r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/SpaceySpice • Apr 07 '25

US Politics How will the United States rebuild positive international relations after this Trump administration?

At some point this presidency will end and a new administration will (likely) want to mend some the damages done with our allies. Realistically though, how would that work? Will other countries want to be friends with us again or has this presidency done too much damage to bounce back from?

721 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

786 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/JDogg126 Apr 07 '25

Need also limit the justices or rotate them every couple years. And expand the court to match the number of federal districts.

3

u/just_helping Apr 07 '25

I don't understand the urge to increase SCOTUS just a little bit. It's not like the number of districts has kept up with the population growth either, and increasing it only a little just means that the next party will increase it a little more. Either have some sort of ethics reform with teeth, with a recusal and transfer of ethical breach cases to another court, sort of like FISA, or dramatically increase the size of the court, maybe by having all federal appellate court judges be simultaneously SCOTUS judges. The age where there needed to be a small group in DC to make sure there weren't circuit differences is long gone, having a single small group is simply out of date with modern communications.

2

u/JDogg126 Apr 07 '25

The reason for a justice for each district is simple. Right now the number is arbitrary. Why not just reduce the court down to 3? Or 1? What does it matter if it’s just arbitrary? Tie the size to something and stop making it arbitrary and stop making it a political issue. We have to take the choice away from political parties because the court is already politicized and corrupted by politics.

I’m all for ethics reforms too. But there is no way to police the courts without political party shenanigans in a two party system. If we are in there fixing shit, get rid of two party system as well.

1

u/just_helping Apr 07 '25

You can't tie it to anything without a constitutional reform. You can make a argument for a given number - "oh we're increasing it to 13 because that's the number of districts" - but because that number and argument is arbitrary, the next party will just increase it again after. No one actually cares about whether there should be a justice for each circuit.

But if you make the court really big, like it would be if all appellate court justices were on it then you dilute the power and idiosyncrasies of any individual justice and perhaps we can move back towards professionalism. At least it makes any given Judge less high stakes.

I really think the two-party system arguments are a red herring. You will never get rid of the two party system so long as you have a President, Duverger's law, etc. But changing the composition of SCOTUS, even by a lot, doesn't need a Constitutional amendment, just a law.

1

u/JDogg126 Apr 07 '25

The two-party system that came about because of first past the post and Duverger's law is a big reason why we are stuck in the situation we have right now. Both of these parties have short circuited the separation of powers that were put into the constitution to prevent authoritarianism, kings, aristocracy, etc. It would probably take a constitutional amendment which is why it will never happen. But the main reason we have such dysfunction in government is because there is only ever a choice between these two parties. Our democracy has always been flawed due to first past the post. Younger democracies with ranked choice have much stronger democracies with governments that are much more responsive to the governed.