Political Memes

There are a number of ideas to help regulate the power of the court. Adding more members is a popular one, but that isn't going to prevent Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society from conspiring to pack the court again with ideologues, partisans and corrupt crooks (looking at you, Clarence Thomas).

And impeaching and removing a justice is as difficult as impeaching and removing a president, which is to say, nearly impossible.

One option is to add a lot of new justices, like bringing the total to one hundred. A small number of them would bench a committee to choose the cases to be heard, and then for each individual case, six to nine of the pool would be tapped to hear it, the way that the other courts operate. That way it takes a lot more effort and resources for corporations and billionaires to bribe all the justices. It's also a lot harder for organizations like the Federalist Society to dominate the court. (They'll try, but it'll be evident they are trying long before it creates an unbreakable veto on the rest of government.)

Currently, legal experts are looking at a multi-pronged approach, installing term limits (that will require a constitutional amendment), adding judges, and chartering a mandatory code of ethics enforced by congressional committee. I'm afraid that doing these three will not be enough, and it won't fix the problem quickly enough.

We're beyond mild reforms of the Supreme Court. We need to break it, and then create something else new in its place. And stripping it of its jurisdiction as the last court of appeals that decides constitutionality, will go far in that effort.