Justice Samuel Alito says Congress lacks the power to impose a code of ethics on the Supreme Court. He becomes the first member of the court to take a public stand against proposals in Congress to toughen ethics rules for the justices.
I like the idea of terms being twenty years and judges being selected randomly from existing sitting judges in lower courts. Takes all the air out of the balloon around Congress fighting over approving SCOTUS judges.
I kind of like that idea, except I think it’s less likely to create a non-partisan court and more likely to create a randomly partisan court. Like, odds are that five of the justices would still have a partisan lean. Is that fair to the American people? Also, when Republicans block a president from having their judicial nominations confirmed, then it becomes even more likely for conservative justices to make it to the SCOTUS. Same for if Dems blocked. It would incentize obstruction.
I’ve felt that we should simply have the SCOTUS be elected like we do in many states. Why shouldn’t the people have a direct say in who makes the greatest decisions about our constitution? It was one thing when the court was ostensibly non-partisan, but at this point if it’s going to be partisan either way, we should just make it elected.
Alternatively, we could bake the partisanship into the court. Make the court have an even number, then reward an equal number of justices to the major parties (parties receiving more than x% of the vote in presidential elections or something like that). If libertarians or greens ever get more popular, we can have the court autoadjust to split between more parties. That’s my hairbrained idea that would probably be too messy to be worth it.
I like the idea of terms being twenty years and judges being selected randomly from existing sitting judges in lower courts. Takes all the air out of the balloon around Congress fighting over approving SCOTUS judges.
I kind of like that idea, except I think it’s less likely to create a non-partisan court and more likely to create a randomly partisan court. Like, odds are that five of the justices would still have a partisan lean. Is that fair to the American people? Also, when Republicans block a president from having their judicial nominations confirmed, then it becomes even more likely for conservative justices to make it to the SCOTUS. Same for if Dems blocked. It would incentize obstruction.
I’ve felt that we should simply have the SCOTUS be elected like we do in many states. Why shouldn’t the people have a direct say in who makes the greatest decisions about our constitution? It was one thing when the court was ostensibly non-partisan, but at this point if it’s going to be partisan either way, we should just make it elected.
Alternatively, we could bake the partisanship into the court. Make the court have an even number, then reward an equal number of justices to the major parties (parties receiving more than x% of the vote in presidential elections or something like that). If libertarians or greens ever get more popular, we can have the court autoadjust to split between more parties. That’s my hairbrained idea that would probably be too messy to be worth it.