• Each branch being able to counterbalance the others matters little when capital can be used to control or influence all three branches. There is unfortunately no current counterbalances to that of capital or power and long gone are the days where the government intervened to prevent the accumulation of either.

    Any minor disagreements we might have on these issues, I think you stated the broader issue here better than I could have. I believe the Supreme Court is an admittedly flawed but essential institution–why I think the original posted article misses the mark–and that the systemic issues with the Court today are symptomatic of a broader corruption of the entire political system by the injection of capital as the prevailing political force. Some may argue it’s always been that way–I honestly don’t know–but whatever the case we’re reaching a breaking point, and I’m not sure doing away with or even heavily reforming a singular institution (such as the Court) is going to resolve the issues on its own when the ultimate source of the problems isn’t directly tied to a singular branch and has metastasized through them all.

    • Agreed. Arguably the only reason the Supreme Court has as much power as it currently does is because the Legislature has been almost entirely broken, with a near complete inability to address the concerns of its citizens or clarify and update out of date laws. It’s become horribly clear just how much of modern life was dependent on some very unstable foundations and interpretations of laws and policies not directly addressing the issue at hand. Rather than take that as a prompt to write a law specifically clarifying these issues. the legislature has been content to rely on court opinions to serve as policy making instead.