Quote:
Originally Posted by Mick
If it’s not Constitutional Chris, no precedent can persist. Roe vs Wade, could be overturned in a Supreme Conservative led Court. The court cannot invent laws, that’s the job of the legislature. Republicans have tried to legislate and have passed legislation, only for it to be vetoed by then President Bill Clinton.
What McConnell said in 2016 wasn’t a legal ruling or precedent. It’s just he was Senate Majority leader and he wasn’t going to allow a Democrat President get his Nomination confirmed, in an election year where a Republican president could win and get his nomination in, there is nothing unjust about this. It’s called party affiliation. If Democrats want to appoint justices they have to win elections and be in control of the Senate.
The issue of abortion is a highly emotive and separate topic.
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I’m basically agreeing with you.
. The abortion issue is relevant here only to the extent that it illustrates the operation of legal, constitutional precedent in the US system.
That’s why I was chewing over what we call convention, because that’s the concept that I think they’re actually appealing to as we would understand it. The principle of Precedent does apply in the USA as it does here, and is not absolute in the USA or the U.K.; the difference is that Parliament in the U.K. can always legislate to overturn a precedent even if it’s set by a ruling of our Supreme Court because the UK’s Supreme Court is not a constitutional court, but is really just the final court of appeal. In the USA, however, if the constitution needs to be interpreted, their Supreme Court performs that function and once it has ruled, then that is the interpretation that stands, unless it is modified in future by the Supreme Court again, or in the highly unlikely event of a constitutional amendment being passed by the appropriate supermajority in both legislative houses.
I don’t know the US system well enough to know how persuasive past political decisions are in creating convention (or precedent as they call it). I suspect that it is not as strong as the Democrats are making out, and that this is all part of the heat and noise of the election campaign rather than a genuine democratic outrage.