• ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    The segment of the constitution relating to the supreme court is preposterously small. It’s very weird that people think that no one is capable of actually reading the damned thing.

    Never mentions any number of judges. Mentions numbers in a bunch of other places, and gets so detailed as to specify how to break up the initial batch of senators to ensure rolling terms.

    But no, they specifically intended for there to be a specific number of justices that they just opted not to write down: 6 5 6 7 9 10 7 9 justices, just like the constitution forgot to dictate.

    Other fun fact: you can pass a law that says the supreme court can’t hear appeals to certain types of cases. It’s explicitly stated that you could just write the supreme court out of hearing any case that involved the supreme court or any Justice, an executive who appointed any member of said court, or just about anything.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      you could just write the supreme court out of hearing any case that involved the supreme court or any Justice, an executive who appointed any member of said court, or just about anything.

      Yes, please!

      Since the constitutional amendment process is literally impossible and has been for at least 40 years, SCOTUS is the final verdict on any constitutional matter.

      Even if it WASN’T fundamentally broken, it’s the mother and father of all conflicts of interest to make it the final arbiter on matters pertaining to itself and the ex president/wannabe dictator that appointed a plurality of them.

    • thesporkeffect@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Other fun fact: you can pass a law that says the supreme court can’t hear appeals to certain types of cases.

      This is interesting, how would appeals work? Would there be a special committee formed by Congress, or would the circuit court be the final word?

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        There’s no defined process. The constitution just specifies that the supreme court has appellate jurisdiction except where Congress defines exceptions.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisdiction_stripping

        Since Congress also has authority to actually create and organize the lower courts, they can do almost whatever they please.
        The only thing that can’t do is diminish or expand the original jurisdiction of the supreme court.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_jurisdiction_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States

        So they can’t put a different court in charge of cases involving two states disagreeing over ownership of a river or it’s water, or ambassadors and such.

        So if Congress wanted it to be a single use court nominated, appointed and dissolved for one special case they could. Or they could say it just stops at the federal appeals court, the state court or wherever they want.

        Personally, I think a single use court established for special high profile cases with a large potential for conflict of interest would be best. There’s some trickiness that would be involved, since Congress can’t actually appoint judges, only the executive can. So if the case involved the current sitting executive (in my opinion only in their personal capacity, as cases involving the office of the president lack the personal liability that makes for a conflict of interest), then they would still need to be the one to make the appointment. Might be able to sidestep it by having the house select already appointed judges without the conflict to hear the case, but it’s very close to appointment with extra steps.

        In any case, other than the caveat that’s never happened, it would be so much more clearly unbiased.