This wouldn't be as big of a problem as it is for both the population who has to stay extremely vigilant (more than they want to) just so they don't pass something quickly and in secret/when no one pays attention (like at holidays), and also the Supreme Court wouldn't be barraged with bad laws from Congress (and these laws don't even reach them for decades sometimes), if US was using a Constitutional Court.
I think having a Constitutional Court that verifies every single bill that passes through Congress and administration, and has final say on whether a bill is going to become law or not, would be a decent solution for an out of control Congress and administration that don't even care if their laws are Constitutional or not anymore.
This is not to "replace" the Supreme Court, or any other Court. this is in addition to them. A Constitutional Court could filter out a lot of the bad bills, before they ever had to reach the Supreme Court for their unconstitutionality. With a Constitutional Court something like the Patriot Act or FAA might've never passed, and we wouldn't have to endure it for 20 years before it even reaches the Supreme Court, to decide its constitutionality.
But what happens if a Constitutional Court allows a "bad bill" to pass anyway, you ask? Well, nothing different than right now. It goes out there, and eventually someone sues over it, and it goes through the same process up to the Supreme Court, if it's that bad. The point of the Constitutional Court wouldn't be to "set a precedent" but to filter out at least 90 percent of bad/unconstitutional bills coming out from Congress. Other than that, everything else will work as normal.
The system is already used in many European countries, and I think it would work well for US, too. Without it a lot of EU countries would probably have a lot worse justice system, since they don't even have the precedent thing, which means that if a lot more bad bills were allowed to go through, they would have a lot more judges split on the decisions, and more unconstitutional laws would be allowed to continue for more years. But the Constitutional Court filters out most of those, so the judges can only be split on a few of the bad ones.
Still, though, the weak link remains that everyone has to trust these officials will actually uphold the constitution. Unless we can develop something more binding than swearing on a Bible, we're going to keep coming back to this same problem.
That's not to say I don't like the idea of a constitutional court, though. I just think we need to also add some sort of protections against blatantly unconstitutional actions.
Don't you think that would end up like the patent office? Rubber stamps for everyone...
I think a far more effective solution would be to require all laws be version controlled on a publicly available site. Something like github for Congress. No more need to reference Act 737 Paragraph 3 section 2 part H. It's just a diff at that point. It would make it very clear who is proposing changes to what. Combine passage with a code review process so that everyone can see who voted for/against/abstain and why for everything, ever.
The NSA can view the totality of everything we do. Why are we still unable to view the totality of what Congress is up to? 300,000,000 Americans private lives are under total surveillance, while we can't even monitor the supposedly public activity of a measly 600 people.
I'm skeptical that adding another layer for the bill to pass through will cause any meaningful improvement, unless there is some clever way to align the incentives of the individuals in the layer more closely with the people.
I think having a Constitutional Court that verifies every single bill that passes through Congress and administration, and has final say on whether a bill is going to become law or not, would be a decent solution for an out of control Congress and administration that don't even care if their laws are Constitutional or not anymore.
This is not to "replace" the Supreme Court, or any other Court. this is in addition to them. A Constitutional Court could filter out a lot of the bad bills, before they ever had to reach the Supreme Court for their unconstitutionality. With a Constitutional Court something like the Patriot Act or FAA might've never passed, and we wouldn't have to endure it for 20 years before it even reaches the Supreme Court, to decide its constitutionality.
But what happens if a Constitutional Court allows a "bad bill" to pass anyway, you ask? Well, nothing different than right now. It goes out there, and eventually someone sues over it, and it goes through the same process up to the Supreme Court, if it's that bad. The point of the Constitutional Court wouldn't be to "set a precedent" but to filter out at least 90 percent of bad/unconstitutional bills coming out from Congress. Other than that, everything else will work as normal.
The system is already used in many European countries, and I think it would work well for US, too. Without it a lot of EU countries would probably have a lot worse justice system, since they don't even have the precedent thing, which means that if a lot more bad bills were allowed to go through, they would have a lot more judges split on the decisions, and more unconstitutional laws would be allowed to continue for more years. But the Constitutional Court filters out most of those, so the judges can only be split on a few of the bad ones.