President Biden “calling for three bold reforms to restore trust and accountability” in SCOTUS, the White House announces. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/07/29/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-bold-plan-to-reform-the-supreme-court-and-ensure-no-president-is-above-the-law/
But the Supreme Court is intentionally not a representative body, that's the Congress. There's no reason at all that SCOTUS should have followed demographic developments.
It's not its role in the federal system, and that threatens to obstruct the branch that IS to be representative.
@volkris @w7voa
1. Caseload Management: As the population and complexity of legal issues increase, a larger Supreme Court can handle a greater volume of cases, reducing backlogs and speeding up the judicial process. 2. Diversity of Perspectives: A larger court can include justices from a broader range of backgrounds, experiences, and legal philosophies, potentially leading to more nuanced and well-rounded decisions.
@volkris @w7voa 3. Reducing Influence of Individual Justices: With more justices, the influence of any single justice is diluted, which can lead to decisions that more accurately reflect a consensus among a diverse group of legal minds.
4. Regional Representation: In countries with significant regional diversity, increasing the number of justices can ensure better representation of different geographic, cultural, and social interests within the highest court.
@volkris @w7voa 5. Political Balance: Sometimes, proposals to increase the size of the court are motivated by a desire to change its ideological balance. This can be controversial, as it may be perceived as “court packing” to achieve specific political ends.
6. Specialization: A larger court can allow for the creation of specialized panels or divisions to handle particular types of cases (e.g., constitutional law, commercial disputes), which can improve the efficiency …
@volkris @w7voa 7. Institutional Resilience: More justices can enhance the resilience of the court by ensuring that its functioning is less impacted by vacancies, illnesses, or recusal of justices.
Each of these reasons reflects different priorities and challenges that a judicial system might face, and the decision to increase the size of a Supreme Court often involves balancing these various factors.
But in just about each of your arguments above there are serious drawbacks and reasons they might actually be counterproductive.
For example, you say the court today is slow. Firstly, I disagree with that, but even if it is, adding more justices threatens to make it exponentially slower, if even more time has to be taken to shuttle drafts back and forth between even more justices.
And you seem to keep going back to representation when the Court is adamantly NOT to be a representative body. Wrong branch of government.
Should the Court start featuring representation it would be a malfunction of the US system, not a benefit.
@volkris @w7voa In an ideal world this might be correct. But, we have all lately experienced how slow the #SCOTUS handles each case (about 7000 per year) and how politicized it has become since Trump’s tenure. Here is ChatGPT’s answer to my question on why one should want to increase the size of the institution: Increasing the size of a Supreme Court can be driven by various motivations, both practical and political. Here are 7 common reasons for such a decision: