Recent polling released by NBC News shows that only 22% of Americans have confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court. In the wake of that growing unpopularity, a new proposal in Congress would amend the Constitution to impose 18-year term limits on Supreme Court justices. Democratic Rep. Johnny Olszewski of Maryland joins "The Takeout" to discuss.
What method of appointment would be better? I think there’s a whole host of issues with them, but I think most would be fixed simply with an 18 year term limit and some basic corruption laws
My hot take is that the number of justices should be raised to match the number of federal judicial circuits, reasonable term limits given, and and the seat should be impeachable. Each circuit nominates and seats its own justice, and congress presides over impeachment proceedings.
That’s a start.
Why not have it be similar to how the pope is elected by having the circuit and district court judges vote to nominate and congress would vote to approve. Checks and balances and all that. Congress is feckless right now though, it needs its own reform to be held through RCV, abolish the Senate, expand the house based on the cubed root of the population, and fill seats based on proportional representation in the vote.
But fat chance that ever happens. We couldn’t dream of having black and brown people and women and working class people represented could we?
RCV is huge step forward compared to the current FPTP, but given the amount of power wielded by corps and foreign groups it follows that they’ll still try to tilt the ballot in their favor, they’ll just have to donate/bribe more than one or two candidates each election.
I think we need to move on to a system where the congress is comprised of volunteer citizens selected by random lottery. That is more likely to create a congress that evenly represents the populace, whereas candidates in an RCV ballot are still likely to be overemphasized/propagandized by the media and rich donors.
That said, this is just an off-the-cuff hot take by me. I’m not an expert by any means, just another frustrated and jaded citizen.