Tell them you want 75% off.
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Correct, but since the Constitution doesn’t differentiate SCOTUS justices from other federal judges, they could pass a law requiring justices after x years on SCOTUS to enter the Senior Judges program. I don’t think that would run afoul of the “during good behavior” clause.
It’s been proposed that justices do that at x years and other federal judges get cycled onto SCOTUS in a regular repeating schedule that allows each president y appointments per term. This would lessen the hair-on-fire political stakes of appointments which today arise only from unpredictable deaths and retirements. And if justices had to be sourced exclusively from the sitting stock of already-approved jurists, even better limiting that pool to appellate judges, there’d be no more fishing for some outside partisan to elevate to carry out the president’s party’s political agenda.
On the related problem of filibuster reform, which would be needed to pass any of these things and so much more, I was thinking a simple reform that the conservative Dems might actually approve would be a rule that to stop a cloture motion would require 40 opposed, and that it’s automatically a time-limited roll-call vote. The minority can still prevent cloture but they have to have the 40 votes and actually enter the room within the narrow time window. That would take so much coordination and effort on the minority’s part that I think filibusters would become exceptional events once again.
Whatever gets done, it’s essential that it leave the con Dems room to say they “saved” the filibuster.
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15-seat court, with possibility to handle business with three-judge panels. The US has a huge administrative apparatus, no matter what the small government people would like to believe. While a non-functioning SCOTUS may please that lot, most of us prefer functioning government organs.
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Four?
Fight for 15! Or, even better … 21!
Actually, that’s precisely why Biden should expand it to 21 now.
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alternatively, investigations into backgrounds of sitting justices who were not properly vetted prior to ascension to the court could reveal conflicts which may prove a justice unworthy of that position and impeachment and removal would be appropriate
that money had to come from somewhere, and who knows what skeletons are in the Thomas family closet
give them a choice
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I have read they are offering lower prices of late. I would hate for you to leave the site. Your posts are always interesting and informative. If you must leave know that you will be missed.
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The damage to the federal judiciary by McConnell & the Miscreants during the previous administration cannot be undone. It can only be balanced. Increasing the size of the Supreme Court, by 4 seats, and the lower courts is necessary.
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Senior status for other federal judges obviously seems to be constitutional, but it’s also entirely voluntary. Mandatory senior status – my preference would be to make it mandatory at the latter of 10 years service or age 70 --would certainly be challenged by the first judge/justice forced to go senior. I think it’s worth doing, but the judiciary obviously has a serious self-interest in keeping their status as long as they want to do so.
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“Supposed to” carries a lot of weight in this sentence.
None of which excludes expansion.
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What a stupid idea. If it passed the Senate (which it won’t), it would simply mean that in 2025 when the Republicans take the Presidency back (they’ll have already taken the Congress back in 2023), they’ll simply raise the number from 13 to 17. And sometime in the future our great grand children will wonder why there are 51 justices on the SCOTUS.
Leave the fucking court alone, and try passing legislation that both parties will accept. That pretty well guarantees constitutional laws.
What a tremendously silly statement. Congress almost unanimously reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 2006. John Roberts wiped his ass with it four years later. McCain-Feingold was bipartisan too, and how did that work out?
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Not pack. Not expand. Reform.
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So do this now, Elie Mystal argues.
Ummm…Trump. Full Stop.
Methinks that ship has sailed.
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Oh how I really like this solution. You have advanced it more than once here.
RGB, if she were still with us, would’ve never accepted the offer. And I suspect the current left leaning Court members would be resistant to doing so - with the possible exception of Justice Breyer if only because he is approaching dirt in age.
There are no retirement requirements under the Constitution, but there are no pension provisions in that document either. You could save a few million if Congress were to pass a provision of full pension entitlements upon attaining 15 years of service, but diminishing benefits for every year thereafter.
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It seems we all happened upon a bridge, and found a troll. A tiny troll, but a troll none the less.
Go to bed little troll (and stay there). The adults are talking here.
RGB would have accepted the offer the moment she was diagnosed with cancer. That happened back in the Obama administration. I forgot to add that the congressional bribe is not payable to anyone who dies prior to retirement.
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This is all exactly wrong. Creating a precedent that the party in power may expand the court whenever it deems it “unbalanced” will unbalance the institution permanently.
More, the insistence that this is now a reasonable goal because because the number of people angry enough to consider it make it feel “mainstream” is peri-trumpian:
“Lots of people are saying it…”
“Just ask Congressman Nadler…”
“Maybe people are a lot more upset about [these appointments] than you are, Kevin…”
However angry however many people now are, court packing is still monkeywrenching, destabilizing, self-defeating, and wrong. It’s better to win the long game (because if you have to short-cut it to stay ahead you’re most likely going to get beat at that too).
Don’t believe me? Go back and look at how smug Ted and Lindsey were behind their “Just Say No to Court Packing” sign. If we’re too angry to avoid this kind of bear trap we’re sunk.
Your opinion is duly noted, Sergei.
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