The Judicial Branch (Supreme Court) PASSED

[pikachu]

The status quo works imo. Trying to make the court more active is dependent on an active citizenry wanting to settle constitutional issues (eg, Foucalf's Roe v ZuWo case last year).

[pikachu]

So, some stats which might be useful for this discussion: not counting windjammer, 27 terms served on the Supreme Court (this number counts Atlasians who served non-consecutive terms by the number of terms they served). The average justice served 15 months on the court. However, if you remove opebo, who served 88 months, that number decreases to about 12.5 months per justice. If you remove the four longest serving justices (Oakvale, Spade, opebo, and bgwah), who've served a bit more than half the total months of the court, we get to 8 months per justice. Just some stuff to keep in mind.

[pikachu]

[ X ] Fixed Bench
[   ] Rotating Bench
[   ] Abstain

[pikachu]

Excellent. I believe we are now proposing essentially the same thing (2 Justices appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, 3 Regional/Associate Justices appointed jointly by the Governors and the President and confirmed by the Regional legislatures), which will make the principle vote much more straight-forward.

I like that, but are the Regional Associate Justices appointed by the Governor with veto power by the President, or "appointed jointly?" I know there aren't many differences, but I'd much prefer the former because 1) it's simpler--I mean, how would they both appoint them? Would one of them stand behind the other in the style of Chris Christie? 2) it means the President would need to publically veto nominee for the Governor's pick to fail, which would only happen if the nominee is widely disliked, thus protecting the Governor's upper-hand in his/her only pick.

Honestly, what I'd like for the Regional Associate Justice is this: the Governor makes the pick, the President can veto it, but the Senate could veto the President's veto in the same way that they can turn down a President's Supreme Court nominations. What do you guys think about that?

Initially I thought this was unnecessarily complex, but I do think that it's important to know what nominees think about federal law and precedents, which likely wouldn't be asked by regional assemblies.

[pikachu]

1. Plan C
2. Status Quo
3. Plan A
4. Plan B

[pikachu]

Aye