West Virginia’s Supreme Court Impeachment Crisis
slate.com
slate.com
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/10/1...
I knew that states like Florida, New Jersey, and Louisiana rivaled us in corruption, but now I'm starting to wonder if maybe the entire US is just as bent as we are? Maybe all these other states just don't land themselves in the papers as often, but they have all the same problems with public corruption?
The US, in general, likely has a much larger problem with public corruption than I thought.
I guess I should just run down a few incidents that might give you somewhat of a picture of how things work up here:
We've had our share of bent DA's here in Wisconsin. Probably the best story I can tell you about is a DA that would allow drug dealers and other criminals to "contribute to charity" in lieu of going to jail for their crimes. Of course, all of the "charities" they could contribute to were controlled by he and his buddies. (This way they could make sure all the "contributions" went for the benefit of the local community you see.) It got so bad that drug dealers were routing their shipments through that municipality because if you get caught, you just paid the bribe. I mean, "charity". You didn't have to go to jail.
I won't go into too much detail on this one, because it's disgusting. That said, we have a juvenile detention facility where the guards were discovered to have using the boys for... Well, I think you can figure it out. If not just Google "Lincoln Hills". (but I'd recommend just ... yeah... just not googling it.)
Moving on, we have something called the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. Basically everyone chips in to a fund, via taxes, and that fund gives money to entrepreneurs and businesses to stimulate economic growth. That's the idea. In practice, whatever politician is in power funnels the money to his/her cronies. They're pretty open about it too. So small businesses in the state end up having to make do with whatever they get out of the federal SBA. Because the big political guys take all the money from WEDC.
And that's just scratching the surface with the criminal related stuff. There's all kinds of political and public spending related stuff that happens here all the time. There's the typical police corruption that you need to look out for. Man don't even get me started on Wisconsin's part in the VA nursing home scandal. Wisconsin is so bad that at one point there were 100's of thousands of protesters outside our Capitol building in Madison. We're just a really bent state, and there's not much that can be done about it because of how we're set up. There's a lot going on up here. Despite what you may have heard on Netflix, the corruption up here is not ALL about Steven Avery.
Illustrative factoid, there is a restaurant in Madison right on the Capitol Square. It's pretty conveniently located for the state senators and assemblypeople. Kind of a nice place too.
What's it's name?
"Graft", I kid you not.
Located on the ground floor of a building full of lobbyists. I mean, "lawyers". Right across from the Capitol.
I know that sounds just WAY too brazen, but it's a true story.
Thing is though, I wonder if all states have this stuff going on? Perhaps in Wisconsin we're just always complaining about it and it gets in the papers? Then it makes us think Wisconsin is worse than other states, when really, the other states are just as bad, but maybe the people in those other states have just stopped complaining.
We need to hold members of the legislature and judiciary to the same standard as the citizenry.
It's just very, very unfortunate that this situation has spiraled so far beyond that.
From what I read, only the judiciary can enforce the code of conduct on themselves here.
Given the amount of criminality and conviction, I see this as a good thing. Treating the political elites as something more than citizens, is already a corruption of the state body.
That's doesn't invalidate wrongdoing. I am neither R nor D due to their long standing hipocrisy as organizations.
I've not seen too many citizens who're able to disregard court rulings.
I don't see how. The court isn't filled with superhumans. They are people and people are fallible, even in groups (eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Bell_scandal). If it happens to dismantle a governing body, that's how accountability is supposed to work. That is a possibility.
No, the US Constitution does not say members of Congress can be impeached. Only "the President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States" can be impeached (Article I, Section 3). Members of Congress are not "civil Officers", they are elected representatives. Each house of Congress, according to the Constitution, can expel one of its own members by a two-thirds vote (Article I, Section 5), but that is not the same as the impeachment process (which requires the House to vote to impeach--bring the charges--and the Senate to try the case and vote on whether to convict).
I agree that this should not be allowed. A sitting member of Congress can be expelled by a two-thirds vote of the members of his house of Congress, or can be voted out of office at the next election. Those are the only remedies, and should be.
Oh, that's not what our politicians did. They just wrote the law that made them exempt from insider trading instead.
This thing that you fear may happen in the future happened in 2012 (STOCK Act, clarifies that insider trading is banned for Congress). You are six years behind.
So how has your prediction panned out? Have malicious Presidents used it to go after Congress? No. There have been no prosecutions whatsoever.
I will say I agree with you that it’s strong evidence the fear is overblown, but it certainly doesn’t disprove that threats like this are being made and are just working.
I guess it might happen if one party (let's just call them the Pinks) holds both houses of Congress. They would probably have to hold the Presidency, too. This party decides to run the country in total disregard to the other party, the established rules, and even the Constitution. Someone brings a lawsuit over something the Pinks have done. The Supreme Court hears it, and rules against the Pinks. Now, for this scenario to work, it would have to be a 9-0 ruling against the Pinks, even though some of the Supreme Court lean toward the other party (let's call them the Browns).
Possible? Yes, I suppose. But personally, I find it quite hard to imagine.
More likely than impeachment would be expanding the court. The Constitution doesn't say anything about the size of the Court other than it must have a Chief Justice. The number of Justices is set by legislation.
