What Democracy can learn from Silicon Valley
When Silicon Valley decides something can’t fail they use single point of failure, SPOF, analysis, and our democracy must do the same.
The United States Supreme Court has many times been a single point of failure in recent memory — Bush v Gore, Trump v. United States, Citizens United v FEC, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, etc.
All of these decisions were SPOF failures because:
- The decisions were corrupt by definition; each had three or more dissenting judges out of nine
- Other branches of government were unwilling or unable to correct the corrupt decisions after they were made
- Three of these decisions affected democracy immediately in a way that cannot be easily corrected after the fact
In short, going forward, the Supreme Court cannot be allowed to reach binding decisions where 1/3 of its members dissent and digging our way out of these corrupt decisions might require court packing or removing the Supreme Court as a branch of government.
In comparison to these corrupt decisions, Brown v Board of Education, 9/9, Roe v Wade, 7/9, and Marbury v Madison, 4/4 with 2 abstaining.
Then there is Miranda v Arizona with 3 Supreme Court justices dissenting and one only partially agreeing. So yes in cases like that the decision should be announced but not be binding. The ruling of the lower courts should prevail and a nation wide Miranda rights should have to wait for a new law or a Supreme Court with more agreement.
The problem with allowing a Miranda decision with 3 or more dissenting judges is that it means that either Supreme Court justices are extremely failable or that the decision being reached is highly debatable. Either way SPOF says democracy can’t be put at the mercy of such decisions.
But what if you need the Supreme Court to save democracy, say from a traitor / felon becoming president, and the 7/9 standard can’t be reached? The problem here isn’t the proposed 7/9 rule but that the office of president, as currently conceived, is a SPOF violation.
A more reasonable system divides up power:
France operates under a semi-presidential system where the president and prime minister share executive power. The president, as head of state, oversees foreign policy and defense, while the prime minister, as head of government, manages domestic and economic policy.
Even more reasonable than that would be if America, instead of a Cabinet, had separate elections for each of the 15 executive departments. Instead of mostly rubber stamping in Cabinet members, Congress would be responsible for creating, defining, and removing executive departments. In that system there would be no president in the executive branch and supreme court justices would be nominated in some other, hopefully less political, way (maybe the heads of the executive departments would decide by voting on who to nominate).
Under our current system civil protests are the only real checks on power. Civil protests are likely to be necessary under any system, but the more America relies on them the uglier democracy will get.