theRepublic said:
Sqrl said:
theRepublic said:
Sqrl said:
The edit actually doesn't change my point really. I don't argue against the idea that your experiences shape your biases...that is a given. My contention is that selecting people for those biases as a way to "counteract" (or "balance" if you want to flower it up) other biases is insane because the members will inevitably change leaving the court biased.
By selecting the least biased people the majority will anchor the bias and prevent it from corrupting. And like I said nullifying existing bias by adding bias is nullifying the nine justice dynamic and basically making it a 7 justice dynamic...and then a 5 and then 3...and eventually nullified to just 1...and whichever bias occupies the 1 odd seat basically runs the court. It's an absolutely shortsighted way to handle things.
Least bias, most impartial means that you have a stable court where one or two justices allowing bias to get the better of them has no impact.
In short the "counteractive" or "balance" bias approach produces a highly unstable court...the most impartial approach produces a stable court. The only question once you realize that is whether you want stability in the rule of law...kind of an easy question for me.
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You missed my question. (Damn my edits)
I would call most of the court very partial judges right now, what makes you think this is going to change drastically in the future?
To your point about trying to balance biases, I wouldn't do that, I would just have the court look more like America's demographic makeup. That is the best you could really expect to do.
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I agree actually, I think the court is very politcized right now, but I'm not talking about what it is, but rather what it should be.
To your last point: So you're advocating that the court have a bias that is representative of america and that their rulings should reflect the bias of america on average?
I don't understand why you would advocate for the intentional introduction of bias...of any makeup. Why not aim for the most impartial application of law we can manage as imperfect as we are? Saying you will always have bias is one thing, but it doesn't mean that we have to accept bias as part of the decisions when we have a 9 judge dynamic that is specifically designed to handle this exact issue.
Not to mention, and I'm sure you'll hate me for pointing it out, but your argument is again assuming that everyone of a given race thinks alike. If you take it as a given that people of one race don't all think alike then nominating based on race, by your own logic, is absolutely pointless. Not everybody from one race is going to have the same views so the claim that somehow a 9 person sample is even remotely meaningful defies basic statistics. I actually just did a quick calculation and with a population of 300 million and a sample of 9, barring sampling error (which would exist), you have a margin of error of nearly 33.3% meaning your range of error is 66.6% (MOE is +/-). This means that by basic statistics if we select justices to represent america we will almost always end up not representing america.
The entire idea is simply flawed.
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First bold
So you are actually talking about some sort of ideal world where people can actually know their own biases and selectively filter them out? How do these impartial judges get selected? It wouldn't happen the way judges are selected now. How do you suggest the Constitution be amended to change the selection process?
Second bold
No it doesn't. It assumes that people of different backgrounds have different life experience.
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First point:
If you think what I'm taling about is idealistic then I don't think you've understood what I'm trying to say.
Identifying one's own bias is trivial with some introspective thought....the real challenge in what you were talking about as idealistic (although I should point out that the idealistic scenario you referred to isn't something I put forth) is the ability to filter out your own biases. That is of course the hard part but people are certainly capable of it, I do it all the time as a moderator (I'm sure some bias still exists and since I rule by myself it gets into the system where as if it took 9 mods to decide my bias would get outweighed in all but statistically anomolous cases) and I've hardly had the life or judicial experience of someone who would be considered for SCoTUS.
So to be specific what it should be is 9 people who, regardless of political belief, are aware of their own biases and capable of filtering out the majority of it in their decision and just focusing on the law and facts of the case. I don't expect them to be perfect in this endeavor but I expect their inability to be perfect to be balanced by both the votes and the words of other members on the court.
Second Point:
Then why choose based on race if it is just different backgrounds? I agree that different backgrounds give different life experience but just because someone is latino, white, black, asian, etc.. doesn't mean they are going to get the "Life in the Culture" tour and even if they did it still wouldn't mean they took the same things from the experience and it still doesn't mean that they pick up aything unique that makes them uniquely qualified above any other person from any other racial background.
The problem I have is that what you are suggesting is the people from a given race, when presented with the same facts and laws of a case, will come to a different conclusion (or at least that some of them will) because of their life experiences which are guided by their race. My question is what aspect of laws and facts lends itself to the use of life experiences to deliberate through?
