the news that boris johnson, britain s prime minister has suspended parliament hit home with me. it struck me as an american who has been worried about a state of our representative democracy. while our systems are different, both the uk and the usa operate under rules. some written down, others based on precedent. you know them when someone breaks them. for example, fdr, riding high after his first reelection tried to pack the supreme court, getting his way past the nine men on the supreme court by adding more justices on top of them. the president saw this as the president breaking the rules. prime minister johnson hasn t been able to get his brexit plan through the parliament so, he is getting his way by calling parliament out of session. in his case, his action strikes me as a more fundamental assault on the british constitution, which holds parliament supreme. it worries me that an american president, our president saluted this action. after all, it s a majority of the house of co
somewhere in america and you have a conflict, they can find another trial judge to take your place. same with the courts of appeal. there are no spare supreme court justices. so any time a justice recuses that leaves the court at a dean minutishes capacity. it s usually up to the justices themselves to decide whether to recuse. and they usually recuse for direct conflicts of interest. they have a family member. they were a judge that on the lower court when a case was decided. they worked on the issue when they were at the justice department. or they have some personal financial stake. they own stock in the company, that kind of thing. those are the usual reasons for recusal. recusals on political grounds are really exceptional. remember, ruth bader ginsburg made some very harsh comments about president trump, saying she might move out of the country if he got elected that kind of thing. she later apologized. there were some suggestions that maybe she d have to recuse from
supreme court i mean, obviously the others on the supreme court and people who believe in this institution are worried about reputational damage. what do americans need to see to feel either secure or, frankly what other options do they have in this guy is quite possibly going to be on the supreme court by the end of the weekend. that s right. john reports s roberts is cons. i think he would welcome kavanaugh s conservative ideology. the chief justice also cares deeply about the image of the court and i think he will be troubled. one other thing we have to wonder about is there is some real possibility look, after the clarence thomas allegations, i d say the subsequent reporting has largely sustained those allegations. it makes it seem quite likely indeed those allegations by anita hill were correct. if in a similar way more people
almost inarguable that kavanaugh told about renauti alumni. obviously, that wasn t just a matter of affection and everybody knows that. so i think that undermines the integrity of the court. i guess i d also say at some level if you look at the historic mistakes, the supreme court has made over the last century, they haven t been because of lack of brilliance or a lack of judicial reasoning. they ve been because of a lack of empathy. it s been dred scott. it s in pleasy versus ferguson. it s been some of the cases about women s rights, about gays. and watching judge kavanaugh there, i think one had to question whether in this kind of case coming forward whether he would be able to have that kind of empathy that would contribute to a forward-looking ruling organize one that is ultimately an embarrassment for this country. nicholas kristof, pete
confirmation. not, to use your term, left wing. not a left-wing policy argument or the kind of administrative question that might come before the supreme court. now, that may be too much of a legal nicety and the claims here you know, the cannons of judicial say that judges should have no conflict and no appearance of a conflict and that s where the difficult question comes in. he s the one who said that himself, and he s the one in the speech who said a judge has to have an appearance db tosh an umpire, has to have the appearance of leaving his politicians at the door. he both raised the expectation and then shattered it. i think there s also other larger questions. we obviously expect court to have integrity. and at least i m deeply troubled by what you might call these small lies that i think it s