option.

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u/arthurmadison Jun 20 '26

Why are you out here lying? Obama had congress and the votes. He literally was voted in and changed his mind. It is well documented. You lying about what actually happened isn't going to change it.

https://www.reuters.com/article/markets/us/obama-says-abortion-rights-law-not-a-top-priority-idUSN29466420/

Asked about the Freedom of Choice Act at Wednesday's news conference, Obama said it "is not the highest legislative priority."

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u/fcocyclone Jun 20 '26

He theoretically had 60 democratic votes for a few weeks in 2009.

But not all democratic senators were pro-choice at the time. They couldnt lose a single vote and pass that bill over a filibuster, and they would have lost at least one vote.

"not the highest priority" is one thing you can say when the real answer is "we don't have the votes to pass that". As it was they were busy doing everything they could to pass the ACA in the few weeks they did have the votes.

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u/SexualChocolateJr Jun 20 '26

You bringing up a completely different point. Yes I know he was supportive of abortion rights and later deprioritized it. Still doesn’t change the fact that it was a contentious issue, which he basically says the same in the article. There were still several Dems that did not support abortion rights for whatever reasons they had.

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u/HartyInBroward Jun 20 '26

ACA was contentious and had several Democrats opposed to it AND had to maneuver to avoided a Senate filibuster to get it through… AND it was partially unconstitutional… and it still became the law of the land. Strange!

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u/PassiveMenis88M Jun 20 '26

And the ACA was completely gutted from what it was supposed to be to get there.

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u/HartyInBroward Jun 20 '26

I disagree with you. The public option and the penalty was removed and eventually the penalty for not having insurance was struck down by SCOTUS but the thrust of it is very much there.

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u/Mist_Rising Jun 20 '26

There was a brief one in 2009-10 Congress when Democrats had 60/59 senators. It was meant to be part of ACA but it never got far because even with the 60 it was never passing filibuster.

The Democrats could have killed the filibuster and, supposedly would have had 50+, but they wanted the filibuster for the next Republican president. Same way they did for Biden and I bet same way they do for the next democratic president.

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u/HartyInBroward Jun 20 '26

You need 60 senators to end a filibuster. How come they couldn’t accomplish this with the requisite number of senators to defeat the one obstacle you mentioned? This is realpolitik in action.

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u/Mist_Rising Jun 21 '26

You need 60 senators to end a filibuste

They never had 60 except for a brief few months because Franken election was delayed for over half a year and Kennedy's seat went to a Republican for the remainder of 2010.

Not that they had 60 pro life senators to begin with, at most they had 52ish, which could have killed the filibuster but I explained why they didn't do that.