I keep seeing memes go by on social media that list changes we need to make once we get the fascists out of office. There are some good items on those lists and the people sharing them have good intentions, but at least two of the items drive me nuts: term limits for the Supreme Court and ending the electoral college.
It’s not that I disagree with those ideas – the electoral college should have been tossed out long ago and while I’m generally skeptical about term limits the lengths suggested are reasonable – but rather that they aren’t going to happen.
The Constitution provides for appointment for life for Supreme Court justices (and all federal judges) and it also sets up the electoral college. To get rid of those things, you need a constitutional amendment.
Getting a constitutional amendment is hard and in the current political climate probably impossible even if we throw all the bastards out in 2028.
However, there are things we can do that do not require amending the Constitution, and one of them would do a much better job of fixing the current disaster of the supreme court than term limits.
We need to expand the court.
There is no limit on the size of the court in the Constitution. The size of the court was set at nine members – eight associate justices and a chief justice – in 1869. At the time, the population of the United States was about 39 million, or roughly 10 percent of what it is now.
We actually need a larger court to get to all the issues the Supreme Court should handle. We need more judges on the federal district courts and the courts of appeal as well.
Further, term limits wouldn’t even apply to the current judges we need to get rid of, because any amendment would likely exempt them. We need to change the Supreme Court immediately and expansion would do that. Continue reading “The Changes We Need”…