(02-21-2021, 11:34 AM)DHBirr Wrote: The Department of Justice needs to be taken out of the Executive Branch and become part of the Judicial. This includes the President having no authority to appoint the Attorney General. A new AG, or perhaps a choice of potential AGs, could be nominated by his/her predecessor, with input from the Supreme Court to narrow down the list, and final approval by Congress. At most, a president should be permitted to raise an objection to a particular AG candidate, or later to specific actions by a currently serving AG, such objections then to be voted upon by Congress — and possibly overruled by SCOTUS.
The President should also lack any vestige of authority to nominate justices, even to the lowest courts, much less SCOTUS. Instead, all such nominations would be by serving judges, usually of higher courts. These candidates would then be voted on by Congress — and refusing to even hold hearings, as McConnell did to the Garland nomination, would result in the candidate being automatically appointed as a rebuke of Congress's dereliction of duty.
These changes would firm up the independence of the Justice Department and the Judiciary from the Executive. "'My' Supreme Court; 'my' Attorney General"? No way, hombre.
Ehm, you realize that the problem isn't that the DOJ is part of the executive branch, but that there's somebody who can tell the DOJ to take up or drop certain cases?
And in some cases, that's actually a good thing! Sometimes it really is interest of the people for a case not to be pursued or for it to be pursued extensively.
The problem is when the fellow who can tell the DOJ what to do does so for political purposes rather than the people's best interests, and it doesn't really matter whose signature is on the bottom line in that case.