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Despite AWFUL national and international reporting on the Supreme court, their powers are actually quite limited. Their authority is restricted to interpretation of situations where written federal laws do not already exist.

For all it's faults, I would argue the Supreme Court has worked reasonably well - because the justices do not seek elections and do not owe loyalty to their appointees. And anything they do could be relatively easily undone if the US could ever be bother to pass laws again.

In a way, you can almost think of their decisions as open-source. All of their arguments are written down and you can actually read their reasoning for yourself (as opposed to some of the dire interpretations offered by journalists). There are some notable exceptions (Alito and Thomas), but for the most part you can read their arguments for yourself and see that most of them are pretty professional and fair-minded.

> I think it is quite optimistic, if not even downright naive to assume the text matters at all for such protagonists.

If anything, the newest court is doing the opposite of what you are worried about. They are willing to throw out established precedence where there is not written law. In a way, the new court is leaning more democractic to a fault.

Their authority is restricted to interpretation of situations where the meaning of federal laws or regulations is unclear. The problem is that, ultimately, pretty much any law can be challenged and appealed all the way to SCOTUS - and if they choose to take the case and issue a ruling, there's no recourse within the system. That is an immense amount of power no matter how one looks into it - it's basically a non-overridable veto on anything the government does, not even necessarily just passed legislation, and not just on the federal level (as any action by the state government can also be challenged on the grounds of being unconstitutional wrt the federal constitution).

The SC can only rule on cases that appear before them. The SC cannot just decide to rule on whatever they want.

There are 250 million adults in the country who can sue over pretty much anything. It is not exactly difficult to arrange for a convenient case to land on SCOTUS plate - indeed, it has been done several times in history.

The SC only hears a handful of cases in a year, and only those that have managed to bubble up through the lower courts. The SC does not invent cases they can then rule on.

> it's basically a non-overridable veto on anything the government does

The Legislature and Executive can pass a new law that overrides a decision that ruled on existing law.

Not if the ruling was on constitutional grounds. Well, they can pass a new law and claim that it's constitutional, of course - but it would be likely to blocked right away in the lower courts if it is in blatant contradiction with the earlier ruling, regardless of whether those courts agree with the ruling itself. Worst case, it just gets appealed all the way back to SCOTUS which strikes it down again, so it's not at all like the usual 2/3 supermajority legislative override of the executive veto.

Congress can change the Constitution.

Congress can submit an amendment for ratification. 3/4 of state legislatures would have to ratify it for constitution to actually change. But yes, you're right, that is the one and only check there is ... although even that one is weak, because no matter what the constitution actually says, the court can interpret it however it wants in practice - there's no shortage of examples.

> Despite AWFUL national and international reporting on the Supreme court, their powers are actually quite limited. Their authority is restricted to interpretation of situations where written federal laws do not already exist.

This is pretty directly refuted by Dobbs. Roe v. Wade was not ambiguous and was a settled matter of constitutional law until the new court decided they didn't like it.

> This is pretty directly refuted by Dobbs. Roe v. Wade was not ambiguous and was a settled matter of constitutional law until the new court decided they didn't like it.

I don’t like the decision here as well for political reasons, but if you read the arguments the Supreme Court is just saying that abortion law is a state issue not a federal one. Which limits the power of the federal government. Which is good.

The part where women have to register their periods and have them tracked and might get arrested if they miss a cycle, or put in jail for buying contraceptives, or for googling the wrong things, or are forced to carry a dead fetus to term - which actually happened because in some states the ban on abortion is absolute, with fifteen states not even having exceptions for rape or incest - is not good. The part where doctors are afraid to perform procedures on pregnant women for fear of committing a felony? Not good. The part where Americans don't seem to care about the actual human cost of rights being taken away as long as it weakens the federal government is not good.

