Justice Breyer's retirement highlights what's wrong with the Supreme Court

[Jilly_in_VA]

By Shan Wu, legal analyst and former federal prosecutor

Justice Stephen Breyer’s anticipated retirement announcement set off the usual frenzied speculation about who will be “the pick.” The reaction perfectly illustrates everything that is wrong with the Supreme Court.

Justices seem unlikely candidates to become cultural icons, but the prolific memes and two documentaries about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg make it plain that justices are increasingly viewed as rock stars. This should not be surprising because today’s Supreme Court has become a super-legislature to which we look for solutions for everything from gun violence to the Covid-19 pandemic. Add to this that this super-legislative body has only nine members – all of whom are appointed for life – and it’s easy to see why individual justices are seen as either saviors or destroyers of our democracy.

Among worldwide democracies, the United States stands pretty much alone in obsessing over its high court and those who serve on it.

In Britain, for example, little attention is paid to appointments to its relatively new high court, and Canadian commentators have opined that more Canadians are familiar with Roe v. Wade than any of their own country’s high court judgments.

How did the high court gain such power in a country with three separate but supposedly equal branches of government? The full answer to this question is complex but can be boiled down to the simple fact that the Supreme Court is a much more efficient institution than Congress.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/justice-breyer-s-retirement-highlights-what-s-wrong-supreme-court-ncna1288113
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I like the idea not only of term limits, but of circulating federal justices at random through the court.

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Yes there are possible solutions

How would we ever get them passed.

I feel the productivity of the Court is abysmal. And I don't see how Trump got such fast track treatment on some cases.

Case law and rulings on minutiae seem like make-work for lawyers to me. It all just proliferates. In my own state it's not uncommon to see the fourth generation of lawyers in practice. They've been carrying on since Prohibition.

Every President should get one appointment. No one should get more than 2 in a term. If there's a vacancy for a few years, so be it. The Court has become a heavy hand on the public's mind.