Biden delivered remarks from the Oval Office outlining his decision not to seek reelection, his first on-camera remarks since making that announcement on Sunday. In addition to explaining why he is ending his candidacy, he listed off his priorities for his remaining time as president.
“And I’m going to call for Supreme Court reform, because this is critical to our democracy,” Biden said.
Multiple outlets have reported that Biden is considering proposals to establish term limits for Supreme Court justices and an enforceable ethics code for those on the high court.
Add 2 seats to the bench, and then add 13 total judges. 11 of 22 judges are selected at random to determine the case. The non voting judge opinion becomes part of the case law, as well as an intercollegiate constitutional scholar opinion
This matches the broad strokes of the approach I favor as well.
There are 13 Federal circuits. Expand to one justice per circuit, then double that.
But the core of the approach, regardless of the exact number, is to shift to having cases heard by randomized panels of judges. The amount of power wielded by individual justices right now is just insane. Dilute it down so that the power rests with the body rather than individuals.
Further, randomizing who hears any given case would help curtail the current environment where test cases get tailored to the idiosyncracies and pet theories of individual judges.
SCOTUS should be deciding cases based on rational reading of the law, not entertaining wing nut theories that Thomas or Alito hinted at in previous decisions. That sort of nonsense becomes a lot less feasible if there’s no guarantee a case will actually end up in front of Thomas or Alito.
So what happens when the judges chosen for a case interpretation end up being 7-2 in one party’s favor? Conservatives would be sitting at the slot machines in a diaper pulling the lever until they hit a jackpot. It’s not like making them sit out of some cases based on a lottery is going to make them any less hypocritical or prone to power tripping and bribery. They’ll just wait their turn.
Appointees should just be subject to term limits and yearly affirmation votes by members of the BAR association to renew or revoke their qualifications. That way members of the public that are still well versed in law are able to hold them accountable.
I think you’re missing the point.
As things stand now, you get cases that are tailor made to the whims of specific people because there’s a 100% chance it ends up in front of those specific people. That’s an absolutely massive problem.
The point is that you’re less likely to have cases that are specifically aimed at stroking any given individual’s brand of crazy when there’s only a ~1 in 3 chance they’ll even hear it. A panel of 9 from a pool of 26 means that you go from a 100% chance that, say, Alito and Thomas, hear a case together to around 12%. That’s a huge gamble when it takes years and a massive amount of money to get a case in front of SCOTUS.
No, it doesn’t solve all conceivable problems with the court. But it’d help address the fact that SCOTUS justices are entirely too powerful as individuals and it can be done via simple act of Congress.
Appointees should just be subject to term limits and yearly affirmation votes by members of the BAR association to renew or revoke their qualifications
Not going to happen. SCOTUS terms are life appointments constitutionally. That means you’ve gotten into amendment territory which just plain is not realistic right now.
If you triple instead of double that you could have a three judge panel (like federal districts do) that could rule on smaller cases that come out of that circuit. Then, if needed, they could call a full 9 - 11 judge panel if it’s a larger topic. This would also allow them to hear many more cases than they currently do, which has been a problem for decades.
I’d be in favor of more. 26 is just because I think there’s a very easy argument to make for “every circuit gets direct representation on SCOTUS” and it’s not a huge leap to go to two per circuit from there.
Increasing throughput is definitely one of the reasons I’d support doing this as well. Thanks for highlighting that since I didn’t.
