politics

President Harris could and should get ten new picks.

This is just my personal view but I don’t think we should have one Supreme Court. Every case should get a random assortment of 9 judges drawn from the several circuit courts and even the most minor of conflicts of interest should mean you’re ineligible for the random selection.

And if the downside of that is we get constant conflicting precedents due to ideological judges, then why have a Supreme Court at all? If it’s Calvinball anyway, just switch to a parliamentary system.

This is one of the exact reforms I've been talking about wanting for years at this point. 18 years is a perfect tenure for someone as influential as a Supreme Court Justice, and giving every president 2 nominations is a good number to keep the values of the Supreme Court in line with those of the public.

Think there should be something in there about if the senate doesn’t go through with the hearing that it’s “implied consent”. Not that Mitch McConnell bs.

Restore the court’s eroded legitimacy? Two justices at a time per term? Even if Harris wins and gets two in her first term and manages to replace two conservative justices with two liberal justices, that would still leave the court at 5/4 in the Conservatives favor. That would mean at least four more years of conservative zealotry handed down by the court.

The problem needs to be fixed as soon as possible. This is a good first step, or would have been 10 or 20 years ago but it isn't enough right now. Biden needs to add members to the court as well as adding term limits. Or to be more realistic, Harris will need to do it. There's no way a Republican House or 50/50 Senate is going to let Biden do anything in the next 5 months.

Americans, take a look at how the European Court of Justice is staffed:

The Court of Justice consists of 27 Judges who are assisted by 11 Advocates-General. The Judges and Advocates-General are appointed by common accord of the governments of the member states[7] and hold office for a renewable term of six years. The treaties require that they are chosen from legal experts whose independence is "beyond doubt" and who possess the qualifications required for appointment to the highest judicial offices in their respective countries or who are of recognised competence.[7] In practice, each member state nominates a judge whose nomination is then ratified by all other member states.[8]

The Court can sit in plenary session, as a Grand Chamber of fifteen judges (including the president and vice-president), or in chambers of three or five judges. Plenary sittings are now very rare, and the court mostly sits in chambers of three or five judges.[19] Each chamber elects its own president who is elected for a term of three years in the case of the five-judge chambers or one year in the case of three-judge chambers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Court_of_Justice

Not to mention that there are more than one "supreme courts" with different types of expertise.

There is the General Court, the Civil Service Tribunal, and of course very importantly the European Court of Human Rights.

Spread the hazard of hyper-concentration as thin as possible.

Would a term limit by itself ensure that each president gets two appointments, if justices time their retirements strategically to preserve their faction on the court?

Suppose all the conservative justices retire en bloc as soon as a Republican wins the presidency, resetting the terms for all their seats to another 18 years. As long as another Republican wins within the next 18 years and the new justices continue the tactic, they can prevent a Democrat from replacing any of them indefinitely.

A country of +330M habitants could and should have more than 9 Supreme Court justices, also the ninth Circuit should have been splitted long ago

This is s great idea, not to extreme that it's impossible but powerful enough to make a real difference for the better

There isn't a plan.

A plan would list the steps necessary to enact Biden's wishlist, but so far I have not seen a plan for how to actually enact any of the changes he has proposed. It will require constitutional amendments, which is impossible thanks to the undemocratic electoral process enshrined by the Supreme Court. Without amendments literally any legislation can just be struck down by the Court.

Instead of using the unlimited power the Court just granted him, he's just wasting time on a wishlist that won't happen.