Looking at how Southern states seem to be competing to out-fascist each other right now, devolving everything to states' rights seems like a bad idea. If it were entirely left up to the states, half of them would be hunting gays for sport. Having common standards as a culture enshrined in law and a central government strong enough to protect and enforce those standards also seems good. It's weird that this isn't even up for debate where gun rights are concerned but bodily autonomy, rights to privacy and free speech are all up in the air.

There is no such thing as "settled" constitutional law for the Supreme Court. They are not bound by their own precedents and always have the authority to revisit prior decisions.

I don't like the results of the Dobbs decision either. But the root cause of the problem was always legislative, not judicial. When the legislature fails to make the laws clear, anything that ends up in front of the Supreme Court is going to be a toss-up. Tell your members of Congress to do better.

Thanks, this doesn't address what I said at all. What I said is that Dobbs refutes the idea that the Supreme Court's authority is limited to "interpreting situations where federal law does not already exist". There's no question that prior to Dobbs, Roe existed, was not ambiguous, and was the legally operative interpretation of the constitution.

This comment highlights why you shouldn't get legal opinions from tech discussion sites. I don't think you demonstrated any knowledge of why the supreme court exists in practical or theoretical terms, but you are quite confident in your view.

The US is a republic, not a democracy. The Executive, Legislature, and Judicial branches form a triumvirate, which is a stable form of government. Their powers are complementary, and consist of numerous checks and balances.

One feature of the system, not a bug, is the protections against the majority riding roughshod over the minority.

> They must have smoked the bad stuff.

They did an incredibly good job. It's still the best Constitution.

I say this while still disagreeing with a lot of the decisions of the Supreme Court.

> It's still the best Constitution.

[citation needed]

It’s like 8 times older than the average age of most constitutions. So it has longevity and staying power.

It has lasted longer than every other constitution for every other country.

Doesn't make it the "best" but on the other hand you can't achieve that kind of longevity by "smoking the bad stuff."

> It has lasted longer than every other constitution for every other country.

No it hasn't. The oldest written national constitution in continuous effect is that of San Marino, from 1600 (unless you count some charters that usually aren't treated that way, like Magna Carta). And plenty of nations survive just fine with traditional rather than integrated written constitutions, which are something of a modern fad, which is why none of the longest continuous constitutional systems have a written constitution in the first place.

I make no claim that a country has to have a written constitution.

Okay, oldest constitution for a country bigger than a football stadium.

Like I said, doesn't make it "best" but clearly has something going for it.

> I make no claim that a country has to have a written constitution.

The claim that the US has the oldest constitution, even with the caveats necessary to exclude older written constitutions, is simply false; countries without single integrated written constitutions still have constitutions, and many of those are much older in continuous operation than the US constitution (or the US).

The US is the most prosperous and free'est country ever.

> The US is a republic, not a democracy.

At the risk of sounding snarky, this line has become a major eye roller for me. Are there any democracies on Earth, by this definition?

It's a democratic republic in the sense that we have a direct election of leaders and lawmakers. It's a bit pedantic because nowadays people use them interchangeably but we don't really have direct elections over the laws themselves (not at the federal level anyways, some states do allow for direct votes on amendments at the state and local level).

It's a spectrum, but the more weight the popular vote carries, the further towards that end it is.

People today think of the US as one "country" but when its Constitution was written it was much closer to the EU: an alliance and economic free trade and free movement area with basic shared rules.

The vote to create the United States was done by unanimity of Member States not by a popular vote.

Is the EU a "democracy"?

Athens was.

This use of republic is particular to the US. Recently, it has became particular to the Republican Party. Some of it is from the earlier usage, but I suspect it is really to contrast the Republican and Democratic parties.

Citizens have a huge amount of power within the government, being able to vote in elections and pursue ballot initiatives. How is that not a democracy?

Citizens don’t. Because of two senators per state, people in sparsely populated states have far more power than people living in larger states.

Even within states since people are concentrated in urban areas, it’s easy for the minority to engage in gerrymandering so that the rural population voting power is more than urban voters.

