[Alupis]

> including signers of the constitution—point out that if they get too wacky we can and should just ignore them

Completely untrue.

Not only is SCOTUS the head of one of three branches of our federal government and cannot be ignored (whatever that means) - there is an Impeachment & Removal mechanism in place for when a particular Justice does not uphold their duties.

However, not agreeing with you on some issue is certainly not a failure to uphold their duties.

[yamtaddle]

You write about application of the a law. I write about attitudes, observations, and actual history.

[Alupis]

Frankly, none of this matters for the purposes of our government and this conversation. Only the Constitution matters. SCOTUS literally cannot be "ignored" since they are the only body of government that decides what is or is not Constitutional.

[yamtaddle]

This perspective is utterly perplexing to me. The very reasoning behind allowing something as terrifying as a supreme court to exist was that its power comes entirely from the consent of the people and the other two branches. They 100% can be ignored. The executive and legislative simply don't do what they say, and poof, they're ignored. This isn't theoretical—one of their first major decisions, Marbury v Madison, was made with the expectation that if they ruled too much the "wrong" way, Madison and Jefferson were entirely willing to simply declare their decision void and ignore it. The decision may well have come out different if not for that reality (i.e. yes, they literally—literally—can be ignored).

There's the high school civics version of the court, then there's the court as it actually functions. The former has never been a close match to reality, not even in the eyes of (some of) the founders themselves.

[Alupis]

It seems you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the US federal government operates.

Congress can make a new law, or ratify a Constitutional amendment. That is the only way to "ignore" a SCOTUS decision. (although that is not ignoring, that is literally how the legal process works)

The President can commit a crime and do Unconstitutional things - for which they can be removed from office (Impeachment & Removal process), and then tried for crimes.

Each of the three branches has what we call "checks & balances", ie. each branch can do something to offset the power of another branch. No branch can outright ignore another branch - they have to go through their legal processes to make changes.

What you seem to imply here is both Congress and the Executive branches should just commit more crimes because it's currently popular to do or think a certain way.

The disconnect is happening because you observe the President and Congress commit crimes regularly. The Court System does not act quickly - it can take years or decades for a case to reach SCOTUS. This is why a SCOTUS decision is so important - not only does it clarify what is or is not Constitutional/Legal, but it provides guidance for all the lower courts to provide rapid judgements. This system is slow, deliberately, to avoid rapid swings that change with political tides.

If that's a reality people want... then this country is doomed. But... in order to doom it for real, a lot of crime would need to take place at very high levels first - which would lead to a dissolution of the federal government and the United States in it's entirety.

[yamtaddle]

> What you seem to imply here is both Congress and the Executive branches should just commit more crimes because it's currently popular to do or think a certain way.

I never wrote "should".

The actual in-fact reality is that the court's credibility is very important, and that, as there are both legal and illegal means for the other branches to circumvent or punish them, they've repeatedly decided differently than they probably would have without that pressure and those threats.

That's how the court works. It's effectively how it has always worked. It's not apolitical (never has been), it's not immune to public opinion (never has been) and they've always relied on consent of the other branches to enforce their decrees (that fact is the very justification for why they're allowed to be so insulated from direct public input in the first place)

[EDIT] Ah, I see where you got "should". That's a paraphrase of Jefferson and Madison's opinion (among others), not mine, so take it up with them.

[Alupis]

> they've repeatedly decided differently than they probably would have without that pressure and those threats.

To quote the "Dude" (Big Lebowski reference) - that's like, your opinion, man.

Each of the recent high profile cases are clearly constitutional issues, despite the populist sentiment to the contrary. Further, for some of these issues, Congress has had the entire history of the country to set correctly - and has chosen not to.

You should be angry with you Congress people, not SCOTUS. SCOTUS doesn't get to make up laws... but somehow people have come to believe they should when it's "righteous" or "morally right". SCOTUS doesn't even consider those factors, they only consider the text itself. Congress is free to consider those factors, but doesn't...

[anigbrowl]

I think you need to temper your idealism with some realism. Consider, for example, that 'qualified immunity' originates as a pragmatic legal doctrine rather than in statute or executive order. It is a creation of courts, notwithstanding the resultant tension with the Constitution itself (see eg Vega v. Tekoh, the most recent case in the linked summary).

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/qualified_immunity

[Alupis]

From your linked article:

    Specifically, qualified immunity protects a government official from lawsuits alleging that the official violated a plaintiff's rights, only allowing suits where officials violated a “clearly established” statutory or constitutional right.

Literally everything in this article cites the Constitutionality of every presented case that built modern Qualified Immunity. In all cases, a government official is not allowed to violate your actual rights, ie. the ones provided by the Constitution or ones codified into law by Congress.

That is how the system is supposed to work.

I don't see the point you are trying to make, however.