Ask Lemmy

A lot of Western democracies are parliamentary, which eliminates the need for a powerful Supreme Court like in the US since there shouldn't be any fighting between the executive and the legislature.

The US also practices common law instead of civil law, again giving more power to judges as common law relies a lot more on precedent and interpreting the law.

Shocking, one of the few democracies that empowers its judges to the level of the US is Iran.

I don't know that much about the process of selecting the court or corrupting it, but in Australia in the last little while we've had three whistleblowers tried in our supreme court.

One was exposing the government illegally spying on East Timorese diplomats to gain bargaining power. The trial was held in secret because of "national security concerns". The accused was only known as Witness K, and he managed to avoid jail time.

Richard Boyle exposed abusive practices by our welfare and tax offices to illegally share information in a "robodebt" scheme that fraudulently sent poor people crushing amounts of debt. A lot of people committed suicide as a result. He may go to prison for a long time. (Edit: he's facing up to 46 years, ~~and it seems the robodebt scandal was separate, but the ATO was part of that as well~~ EDIT 2: It was in fact about robodebt and the predatory culture in the ATO that spurred it)

David McBride exposed war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan and was given six years jail time. His identity was exposed when our previous right wing government raided our national journalists' offices and stole documents regarding their investigation into the war crimes.

Our current nominally-leftist government could have stopped the last two of these prosecutions at any time and they just let them continue.

Oh and of the three incidents, only the whistleblowers were prosecuted. None of the people doing the crimes have been charged with anything.

Our government and its courts have made their priorities extremely clear: snitches get stitches.

French constitutional court is allowing ministers to vote in the parliament if their resignation has been accepted. It's a fun combo because it involves all 3 powers : executive, legislative and judiciary.

In the case of Germany: a lot less, but it's not impossible.

The German equivalent to the supreme court is the Bundesverfassungsgerichtshof (BVerG, federal Constitutional Court) and in stark contrast to the highest American court, it is not an appeals court. A lower court might refer a case to the BVerG, or ask it to clarify a constitutional question, that has come up during a trial but most case don't even have a theoretical path to Karlsruhe. Political parties and NGOs may also go to directly in front of the Constitutional Court to protest the constitutionality of laws.

New justices are confirmed with a 2/3 majority which means that you need to convince roughly 30% of the opposition to vote for your candidate. That in turn leads to more moderate candidates put forward. Justices are also limited to one term of twelve years. Outside of that a justice may be removed from office by the German federal president* if 2/3 of BVerG justices vote to impeach their colleague.

So far so good. Unfortunately there are some weaknesses in the entire setup. The law responsible for needing a 2/3 majority to elect a justice can be changed with a simple majority. A right wing government could also expand the court by introducing a third senate and pack it with their appointees. But that requires them to get into power first.

German late night show Die Anstalt did a segment about that problem a while back: https://youtu.be/ljjZ6AZsmGk (Video in German)

Tldr: the highest German court is not going to stop a fascist government from doing fascism but it is also not working to put the fascists into power, the way the US supreme court is.

• Yes Germany has a president. The role is largely ceremonial though as he isn't head of government

Here in Greece the supreme court is determining goverment actions as unconstitutional, recommending changes, and nothing is being done. It is essentially powerless.

In Switzerland we don't really have a supreme court in the sense the US have one, parliament decides if they follow the constitution or not. The federal court only decides if the lower courts applied the law correctly. They don't even take cases with plaintiffs and defendants.

In a non first past the post voting system, it's less likely that 1 radical party remains in power long enough to screw up the high courts. But it can still happen, case in point Hungary and Poland.

Iirc, Orban had been in power for many years in Hungary and went for a gradual erosion of the independence of the courts. Death by a thousand cuts.

Pis in Poland only had a majority for 2 election cycles, but they needed only the first win to screw up the courts. Instead of a gradual (legalistic) takeover, they went for a bonkers hostile takeover of the supreme courts: https://freedomhouse.org/report/analytical-brief/2018/hostile-takeover-how-law-and-justice-captured-polands-courts

The eu should have kicked out both states out of the decision making process and implemented sanctions, but since that required unanimity, Poland and Hungary were essentially protecting each other from consequences. Now that pis lost in Poland, I hope that the eu takes action and prevents this from happening again.

much less than the US supreme court, which allows for corruption and has lifetime appointments.

It's easy to think about the US supreme Court versus other high courts the same way that the US treats voting districts.

In almost every country with a similar voting system, gerrymandering, dividing up districts arbitrarily, is illegal because you can easily say well. I'm going to divide it like this so that only these people's votes count and I'll just ignore the voters that I don't like.

That is illegal in most western countries.

Gerrymandering is perfectly legal in the US, resulting in a far weaker vote because entire counties can be disregarded by dividing the county up cleverly to benefit the Republicans, who take far greater advantage of this.

Same with the court systems, the US didn't set up protections and hasn't modifed or improved the court as time has gone on and problems have arisen like direct bribery or contradicting rulings or politically refusing justice appointments.

If you were to design a government system from scrstch, knowing what you see now, where would you place a Supreme Court?

How vulnerable

More than you would think.

While the most systems are built more robust than the Us one, it is still a sad fact that fascism / totalitarism is on the rise in many countries currently. Even robust systems are vulnerable.

Italy has been in the hands of one man recently who owned all the press and the better part of the state, and he transformed it into a puppet show. He is gone but the country is still suffering.

Austria was on the brink only a few years ago. One man had nearly owned the 3 powers legislature, executive and judiciary. Only a strong scandal in the press has saved the country.

All of them.

It can happen here. It’s frighteningly easy to get to this point.

Other places haven’t come anywhere near the politicisation that the US has. Instead, appointments are treated as pretty meritocratic.

I’ve personally spoken to a former chief justice of a country about the selection process, and they said unequivocally that it should be taken away from the government. It should instead be done by an intermediate selection committee whose members are selected by the government. Basically creating a degree of separation between the government and the court to buffer against politicking the whole thing.

Makes perfect sense to me and is probably the best chance the US has apart from packing the court.

Otherwise, without knowing much about the US situation, it seems to be in part attributable to the polarisation of the strict two party system, the central quasi-monarchical presidency and the vagueness and ~~hear~~heat of the bill of rights. Lots of places just don’t have that combination of factors … where in same ways the US system is likely showing its age and lack of evolution over time.

In fact, generally, it might be true to say that US politics over the past 10 years and into the next century will be driven by the friction between needing to adapt to its new state in the world (less super power and more dependent on global affairs) and wanting to cling to its traditional role and the old promises of the post-war era.

While the USA is a relatively young country, it's oddly one of the oldest democracies.

I believe most other democracies have better-written laws and better checks and balances because, in part, of mistakes the founders made when writing the US constitution (which was always a highly imperfect compromise, allowed for slavery, and had to be ammended several times just to patch it up).

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will chime in. But I think the shitshow we call the SCOTUS is somewhat unique.

In the case of Colombia, there are independent investigation agencies that aren't subject to any of the three branches, and specifically the judiciary branch has a committee that investigates disciplinary trespasses by judges. Also, there are three separate "Supreme Courts": one handles typical everyday cases, another handles conflicts between citizens and the government, and another handles Constitutional violations. So there are several protections against a rogue Court.