Every president appoints one justice, but only in their second term if reelected. Fuck cares how many justices there are at any given time.
Here’s the catch: There’s no term limit and technically no age limit… but in order to qualify, any nominee must have served at least 20 years as a federal judge and have another 15 years in the legal system (as a judge, attorney, whatever), for 35 years total experience. Oh and they should have a law degree, since that’s not a requirement right now lol.
This way you get someone with a judicial record to consider at confirmation hearings, and make sure they’re incidentally old enough that they’ll die or retire relatively soon in case they turn out to be fucking horrible.
What happens if you have a streak of single term presidents, with no new judges appointed?
I would rather see a lottery system implemented. Every year, the oldest standing percentage of judges gets retired and replaced with randomly picked judges out of a pool that meets certain requirements (these can be debated). No election, no appointment, using an auditable system, and participation is compulsory, with strict restrictions of what activities the judge is allowed to participate in while serving so that they’re discouraged from staying on term too long.
What if we turned it into a virtual supreme court like that?
Every case gets heard 2-3 times, Judges are randomly assigned from the pool of federal judges that meet qualifications.
This body could vote to impeach their members, and courts are randomly assembled for a few months at a time
The idea being, the supreme Court has one job - to decide matters of law, meaning they decide edge cases and conflicts. They need to understand the law, not have power - the goal is consistency in applying the law. A method to find consensus among top judges seems a lot more stable and effective than individuals
second-term presidents having expanded power seems scary. otherwise this all seems cool. any ideas about reforming lower federal judge appointments by the president?
Here’s my Supreme Court fantasy:
Every president appoints one justice, but only in their second term if reelected. Fuck cares how many justices there are at any given time.
Here’s the catch: There’s no term limit and technically no age limit… but in order to qualify, any nominee must have served at least 20 years as a federal judge and have another 15 years in the legal system (as a judge, attorney, whatever), for 35 years total experience. Oh and they should have a law degree, since that’s not a requirement right now lol.
This way you get someone with a judicial record to consider at confirmation hearings, and make sure they’re incidentally old enough that they’ll die or retire relatively soon in case they turn out to be fucking horrible.
What happens if you have a streak of single term presidents, with no new judges appointed?
I would rather see a lottery system implemented. Every year, the oldest standing percentage of judges gets retired and replaced with randomly picked judges out of a pool that meets certain requirements (these can be debated). No election, no appointment, using an auditable system, and participation is compulsory, with strict restrictions of what activities the judge is allowed to participate in while serving so that they’re discouraged from staying on term too long.
Jury duty for judges. Interesting thought!
What if we turned it into a virtual supreme court like that?
Every case gets heard 2-3 times, Judges are randomly assigned from the pool of federal judges that meet qualifications.
This body could vote to impeach their members, and courts are randomly assembled for a few months at a time
The idea being, the supreme Court has one job - to decide matters of law, meaning they decide edge cases and conflicts. They need to understand the law, not have power - the goal is consistency in applying the law. A method to find consensus among top judges seems a lot more stable and effective than individuals
second-term presidents having expanded power seems scary. otherwise this all seems cool. any ideas about reforming lower federal judge appointments by the president?