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The Center for American Progress reports
After Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) decision to prevent a president of the opposite party from nominating anyone to the Supreme Court, it's doubtful that any justice will ever be confirmed again when the presidency is controlled by a different party than the Senate. That means America will lurch back and forth between extended periods with a understaffed Supreme Court, followed by massive shifts in the law as one party fills a backlog of vacancies.
[...] Several states have shown that there is a better way [than what, it appears, will happen at the federal level from now on].
The Missouri plan
As America struggled through the Great Depression, Missouri's courts were a den of partisanship and corruption. As former Chief Justice of Missouri Michael Wolff explains, judges were "selected in elections in which nominees were chosen by political parties under a patronage system." In much of the state, judges were selected by a single machine party leader, "Boss" Tom Pendergast. Throughout Missouri, "judges were plagued by outside political influences, and dockets were congested due to the time the judges spent making political appearances and campaigning."
Frustrated with their politicized judiciary, the people of Missouri passed a ballot initiative replacing the state's corrupt process with a non-partisan coalition--at least for the state's top judges.
When a vacancy arises on the state's supreme court, a seven person commission consisting of "three lawyers elected by the lawyers of The Missouri Bar . . . three citizens selected by the governor, and the chief justice" submits three candidates to fill that vacancy to the state's governor. The governor then has 60 days to choose among those three names. If the governor fails to meet this deadline, the commission selects one of the three.
Finally, after a year of service, the newly appointed judge must survive a retention election, where a majority of the electorate can cast them out of office--though this only happens rarely.
This method of judicial selection, as well as variants upon it, was adopted by many states since its inception in Missouri.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @02:25PM (16 children)
There's no problem that can't be solved by one more level of indirection, amirite?
Maybe the organizational structure of society is fundamentally broken.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 13 2017, @02:37PM (11 children)
That was a given the first time any man made a decision for another man. All government is an exchange of practicality for liberty; there is no possibly way for it to be anything but. Our founding fathers understood this and tried to keep the destruction of liberty minimized but government will always slide towards corruption if not held in check by sufficient threat of consequence.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @02:53PM (10 children)
The United States Government is just a primitive, naive attempt to create a culture of contracts ("law") based around some kind of separation of powers; the one wrinkle is that the United States Government is still based around the principle of imposition, rather than being based around agreement in advance.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 13 2017, @02:58PM (9 children)
Works in theory. And even then for only those already of an age to agree to a contract. Children born into said government would have no choice at all, exactly as they don't now.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @03:13PM (8 children)
A child chooses to be subordinate to his parents (and others), if only because he knows no other way to exist. Eventually, he may choose to interact with his parents (and others) in a way that is not subordinate, and this process of transition is itself a matter of [perhaps implicit] contract negotiation, dispute-resolution, and enforcement.
That is, there is no inherent need for some arbitrary "age of consent".
--
Now, it's probably necessary to point out that a notion such as sexual consent still survives this view: A 35 year old man might well be in breach of some contract (explicit, or implicit in culture), or might be engaging in poorly defined (and therefore personally dangerous) behavior by engaging in an affair with a 13 year old girl; it doesn't matter that the girl consented, because the man has other constraints that he, too, must meet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @03:38PM (4 children)
it doesn't matter that the girl consented, because the man has other constraints that he, too, must meet.
Help me to understand. What "other constraints" might bind MikeeUSA for example?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @06:54PM (1 child)
I don't fully understand what confuses you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @07:05PM
I should have explained.
What kinds of agreements would a girl child enter into voluntarily that would preclude marriage to a 40-year old video game developer?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @07:11PM (1 child)
Help me to understand. What "other constraints" might bind MikeeUSA for example?
Micropenis? The fact that 13 years old is too old for his taste?
More seriously, I can't really speak for our contract-loving libertrollian, but I think when he says "constraints", he's just referring back to the "might well be in breach of some contract (explicit, or implicit in culture)" bit; that is, our culture may have an implicit contract that says "Any adult caught fucking 13 year olds gets shot in the head, and the shooter gets to keep his stuff." or some such; MikeeUSA will then behave, because if he doesn't, a swarm of
lawcontract enforcement agencies will competing for the honor and profit of killing him.(Sure, once you bring up the idea that a contract can be "implicit in culture", it sounds like Locke-meets-Robocop, but I'm sure there's a difference. I can't see it -- to my mind, using force to uphold a contract I have never consented to, and yet am held to have violated, looks exactly like the "imposition by violence" that he keeps complaining about -- but I'm sure he'll be along to explain how his implicit contracts are different.)
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 13 2017, @07:40PM
> our contract-loving libertrollian
If an AC posts a gem such as libertrollian, is that implicitly declaring that they will not pursue a contract for the future use of said word by others?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @07:07PM (2 children)
A 35 year old man might well be in breach of some contract (explicit, or implicit in culture)
Implicit cultural contracts are not well-defined and therefore you cannot expect people to actually follow them. There isn't much freedom in a society where you agree to poorly-defined contracts just by existing in said society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @09:46PM (1 child)
In much of the world, shaking hands when greeting people is well defined.
If there is some aspect that is in dispute, then it is by definition not well defined; it requires dispute resolution, negotiation, and further enforcement of any agreement.
So, what could your point possibly be?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @01:16AM
By your definition, reality is not well-defined.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday April 13 2017, @02:39PM (3 children)
The indirections can form an infinite loop. The governor selects one of the three candidates. That candidate is then approved by the same process that selected the three candidates. That is, the panel approves the candidate and sends it to the governor who then sends it on to the panel again.
Or try a deadlock. The governor selects one of the three candidates, and then waits for a fully staffed court to give its final approval. The court is not fully staffed until one or more of these candidates are approved by a full court that has no vacant seats and thus no need for a candidate.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday April 13 2017, @03:48PM (2 children)
Umm, that doesn't sound like the process in the summary:
1) Commission members are selected by different groups - no approval necessary
2) Commission selects three candidates - no outside approval necessary
3) Governor selects one of the three candidates, or abdicates the responsibility back to the Commission
4) (implied) Selected candidate is appointed.
I'm not seeing any potential for loops or deadlock. Nor any mention of judicial approval.
(Score: 1) by DannyB on Thursday April 13 2017, @04:25PM
You are correct. But you mistook my indirections and deadlocks as an observation about the process. They were intended as a proposal for congress to fix the process so that it will never work. Sorry for the confusion.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Sunday April 16 2017, @02:27PM
The only potential loop I can see if a judge fails the retention election, then commission puts that judge again on the list sent to the governor, who then selects that judge to serve again, who must then withstand another retention election.
I would assume that anyone who fails the retention election should be disqualified from being picked again, but I don't actually see that explicitly spelled out.