That’s not to mention the fact that even in conservative states, on singular issues like abortion, drug legalization and the right for felons to vote, the population runs to the left of the legislation. When those initiatives are put on the ballot, they win. So the legislators in those states are making it harder for initiatives to get on the ballots.

You can look at states like Texas that are taking more power out of the hands of the city.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4007362-texas-passe...

We don't have ballot initiatives at the federal level. The US is a democratic republic, so it's a bit pedantic, but if you had to classify as one or the other the U.S. is a republic.

Republic means not having a monarch. The US is a representative democracy. So is the United Kingdom, but they are a monarchy.

No, that's not what a republic means. The U.S. is a republic. It is mentioned explicitly in the U.S. Constitution in Article 4, Section 4:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence."

As mentioned, the definitions of republics and democracies have blurred over the years as people often use them interchangeably. Republics have representatives. Just as the ancient Roman Republic did, with its famous Senate. Pure democracies run on majority rule and direct voting on laws.

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIV-S4-1/AL...']

https://constitution.congress.gov/search/republic

> The US is a republic, not a democracy.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a republic, not a denocracy.

The US is a republic that notionally is both democratic and federal.

> The Executive, Legislature, and Judicial branches form a triumvirate, which is a stable form of government.

No, they don't, because a tirumvirate consists of three people, and triumvirates are notoriously unstable. (The two ruling Roman triumvirates from which the term is generalized having lasted less than 15 years combined.)

> triumvirates are notoriously unstable

It works for the US. Also the Soviet Union - the Party, the KGB, and the Army. The reason for stability is one can block the other two. The Constitution is full of checks and balances to this end.

> It works for the US.

No, it doesn’t, because, again, the US doesn’t have one.

Republic means not having a monarchy. You can have a democratic monarchy like United Kingdom. Or you can have democratic republic like most of the countries on the planet including the US.

Some people try to distinguish between representative democracy and direct democracy but since the latter is rare, democracy usually just means the former.

Edit: I guess republic is particular from of democracy, plus non-monarch.

> file forms for transactions

Which forms? What transactions?

I'm sure you're referencing something real, but my search isn't turning up anything https://www.google.com/search?q=supreme+court+forms+transact...

It's kinda weird that the people worried about supreme court ethics are worried about a guy with rich friends who has no business before the court, but not worried about someone with large book deals who does have business before the court.

In response to the prompt, "Given the comment, please characterize the author's implicit bias in a single sentence:"

> The author appears to have an implicit bias against the US Supreme Court, its ethical standards, and the overall American democratic system, particularly in terms of the process for electing government officials and lifetime Supreme Court justices.

That seems pretty good. I should turn this into a browser widget.

Opinion != bias. If parent had said "I think this action was wrong because SCOTUS is corrupt/wrong", then sure. But reading "I think SCOTUS is corrupt/wrong because they've taken these actions" and from that concluding that the author dislikes SCOTUS isn't insight or a gotcha, it's just basic literal reading comprehension.

Congratulations, you figured out that as a friend of free societies I am "biased" against small groups of inacountable and people that excert power of powpulations that cannot vote them out of office without a bloody revolution. This has been a bias I have worked to keep alive despite having been born into a life where I would be fine without cultivating it.

Calling this a "bias" isn't the flex you think it is and probably tells more about your own world view than about mine.

They aren't unaccountable. There are mechanisms and precedents for ignoring the results of the court and for the other branches to manipulate the composition of the court through normal (e.g. nominating and confirming appointees) and extraordinary processes (e.g. increasing or decreasing the size of the court).

As an admitted non-American, writing forcefully about a branch of our government that you don't understand, and essentially advocating for dramatic changes to our constitution to reign in this branch of government that you don't understand but do not like, it is transparently obvious you have some bias such that even ChatGPT can detect and characterize it.

Why are you so hung up about the word 'bias'? Just own it. Americans almost certainly criticize your country and its government.