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Comment by 8ytecoder | Hacker News Reader

Democrats removed super majority requirement for Supreme Court nominations. I believe a super majority would have acted as a check against a stacked court. There would be compromises and more moderate justices would have been considered. [1]

People take less notice of transgressions when their party is in power. As much as we might like to think there’s universal recognition of the current administration’s misuse of power there’s a lot of people who support it - “to get things done”. People just hate it when it’s not the things they want.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-poised-to-lim...

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Democrats removed the requirement for lower court nominations. Republicans removed the supreme court requirement to appoint Brett Kavanaugh, which is a seat they stole from a sitting Democratic president, even though said president nominated a moderate Republican for said seat.

It is true that the Democrats opened this can of worms, but the Republicans then taking advantage of it instead of setting a better example does not exonerate them. They're all bad actors now.

> Republicans removed the supreme court requirement to appoint Brett Kavanaugh

Actually, it was to appoint Gorsuch (who replaced Scalia's vacant seat). Kavanaugh was appointed to replace Kennedy.

Wouldn't that super-majority for the court be a risk, as a minority could easily block its workings (not influence, just block)?

> Wouldn't that super-majority for the court be a risk, as a minority could easily block its workings (not influence, just block)?

I don't think so. The idea is to force compromise by putting the threshold so far out of reach to eliminate fantasies that after the next election one party or other will be in the position not to have to compromise. That's the issue now.

The idea that a minority would try to literally destroy another branch of government for some reason seems so remote and so extreme that I'm not sure if it's worth considering. What would the political calculus be for trying to block the workings of the court system?

> I don't think so.

Actually, that is specifically the reason some supermajority rules were lifted [1]. Do you recall Merrick Garland?

The filibuster is abused similarly [2].

[1]: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/06/04/senate-obst...

[2]: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2013/11/21/char...

They only moved it for federal district court nominations. Because every single nomination was prevented by the GOP from going through. Ultimately we all know that if any Democratic senators tried to keep GOP's nominees from the federal bench (including fascist bloggers and people who have never tried a case), the GOP would have done the same.

I applaud the effort and I think we need to go further and get rid of the fillibuster rules entirely.

> Democrats removed super majority requirement for Supreme Court nominations.... People take less notice of transgressions when their party is in power.

> People take less notice of transgressions when their party is in power....

I used to fault the Democrats for that (and used to consider myself more of a conservative), but on reflection I think the Republican's obdurate obstructionism is the more important fact. That's clear now that the Republican's priority now seems to be to ram through nominees when they have the power to do so (as shown by their last session, nominations over caronavirus response), and they've done such a shit job at checks and balances when it's needed now more than ever.

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