Americans are divided on major issues that the U.S. Supreme Court is due to rule on in the coming weeks, but most agree on one thing - neither Republicans nor Democrats see the nation’s top judicial body as politically neutral, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Just 20% of respondents to the poll agreed that the Supreme Court is politically neutral while 58% disagreed and the rest either said they did not know or did not respond. Among people who described themselves as Democrats, only 10% agreed it was politically neutral and 74% disagreed, while among Republicans 29% agreed and 54% disagreed.
The USA made it a long way without it being a serious issue, like 200 years. Like presidents would pick qualified federal court judges whose judicial philosophies tended to favor their side a bit more, but were generally good at being fair jurists, and cases decided along the lines of which party’s president had appointed them were super rare.
Then in the 80s, Reagan started appointing more explicitly partisan judges, and a far right activist think tank started grooming ideologues who were law students as potential future justices, a few of whom Trump ended up appointing. Basically every appointment after 1982 either continued the trend, or worsened it, with the notable exception of Obama appointing Marrick Garland, though he knew there was a good chance the Senate wouldn’t approve any nominee.
It’s one of those systems that works fine if everybody is acting in good faith, and crumbles when someone tries to take advantage of it. Yeah it’s probably a bad idea.
Any system that relies on everyone acting in good faith is flawed from the get go. You were just lucky until you weren’t.
That’s true, but it’s very hard to come up with a system that can’t be gamed. The fact that you’re not aware of Australia’s system works means it’s probably even more vulnerable to exploitation because nobody in Australia is paying attention.
Really, all political systems are based to some extent on people acting honourably and acting in the best interest of the country rather than themselves or their political party. Eventually that always breaks down.
The main reason I’m unaware is because I couldn’t be arsed looking it up when I posted that, but you make a good point. It’s concerning that our conservative party was trying the same culture war bullshit that worked so well in America, but heartening that we collectively told them to knock that shit off in the last election, although I’m not sure the lesson stuck.