This Post Contains No Artificial Intelligence. It Contains No Human Intelligence Either.
If the law states that the number of seats on the SCOTUS is equal to the number of Appeals Circuits, then it's fixed in place as it is tied to that. No one, Democrat or Republican, can change the number of seats without also changing the setup of the Circuit Courts that reflect the number of States in the US.
If they want to create more Circuit Courts, then that might change the Supreme Court, but only by increasing it. It is unlikely that the number of Circuit courts would be reduced.
The only way to make the adjustment is to tie it to something else. The only other option is to create a Supreme Court Seat for every State and Territory, in which case you would be talking about 50+ seats and no one wants that many.
Original join date: 11/23/2004
Eclectic Connoisseur of all things written, drawn, or imaginatively created.
So once you retire, you're just "waiting to die"? I'm retired, and I hope to keep waiting for a long time yet. Many Supreme Court Justices who have retired have in fact led active lives, including professionally (teaching, writing, lecturing, etc.). RBG just figured that she could keep working as a Justice until she died, because either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would appoint her successor, and so her seat would taken by someone who shares her judicial philosophy. That of course was a bad miscalculation, and had she valued her judicial philosophy more than her personal ambitions, then she should have retired early in Obama's second term. (Note that one of the currently retired Justices is Anthony Kennedy, who was appointed to the Court by Ronald Reagan and who retired early in the Trump administration so that Trump could appoint his successor. He was in fact succeeded by one of his former clerks, Brett Kavanaugh.)
I don't think it was her own vanity that made RBG not want to step down, at least not at the end. During Obama's term, she may have been worried that they wouldn't have been able to put someone as liberal as her in her seat due to Republican obstinance. Then Scalia died and Mitch blocked Obama's nominee, so she knew that Mitch would probably block BOTH seats from being filled. She was probably waiting for Hillary to win, and for hopefully more Democrats in the Senate, before she retired- and then Trump won. So then she had to hope she could hold out until the next election, which, unfortunately, she couldn't.
Talk of her stepping down was not and has not been so that she could live an active life, so please do not try to twist that around on me. You're saying she should have retired so Obama could have appointed her successor; that argument is not about the life she would live after retiring, but about when she would die.
You hope to live a long time yet, but you're faulting her for having that same hope. Just because she could have done other things after retiring does not mean that continuing to serve on the court was not the greatest impact she could continue to have; it almost certainly is.
Be kind to me, or treat me mean
I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine
Yes I remember the talk on the news shows during that time. And she had several health battles before and during this. She should have stepped down at that point. But she wanted Clinton as the first woman president to nominate the next SC Judge. It was a gamble and she lost.
This Post Contains No Artificial Intelligence. It Contains No Human Intelligence Either.
No, it was a gamble and we lost.
RBG noped out with a state funeral and documentaries commemorating her life, career, and achievements. Now minorities, women, and others suffering under the oligarchy with their young psychopathic agents on the SCOTUS bench can do as they please.
Personally, I don't care how she would have lived her life in retirement. I'm just saying that "waiting to die" (in your words) wasn't her only option.
Yes, exactly.
Note that I did retire, even though I hope to live a good while longer. And yes, I am faulting her - not for having that hope but rather for treating that hope as grounds for not retiring. In light of her advanced age and her medical history (repeated occurrences of cancer), it should be clear that her continuing to live for several more years was simply hope rather than expectation.
It most certainly did have the greatest impact of anything that she could have done, and we shall be living with that impact throughout (and after) the likely decades-long tenure of her successor, Amy Coney Barrett.
How would this work?
Does the President get to appoint anyone they want if it's the 150th day of a vacancy? What's to keep a Republican President dealing with a Democratic Senate from nominating terrible candidates (Tiffany Trump, the legal advisor for the Family Research Council, Jim Cavaziel) with the intention of getting rejections, so that some federalist society backed state supreme court justice can get in on Day 151?
Can there be a pause if there's an investigation?
To change the law so that it states that the number of seats on the SCOTUS is equal to the number of Appeals Circuits, you would need the presidency and the Senate.
And if Republicans take over, they could easily change it. There isn't really a need to tie it to anything else, though they could easily come up with some pretext (It's the # of Circuit courts plus two! DC Circuit, 9th district and Federal Circuit get two justices due to their higher profile, while the Chief Justice isn't tied to a circuit! One Supreme Court justice for every ten circuit court judges!)
It probably would be healthy to normalize retirements. The justices can devote themselves to the next generation. Stevens wrote three books.
During early 2014, it was recognizable that Republicans might soon take back the Senate.
That was her moment.
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets
Be kind to me, or treat me mean
I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine
I thought that replying to each tiny paragraph separately rather than collectively (so that it was clear in each case just what I was replying to) actually facilitated communication. However, if that mode of writing is what you consider important rather than what I actually wrote, then it is clear that in fact we are not communicating at all.
I don't think we can set a time limit on when a vacancy is filled (for some of the reasons Mr. Mets pointed out, again think long-term and worst-case), nor can we keep the other party from obstructing. I get the instinct to want to have the ability to do things when we have control of some of the branches of government. But there are two things to consider. One: the way this government is run was decided centuries ago by a group of people wary of too much power being in the hands of a few and is conservative (small c) and slow and difficult to change for a reason. They wanted all things to be considered, they didn't want reactionary changes to law based on the current trends/attitudes, and they didn't want one election to allow a single group to change the way our country is governed.
While this is frustrating when you want change now or when quick action is called for (or on the depressingly common ongoing issues that needed to be fixed decades ago but are still waiting for action). But I can understand the reasoning and to some extent even agree with it. Second, you need to consider whatever you can do the other guys can do it as well. You get no monopoly on packing the Supreme Court with new Justices. If you "tie it to the number of circuits" as a convenient excuse to add liberal/centrist Justices I guarantee you the Republicans will find a reason to make it 20-25 and make it sound just as reasonable. You also don't want them to run roughshod when they get in power again (and of course, they will) without the ability to slow them down with the filibuster. You can't just put that on a shelf somewhere while we have Democratic control then pop it back out when they win control of Congress and the White House again. Rules apply to both sides.
Things are slow and difficult by design, and given what we just saw out of the Trump administration that's probably a good thing. Who knows how bad things would have gotten without safeguards in place against his worst instincts. How many times did he propose something only to be told he literally wasn't allowed to? You need to consider beyond the now.