Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Pentagon worried its primary satellite launcher can’t keep pace

U.S.-China talks on AI risks set to begin in Geneva

Web publishers brace for carnage as Google adds AI answers

In photos: The scene in Indonesia after flash floods and cold lava killed at least 44 people

Can you spot bad financial advice on TikTok? Take our quiz.

Trump insults N.Y. case prosecutor at Jersey Shore rally

Did Obamacare ‘massively’ increase the cost of health care?

RFK Jr.’s ‘history lesson’ on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine flunks the fact test

The Trump-Biden battle over the 2017 tax cut

Rare collection of ancient coins, locked away for 100 years, heads to auction

Why Spain will recognize a Palestinian state

Middle East conflict live updates: Israeli forces advance in Rafah; Health Ministry says Gaza hospital system will collapse in hours

Retired cop meets abandoned baby he helped 23 years ago: ‘What are the odds?’

I used to dismiss my mom’s advice. Then I found a note she wrote before she died.  

Photos of his mom at lunch are a balm people didn’t know they needed

Why Donald Trump ended up praising Hollywood’s most famous cannibal

Biden seeks to put focus on health care, infrastructure

No, Apple, people do not want tech to crush everything in its path 

The urgent air defense lessons of April 16 

Are smartphones destroying childhood? It’s complicated.

Wizards just miss No. 1 pick again but land top consolation prize this time

Eighth-inning decision burns the Nats in a 4-2 loss to the Red Sox

The Wizards will pick second in the NBA draft. Here’s whom they could take.

Pete Buttigieg’s view from the middle seat

The case for eating at Italian gas stations

5 big travel lessons from an accomplished conservationist

5 myths about Social Security as the program faces a funding crisis

Social Security has to be fixed. But you still need your own savings.

Miss Manners: Should I accept offered seat swaps when I’m flying for free?

Ask Amy: Dad hurt by daughter publicly reconnecting with her biological family

Carolyn Hax: What’s the real cost of going halfsies on a modest engagement ring?

Trump trial live updates: Michael Cohen resumes testimony in hush money case

US-POLITICS-JUSTICE-COURT-TRUMP

With Monday night’s announcement that he’s nominating D.C. Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the seat vacated by Anthony M. Kennedy, President Trump moves one step closer to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/a-more-conservative-supreme-court-could-step-not-lurch-to-the-right/2018/07/09/48997ae6-83a4-11e8-8553-a3ce89036c78_story.html?utm_term=.044b73925310">shifting the direction of the Supreme Court for a generation or more</a>. As the swing vote in closely divided cases, Kennedy single-handedly decided some of the most controversial issues in the United States. Trump’s decision to tap Kavanaugh leaves Republicans hopeful that more of those cases will be decided in their favor.

It’s not hard to see where this is headed. Republicans are already preparing to spend millions of dollars on a political battle to help cement a 5-to-4 conservative majority on the Supreme Court by confirming Trump’s nominee. Liberals will, in turn, lose their minds. When Democrats next gain unified control of government, they could <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/7/2/17513520/court-packing-explained-fdr-roosevelt-new-deal-democrats-supreme-court">pack the courts</a>. It’s the logical tit for tat for the “stolen” seat President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to fill. But then what happens? Play another round of tit for tat, and the future looks unsustainable. That so much is riding on one Supreme Court seat is a testament to how broken our politics are.

There is only one way to get out of the vicious cycle ahead of us: We need to stop thinking of the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of every controversial issue in U.S. politics. Short of that, we must make it harder for the court to act decisively in controversial cases. This could be done by requiring an even number of justices picked by a majority and a minority in the Senate. Let the court deadlock more, and let democracy do the hard work of politics, instead of lawyers and judges.

[There’s no conspiracy between Trump and Kennedy. There’s just the swamp.]

The reality of a deadlocked Supreme Court means that lower court decisions stand, even when they conflict. But that isn’t the end of the world. Even with nine justices, the Supreme Court chooses to hear <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/justicecaseload.aspx">only about 80 cases each year</a>. Most of the judiciary’s work occurs at the district and circuit court levels. And while it’s true that an evenly divided court won’t be able to resolve circuit splits, such divisions among the nation’s jurists are a sure sign that we have on our hands a political, not a legal, question. Which means a job for Congress, not the courts. And we’ve survived periods in which the Supreme Court was evenly divided in the past: Most recently, the court had only eight justices between the death of Antonin Scalia and the confirmation of Neil M. Gorsuch. Still, the republic didn’t collapse.

