A quick thought on the Supreme Court situation

[catsittingstill]

Women are slightly over half the population.  So women should be slightly over half the Supreme Court.  There are nine Supreme Court judges, so that means five of them should be women.

The most we've ever had is two.  George W. Bush left us with only one.  Of course the next Supreme Court judge should be a woman.  The next four Supreme Court judges should be women.  Unless Ruth Bader Ginsberg retires in that time, in which case the next five Supreme Court judges should be women.

Duh.

And I'm being moderate and patient, here.  If I was really going for true equality and fairness, the Supreme Court should have only women on it for the next one hundred and ninety years, at which point a single male would be allowed to serve and twelve years later, a second male would be allowed to serve, with the court only opening up to allow a total of four males sixteen years after that.

Comments

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

What, you don't think Michele Bachman is a good choice?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

(choke)

I may have given the wrong impression. I am arguing that being female should be a *necessary* qualification for five of the SCJs. I never intended to suggest it would be *sufficient*.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

:-)

But if, say, Thurgood Marshall was far better on women's rights than Michele Bachman is ever likely to be, perhaps the exact number of women on the Court is less important than that there be enough women (or men) on the Court and a Court that respects women's rights.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I wonder about this "numbers are unimportant" argument. Would you say that "numbers are unimportant" means you'd be comfortable with six SCJs being women? Eight? Nine?

In fact, I agree that Thurgood Marshall would be better than Michele Bachman, and if those were the choices before us, I would have no hesitation in saying we should pick the Marshall-like candidate.

Yes, having a new SCJ who believes women are human beings with human rights is more important than having a new SCJ with female parts. But surely it isn't impossible, or even particularly difficult, to have both in one person.

Accomplished women generally view women as human beings--look how far afield Republicans had to go to put up a female vice-presidential candidate who wasn't pro-Choice. They had several Republican women with far more experience, intelligence, and knowledge and had to drop their standards, and drop them again, until they finally went for someone who had been governor of a state with a tiny population for all of a year and a half. Oh, sorry; twenty months.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

The great black and liberal justice Thurgood Marshall was replaced by the black and radical right sexist Clarence Thomas, and objections to the Thomas's qualifications were successfully deflected as racist and sexist. A radical movement could use a "five women" requirement similarly, to defend seating an otherwise unqualified woman. I like Dan's three-to-seven and would even rather like to see seven in the "near" term--it puts Congress and the President in the position of having to deal with the issue without setting the sort of target that can easily be abused politically.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

The great black and liberal justice Thurgood Marshall was replaced by the black and radical right sexist Clarence Thomas, and objections to the Thomas's qualifications were successfully deflected as racist and sexist.

Hmm. I see your point. An instance on women for the sake of having women could be abused in a similar way. On the other hand, Scalia wasn't appointed to the court because of his gender or race, and it's not like that kept him from being a dud. So we could always end up with a bad one.

I guess I see it in this light--I don't see anything that makes women inherently less suited to the practice of the law (the way women in general are less suited to playing football or pissing high on a fence, for example). So I figure if conditions were fair, the court would have five women. Thus the fact that the court doesn't and never has had five women makes it pretty plain that conditions are not fair.

I would like to see conditions become fair. It could be argued that by trying to push for more women on the Supreme Court I've grasped the wrong end of the lever. To which I would reply with an invitation to people who care about fairness to grasp the other end of the lever and give me a hand. With some of us on *each* end of the lever, I'm sure we can do it.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

A coin, tossed, that always comes up 50% heads no more honest than one that comes up 90% tails. So I say fairness might be four, five, or six--three or seven at the outside. You're right--what we've got is slanted, and I am all for more women in high office. The whole system is slanted. I don't know what a truly egalitarian government and legal system would look like, but I'm fairly sure it wouldn't look like what we have now.

Meantime, as I've said in other contexts, the Senate is a problem. I really don't know enough history, but I am beginning to wonder if there has ever been a time when the US Senate has not been corrupt.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

My major concern is that if we set a range, and say the lower end of the range is good enough, then the lower end of the range is all we will *ever* get. So if we say "three to seven" we'll get three women, and never any more.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

unh-hunh. Maybe the thing to say is just "more women on the Court", and not give a number. If pressed for a number we can say that any number we give will become a minimum. To judge from the way the wingnuts are acting right now, it's going to be hard just to get to two. With Jeff Sessions ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary committee it's going to be hard to even get a moderate justice approved.

Next, the Senate. I wonder how many moderate and liberal women we can get into the Senate?

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I take issue with the premise that Marshall was a great justice. He was unquestionably a great lawyer, one of the best advocates this country has ever produced. My impression is that he was an adequate justice but it wasn't his forte; he was more talented at driving a case than sitting back and studying it.