A solution to GOP Court packing (if Congress has the cojones for it...)

[lastlib]

...and WITHOUT expanding SCOTUS.

Establish a National Court of Appeals. (Pack it with 25 good young progressive judges.) ALL appeals from lower courts go here.

Strip the Supreme Court of all appellate jurisdiction. (Yes, Congress can do this.) Leave it with only its constitutional original jurisdiction. All appeals go to the National Court of Appeals.

Clarence PubicHair can take all the naps he wants and play with his "long-dong silver" to his little heart's content, and BeerBoy Kavanaughty can spend the rest of his career hung over. And the rest of the country gets justice. Problem solved.

[Chichiri]

1. What's your source

for saying Congress can strip SCOTUS of its appellate jurisdiction?

[SCantiGOP]

2. Congress cannot do this

It would take a constitutional amendment to remove the SC appellate review jurisdiction.
Many states have appeals courts, but they are designed to lessen the work load on the Supreme Court, and all of their rulings are subject to SC review and reversal.

[The Magistrate]

4. Not So Certain Of That, Sir

The Supreme Court is assigned by the Constitution to deal with cases involving ambassadors, between states, and between a state and the federal government. This cannot be reduced or altered save by amendment. Appellate jurisdiction is regulated by Congress, under this clause:

In all the other Cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

This delegates to Congress power to restrict the Court's purview to its bare Constitutional bones. Whether doing so is a good idea, or would even help (as a number of important matters, voting rights for instance, are often couched as disputes between federal and state authority), is another question. But it seems plain the thing could be done under the Constitution by statute.

[AleksS]

5. It's a callback to his nomination hearing.

He had made several off color remarks about pubic hairs to female staffers including Anita Hill, who brought the issue to the Senate’s attention.

Apparently he had a thing about pubic hairs on his beverages.

[A HERETIC I AM]

7. OK...fair enough.

[volstork]

6. See this NYT article from 2018:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/us/politics/anita-hill-testimony-clarence-thomas.html


Ms. Hill said that Judge Thomas had repeatedly asked her to go out with him in a social capacity and would not take no for an answer. She said he would talk about sex in vivid detail, describing pornography he had seen involving women with large breasts, women having sex with animals, group sex and rape scenes.

Judge Thomas would also talk about his own “sexual prowess” in workplace conversations, Ms. Hill said. And he once mentioned a pornographic film whose star was called “Long Dong Silver,” which turned into an infamous name in American political lore.

“It would have been more comfortable to remain silent,” she said. “But when I was asked by a representative of this committee to report my experience, I felt that I had to tell the truth. I could not keep silent.”

After Ms. Hill’s opening statement, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Delaware Democrat who was then chairman of the committee, began questioning her on the specific locations of her harassment allegations. She mentioned the “incident of the Coke can,” which — as she had described a half-hour earlier — involved Judge Thomas asking her who had put pubic hair on his can of cola.

Mr. Biden asked, “Can you describe it, once again, for me please?”

After a sigh, Ms. Hill did.

[A HERETIC I AM]

8. Fine. I'll delete

[volstork]

9. Only trying to provide information,

as you seemed not to be familiar with the reference.

Not my intention to be snarky

[A HERETIC I AM]

10. Not at all! I appreciate the correction