It was a joke...

I wasn't trolling at all.

Surely we can still have a sense of humour while we get rid of the capitalist patriarchy.

Maybe I should explain the joke. Your name is Putin33, akin to the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin -- he also scrapped a lot of the power in his courts, parliament, and even the presidency when it wasn't being officed by him, -- so it was a play on that.

:)

I get the joke, it is not well informed, and it was an attempt to troll me.

Anyway, thanks for patiently explaining about the Supreme Court. I found that very interesting. I find yours to be a more complicated, layered system you have compared to us.

I think the joke is fine and it wasn't an attempt to 'troll' you, it was an attempt to be light-hearted with you. I'm genuinely sorry that you're unable to process that nuance.

Inexplicably I've heard there is a movement in the UK to install a Senate. Why you want to follow us down the dark path of destruction is beyond me.

Scalia was probably one of the finest constitutional scholars and jurists in the 20th century if not American history. It's a real shame and again RIP.

Anyway, this vacancy won't be filled until after January 2016. No way the Republican majority in the Senate approves any of Obama's nominees.

Mostly because the house of lords is a joke that did nothing for years, and then the one time it had the balls to take the government to court and force it on a major u-turn (Tax Credit cuts), the Conservative government started flapping their arms and screaming about how it might need to be reformed.

This is despite the Conservatives being the ones who tanked the Lib Dem attempts to reform the House of Lords during the ConDem coalition, and easily being the ones most opposed to HoL reform in general. Pretty amusing episode.

Bring on the unicameral chamber.

Yes, what a fine scholar who frequently inserted frat boy humor into his opinions in order to make bizarre analogies in efforts to demean and degrade people for wanting their rights protected.

Good on you to endorse your party's knee and pathological obstructionism which has done so much good for this country these past 6 years.

*kneejerk

Gosh now we need a good POTUS even more. Go Rubio

I wouldn't say it's inexplicable, even if the idea is undesirable.

It's easily explicable -- simply put, our current parliament is run by 1 elected house and 1 unelected house. The unelected house, the House of Lords, is chosen through the elected house, but members are given life peerage and, until very recently, hereditary peerage. This is seen as unaccountable and undemocratic, so people want to change it to a more accountable, directly-elected system so that both houses are chosen in elections by the public, like the Senate.

The people, generally speaking, don't give a damn. If they were forced to make a decision on it I'd hazard a guess that the most popular method of reform would be to do away with it completely rather than make it elected. Personally I feel that, despite it being a complete horlicks of a design, it seems to work surprisingly well.

@Putin: I am an independent, but also a graduate student who is partially studying the judiciary. In addition, I teach Civics which has a big focus on the American judiciary. I do not subscribe to any party labels, but I must reaffirm that this man was brilliant in his legal opinions.

Disagree with me, but I've studied it and I don't let ideology and rhetoric impact my studies or critical thinking.

Unicameral would be far better than an elected Senate, yeah.

Hopefully Comrade Corbyn can push through just that when he's PM, and then we can make him dictator for life.

Scalia was a horrible jurist who ginned up a bullshit theory that he never applied if it would be slightly inconvenient to his preferred outcome, see e.g. the several times that he voted to expand corporate citizenship rights, a concept that would have utterly befuddled the drafters of the constitution. The only positive I can point to in his career is that he occasionally wasn't quite as horrible as Alito on criminal defendant rights, although it's not as if Scalia was particularly strong on those, either.

I do look forward to the possibility of the Republicans in the Senate shooting their collective foot by rejecting whatever tepid centrist Mr. Obama initially nominates, though.

@Octavious: Yes I agree, a meritocratic chamber does offer our system a lot of value.

Dictator for a couple of years, eh? It beats a full Labour term I guess

We should refrain from mixing our British sarcastic humour with this thread. It will confuse the Americans.

Well, there's no way George Osbourne will win in 2020.

So bring it on, Toryboy :)

So KingCyrus you are advocating for a supreme court that is against Gay Marriage, a Womans Right to Choose, the Federal laws regarding Marijuana, and the Healthcare law? just asking for clarity's sake.

I'm glad I didn't misspell that as "toyboy".

The media would love Boris v. Corbyn.

http://www.webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=174341

But then there's 2 big events with a lot at stake for our 2 main parties this year:

Labour's success/failure in the May elections will determine whether or not Jeremy Corbyn will face a leadership challenge.

The Tories will be fractured either way the EU referendum (in June, potentially) goes, and a victory for the Out campaign would almost certainly lead to David Cameron's resignation and a call for Independence Referendum II in Scotland.

It 'works reasonably well' because generally the Lords has acted as a Tory bulwark for most of its history, am I right?

Not really... it's generally acted a government yes-man for most of its post-WW2 history, whichever government is in power. Tax Credits was the first thing it entirely rejected in something like 100 years. Usually it just makes minor amendments that are, generally, small positives.

I do love how the UK is one of the only Western countries where the church has a permanent "say" in government matters, courtesy of the bishops in the Lords, though. Minor though it is.