tw: politics
Today I learned that, since April, the Supreme Court of the United States has sided with Trump in all 15 rulings it has issued on the President’s emergency requests. Of those 15 rulings, the court has only written 3 majority opinions. 7 have come with no explanation at all.
I don’t have to convince anyone here of what’s going on in America, obvs. I just wanted to share because this fact surprised me. I didn’t realize that they weren’t even justifying their decisions, which normally they do.
It seems really weird you let the president pick the supreme court justices in the first place really. It’s also odd that you vote for judges in some places, because that makes the process overtly political, but even that would be better than just letting the president pick them.
In England and Wales, judges are essentially appointed by the Judicial Appointments Commission.
Here in Switzerland, the parties in power choose the judges. That works because we have like 10 strong parties and many small ones.
After researching, I found, that the choice of judges isn’t that good in Switzerland either and even too complex to understand for me 😂 guess I had that wrong in mind… It seems to ultimately work on trust, empathy and ethics of individual people 🧐🤔
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/switzerland-votes-on-appointing-judges-by-lot/47030624
If I’m understanding this right, your judges are selected by the Judicial Appointments Commission, and the commissioners of the JAC are chosen by senior judges?
That seems like an extremely effective way of keeping the court independent. It may turn one direction or another over a long period of time, but it isn’t beholden to the whims of whatever fat orange fascist is holding elected office at the time.
It would be effective at keeping the court independent, but if corruption or an unpopular ideological movement took hold in the courts it could metastasize rapidly and be very hard to root out.
I think a few of the commissioners are appointed by a body of judges, but most of them appointed to the commission by the commission after open job application.