An even balance on the court would make it less likely that any one justice will again possess the disproportionate dominion on U.S. politics that Kennedy had at the end of his career. And it would leave more issues to Congress, lower courts and the states to decide. The Supreme Court will instead be left to decide two sets of cases: (1) genuine constitutional questions, where the legal issues transcend current policy fights; and (2) questions where conservatives are able to convince liberals, and vice versa.

That would leave the court to preserve its legitimacy to act authoritatively to interpret the Constitution when it absolutely needs to. And it would encourage more creativity and coalition-building among justices and legal scholars, who should seek new ways of litigating complex social and political questions.

Adriana Usero

The quickest way to create deadlock on the court would be to not fill Kennedy’s seat. But to add fluidity and dynamism to the court in the future, each subsequent Congress (starting with the 116th) could add two justices, one agreeable to the Senate majority and one agreeable to the minority, each for an 18-year term, until the court is at 16 members. As the court grows, let a random draw of four justices picked by Republicans and four picked by Democrats decide each case. Regularizing appointments would further drain the stakes of any one nomination and ensure that, as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/30/politics/politicsspecial1/white-house-memos-offer-opinions-on-supreme-court.html?_r=0">once put it</a> while arguing for 15-year term limits, “federal judges would not lose all touch with reality through decades of ivory tower existence.”

[Lawyers alone can’t save us from Trump]

The case for a detente in the confirmation wars accepts that the “the other side started it” is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down">turtles-all-the-way down argument</a>, with the turtles sitting on top of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which first set the number of justices at six. Or maybe the Judiciary Act of 1801 (repealed in 1802), which appointed a slew of “midnight” Adams administration judges and shrunk the number of justices down to five, so the incoming Jefferson administration wouldn’t be able to appoint a justice. Or maybe Marbury v. Madison (1803), which expanded the power of the courts to nullify legislation on constitutional grounds.

Or maybe it was the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/37th-congress/session-3/c37s3ch100.pdf">Tenth Circuit Act of 1863</a>, which upped the Supreme Court to 10 justices (from nine, following an 1837 law), or the subsequent Judiciary Act of 1869, which put the number back to nine. Or maybe it was Franklin Roosevelt’s plan to pack the courts that politicized the judiciary. Or the litany of landmark decisions by the Warren court (1953 to 1969), or Roe v. Wade (1973), that gave liberals the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226726711?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=washpost-20&amp;camp=1789&amp;linkCode=xm2&amp;creativeASIN=0226726711">hollow hope</a> that the courts would be their savior and mobilized conservatives into seeing the judiciary as the antidemocratic battering ram of too-fast social change. Then Bork. Then Garland. Then the end of the judicial filibuster. And now, well, you get the idea.

Letting this moment pass without reforming the way we pick Supreme Court justices could have dire consequences for our democracy by continuing to divert the most controversial fights to the place where their ultimate arbitration is least likely to generate legitimacy — the courts.

For decades, conservatives have complained about judicial supremacy intruding onto politics, leaving decisions that belonged in the hands of the people and their elected representatives to nine lifetime appointees. Liberals, now for the first time in 80 years, are coming to understand why that’s such a problem.

We’re at a unique moment when everyone should be open to change. It’s a moment for senators to bind together and think about the political legacy they’re leaving. Now is the moment to defuse the hypertrophy of the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of complicated political fights and return politics to where it belongs: the public.

Lee Drutman is a senior fellow at New America, co-host of the podcast Politics in Question and author of "Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America." 

Lee Drutman

James Wallner is a senior fellow at the R Street Institute.

James Wallner

The Washington Post

name

prism://prism.query/site,/opinions/posteverything?limit=20

PostEverything

The conversation is bigger than you think.

Opinions to start the day, in your inbox. Sign up.

Opinions

The Washington Post Opinions section features opinion articles, op-eds, editorials by the Editorial Board, global opinions and letters to the editor on the issues of the day. Offerings include columns by Washington Post opinion writers, political cartoons by editorial cartoonists Ann Telnaes and Michael de Adder and podcasts by James Hohmann and Jonathan Capehart.