Legislative override of SCOTUS

Rebuttal 1: No meaning in first contention This is a false. The job of the Supreme Court is to make a determination about the constitution within a particular context. This is done in the status quo and by affirming your plan, we would limit that power to interpret. Marbury v. Madison has already determined the job of the Supreme Court. The job is judicial review, and by allowing congress to impede on this, we are seeing that Congress is now limiting the power of the Supreme Court so that Congress has the Supreme Court’s job. Checks and balances states that each branch should be equal in power to another so no branch is stronger than another. This is a clear problem in your plan. However you refute this with Thomas Jefferson’s idea of the fact that checks and balances should not mean that the judicial branch has congressional power. It does not even in the status quo. You can call the judicial system flawed, but you can’t show the fact that it directly passes law. In the Supreme Court, a law is discussed, but only on constitutional terms and not under whether it would be a net benefit to the American people. Not only this, but with the Supreme Court, we need to see that the power to strike down laws has been handy in the past. According to Mint Press News, three strike laws were considered unconstitutional and a law in place was struck down to prevent the war on drugs from continuing. Thus, this is an important part to put a “check” on congress when bad law is passed. Not only this, but as far as the Supreme Court’s decision to decide whether laws are constitutional or not has been decided by Marbury v. Madison and has already been shown to be an integral part of our governmental system. Not only this, but just because Thomas Jefferson has stated his opinion does not mean that he could have predicted the future as the constitution is a fluid document which changes with the times. That is why some parts of it are vague, to allow for reform when necessary. http://www.mintpressnews.com... Rebuttal 2: Status quo I have already shown that the Supreme Court’s power is limited by Congress. Allow me to look at my opponent’s argument against this. “My opponent has brought up examples where congress limited the effects of a court case, but they never can erase them. Also, as I have shown with the example of RFRA, if congress does try to take back their legislative power, the court can always ignore or strike down congress's acts. This is not enough. Congress needs to have all legislative power.” Yes the Supreme Court can strike down laws as unconstitutional, but there is a backdoor. I have shown to get around this and it may be for the best that the Supreme Court as it means a “check” on the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court can’t pass any bad judgment as Congress will find a way around it. This has happened before and will happen again. Not only this, but I have also mentioned that the states do not follow the same guidelines as the Supreme Court. My opponent has stated that the action to do so is illegal, but that does not mean that in the status quo it matters, because a solution is found, regardless of legality. Rebuttal 3: Did not address the rulings given I am aware of this fact. This is because I have already shown that the job of the Supreme Court is to give an interpretation of how the constitution applies to certain laws. The rulings are simply the opinions of qualified individuals to determine whether a law is constitutional or not. This was to prevent Congress from becoming corrupt by passing unconstitutional bills. Remember as well, opinions are not debate. Regardless of my opponent’s interpretation of the V amendment, or that of any other person, we need to see that the Supreme Court is doing its job. ”My opponent argues that the judges always quote from the constitution in deciding a case. That is true most of the time, but when it is clear, as my opponent admitted in his first rebuttal, that much of the time they are not basing the decision on the constitution, but on their own policy preferences, they are unquestionably stepping outside their authority.” Allow me to show you why this is not a bad thing. I have told you the job of the Supreme Court, and yes, this happens, but we also need to look at the fact that quite possibly, the Supreme Court is the least polar organization in government. Yes, there was a clear majority of Republicans in the Supreme Court, however there have been left wing policies that have gone through and had been passed regardless of the polarity between people. We see the passing of homosexual marriage and Obamacare in the Supreme Court regardless of it being left wing. This leads people to believe that the Supreme Court has very centrist policies and mostly votes on the constitution. Congress on the other hand is shown to be a cesspool of lobbyists and other scumbags that interrupt the government system, so why are we giving congress more power? This needs to be seen as especially true since one party has always dominated the legislative branch. Rebuttal 4: Counter plan “The problem I presented was that the court has too much power. Changing how long each justice can have that power does not in any way lessen that power. If there is an imbalance of power, the solution is not to check all three branches evenly.” Limiting the time served on the bench decreases the power of the people on the bench by limiting the amount of influence allowed on the system. There would be no overarching influence from incumbents who are simply there to benefit monetarily or from policy, there would be people who would serve for a set amount of time, and then leave like the founding fathers intended. I will also go into clarity of my plan. The Government Accountability Office would be in charge of the audits in conjunction with the Department of Justice. Yes, I will also concede that both can be passed at the same time, however, this plan is in place of the other. Rebuttal 5: Imbalance of power My opponent is correct in saying that there is an imbalance of power, and I will address that Congress is in fact the most powerful of the branches. Congress has the power to make laws, override a presidential veto, and can find backways around Supreme Court decisions. Not only this, but as we all know, there is a rampant amount of corruption in congress with personal interests concerned with the process of lawmaking which involves monetary incentives, reelection, and lobbyists. This is dangerous, and giving Congress more power would be troublesome. If you are going to claim that the Supreme Court is more corrupt and polar than Congress, you would be simply wrong. So, let us both concede that regardless of what branch of government is more corrupt we need to take a look at the bigger picture to see the direct effects on the problem of setting a precedent that directly challenges the power of the Supreme Court. If you would like an example of this happening, then let us turn toward the New York Times in 2013, where a few states had an imbalance between popular vote and party makeup of the state. This resulted in the small imbalance showing a huge share of house seats. This delicate and corrupt system can’t handle the power to overturn decisions with the increasingly polar and lucrative system. http://www.nytimes.com... Rebuttal 6: Constitution The tenth amendment may say what my opponent says, but it does not matter. Remember, the constitution was not something that could predict the future, thus the constitution was kept vague and interpretive. Yet, it may be written in English, but my opponent has already proven my point that there are multiple interpretations of what the constitution means by providing what he thinks about certain Supreme Court cases, proving that his idea of what the constitution means differs from other interpretations. For example, the second amendment to some means that the government should keep guns legal, but read the constitution. “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” https://www.law.cornell.edu... This means to some people that the constitution limits the usage of guns to the well-regulated militia. So yes: “The document is in ENGLISH” But the important part of this is the fact that the constitution was meant to be fluid, so that it could change with the times, regardless of what Jefferson has said. This has been shown with the Marbury v. Madison case which solidified the US as a representative democracy that votes people in to represent their individual political views. Rebuttal 7: Abusive rulings deterred My opponent may have missed the point I made in my argument. The fact that some decisions are labeled as abusive makes no difference due to the multiple interpretations of the Supreme Court as dictated by Marbury v. Madison.