A very good case can be made for such an expansion to slow down the amount the Court can change in the short term. 9 worked fine when both parties had strong moderate factions, and so the Court would move a little more conservative under Republicans and a little more Liberal under Democrats. Now the moderate factions have diminished, especially among Republicans, and 9 doesn't provide enough hysteresis.
Second, though, I'm not sure that you'd get more hysteresis. Let's say that, with a nine-member court, a two-term president is likely to get to appoint two or three justices. Now expand the court to fifteen members, as one side has suggested. Well, now a two-term president is likely to get to appoint four or five justices. I don't think that changes the hysteresis at all.
In theory, maybe, it makes sense. Practically, it’s a bad idea.
This seems like a better situation for Democrats than it is currently (not having a majority at all for 30+ years).
No, it can't, at least in terms of a normal legislated expansion, because the immediate effect would be to vastly accelerate the change in the direction of the then-dominant party.
Also, a larger court (even beyond the one-time transition) doesn't provide any more stability on average, though it does reduce the variability in the rate of change (doubling the size of the court doesn't change the percent of the court that changes, on average, each Presidential term. But it makes the standard deviation of that percentage less.)
Also, I suspect that on a significantly larger court Justices would be more likely to retire younger, because they would know that their leaving is not going to cause major changes even if they leave during the term of a President they disagree with.
Blocking all Supreme Court nominations was just good tactics. It is certainly one among many decisive factors that won the GOP the White House.
They could have blocked all Supreme Court nominations while at least maintaining the appearance of doing their job by holding hearings, bringing them to a vote, and defeating them on the floor.
The whole "hearings" thing just seems like theater. Nobody on either political pole had any misconception about what was happening.
Yes.
> Wouldn't problems with how McConnell runs his majority be non-justiciable political questions?
Yes.
> If other senators object, they can oust McConnell.
Yes — but they're very aware of the power that they've given the majority leader under the Senate's rules, and they're very cognizant of Emerson's dictum: When you strike at a king, you must kill him. [0] That's why I said there'd never be the constitutionally-required 2/3 vote to expel McConnell and Grassley.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/385864-when-you-strike-at-a...
As far as prompting a civil war goes, we had a minority party use filibusters for years to block most judicial appointments of the majority party from even getting considered, with the intent of holding them open until they could get a majority. That same party also held a Supreme Court seat open for a year, refusing to even hold a hearing on the nominee--a nominee that they had just told the President was someone they could approve of! (And they openly talked of holding the seat open during the entire term of the next President if that President was not of their party).
And now that the aforementioned minority party has a majority in Congress, they are rapidly filling all those seats they held open, often with young lawyers with little judicial experience, and some rated "unqualified" by the ABA, and accuse anyone who tries to actually vet the candidates of partisan obstructionism.
If that didn't get anyone up in arms, I doubt a little court packing would do so.
It seems pretty clear that the Senate has the authority to blockade nominations. By contrast, the Constitution is clear about duties and timelines elsewhere (for instance, bill vetoes).
There's lots of good reasons to leave the GOP! I'm glad you did! I just don't see this as one of them.
Bills have been not-getting-out-of-committee for a very long time prior to the McConnell blockade, and you can easily make an argument that killing things in committee is actually more harmful to transparency than what McConnell did --- whatever else you might say about the blockade, it was pretty transparent!
Very interesting.
Also, for context: In the 1930s Franklin Roosevelt advocated expanding the Supreme Court when it kept interfering with his New Deal plans.
I don't think either party is going to have enough of a majority in the Senate (two thirds) to get a conviction on an impeachment any time soon.
It doesn't need to be all 9 justices impeached; the point is justices being impeached en masse for largely partisan reasons. That would/could destroy the courts legitimacy and undermine the rule of law.
Also, I am not very familiar with the case, can anyone shed any light on whether the justices are remorseful for their overspendings and other wrongdoings? Any links to apologies or denials? Are some not voluntarily resigning because they don't feel like what they did was bad enough? I clearly understand the legislature's faults in this story just want more details from the judges themselves.
The West Virginia cases is ridiculous but I won't be surprised if there are other shenanigans w.r.t the court being executed all across the country.
I think calling it "polarization" and using similar concepts that don't assign blame is the modern political correctness. If we don't identify the cause of the disease, we can't even begin the cure it; it's a self-inflected wound. If there's a problem with the switches in your datacenter, it would be shooting yourself in the foot to say 'the whole infrastructure is freezing up'. No, it's the switches.
I'm not partisan in that I don't care for one party or another, but I believe the disease in the U.S. is the Republican Party. They are the ones implementing all these things, disregarding all limits, moral, democratic and otherwise, to the pursuit of power. They elected this president, embraced torture, deny climate change, embrace naked partisanship in the federal judiciary (and in states), etc. etc etc. We can say bipartisan things, but until Americans recognize the disease and act, they will get sicker, and the condition of democracy is becoming grave now.
Here, the case is primarily about West Virginia law (impeachment under WV law, who can enforce the Code of Judicial Conduct). There is a federal due process issue, but it can't change the outcome--the WV Supreme Court found the impeachment illegal under WV law, so it doesn't really matter whether it's also illegal under federal due process law. In that case, the state-law decision is called an "adequate independent ground," and the Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction (i.e. authority) to hear the case.